Deep breaths. I centered myself, those breaths becoming everything I would need to keep a clear head in the next moments. Sadie was at the forefront of my mind, and I swore I would never stop going to the gym with her and even stop complaining about it if I walked away alive.
The door burst open, and Adrian spun with me still in his hold, and my head cocked back as far as I could to avoid the piercing of the tip of the blade against my skin. Adrian raised a pistol, aiming it at the door as Matteo stepped inside. His eyes narrowed on the knife against my throat. "Adrian, put down the gun," I said on a wheeze. "You know he'll never let you walk away after this."
Matteo leveled his own gun on Adrian, but I knew from the look in his eye that he would never fire. He'd never risk me like that. "I don't need to walk away to break him," Adrian whispered, and I moved.
I kept my hands close to my body, raising them slowly until I was a breath away from touching his arm. I grabbed his forearm just as he tensed to slit my throat, pulling down and to the left while I cocked my right shoulder. My head slipped under his armpit, and I used his own twisted arm to stab him in the side three times.
Still he fought, and I knew from Sadie's lessons that the adrenaline pumping through him meant he hadn't even felt the wounds yet. I focused on that wrist, twisting until he released the knife and turned to thrust it up under his chin.
The gun dropped from his hand instantly, and the gurgling sound he made would haunt me for the rest of my life. But it didn't stop me from speaking to him, the last sound he ever heard my voice. "You shouldn't have threatened my baby." I yanked the knife free, watching as he flopped face first to the floor and the puddle of blood surrounding him grew. His lifeless eyes stared up at me, like a little broken doll. Horror spread through my veins, unable to believe what I’d done.
Unable to believe that I didn’t feel one bit of remorse for killing a man.
"Ivory," Matteo whispered, and I looked up at him. Blood coated my hands and my dress. "You're bleeding." I nodded, glancing down to my left hand where the knife had cut into my palm in the struggle. "Let's get you cleaned up and have that stitched, okay Angel?"
"Take me home," I whispered, feeling everything return as the haze of adrenaline faded. The pain, the horror over what I'd done.
"After we go to Doc," Matteo answered, wrapping an arm around me and guiding me from the house.
I didn't know when I started trembling. All I knew was that it didn't stop for a long, long time.
Thirty-Four
Ivory
The trembling continued, accompanied by silent tears streaking down my cheeks. "Angel," Matteo murmured, wrapping me up in his arms in the back of the car while Simon raced along the streets. Matteo had torn his jacket and held it to the wound in my hand, while I shook in his arms. "You should have just gotten away. If you hadn't been in the shot, I could have killed him."
"Fuck you," I whispered through chattering teeth. "He took me from my home. He threatened to sell our baby. I'm going to be a mother, and I will do whatever it takes to protect this baby," I whispered, glaring at him.
His mouth molded into a smirk at my ire. "You were a badass, Angel."
I groaned. "Don’t give me your shit right now. I just stabbed a man."
"Rather fantastically," he laughed. "Never would have thought you had that in you, my angel."
I glared at him mockingly. "Maybe I'll stab you next."
"What? Why?" he chuckled, and Simon made a noise while he tried to suppress his own laugh.
"Because you're pissing me off. Being all snuggly when I'm covered in blood. Fucking psychopath, that's what you are! I bet you're all turned on too, like a creep."
I could only describe the face him made as one of absolute glee as his body shook with his roar of laughter. "You wouldn't be entirely wrong."
"Gross!"
"Ivory?" he asked, and I turned to find him staring down at me. My breath caught from the emotion in those blue eyes as he pressed his forehead to mine. "I fucking love you. Whether you're my angel or a knife-wielding badass."
I rolled my eyes, "I love you too, Teo." His lips claimed mine in a slow caress that couldn't be described as anything other than making love to me with his mouth. I sighed into the contact, realizing just how much I'd missed it during our separation. As soon as the car stopped at the estate, Matteo tugged me out and into the house.
"How is he?" he barked at the two men gathered in the foyer.
"Stable," one said, nodding his head to the living room. I turned, my eyes landing on Scar's prone body laid out on the massage table where the doctor had put in my tracker.
"He's alive?" I whispered, and Matteo nodded, glancing at me uneasily.
"I didn't want to get your hopes up until I knew for sure." I slid out of Matteo's hold, moving to his body and staring down at his bare torso as I counted the bullet holes in his body.
Six.
He'd taken six bullets to protect me.
It was a miracle none of them aimed for his head. "When will he wake up?" I asked, turning wide eyes to the doctor who stood over him and looked exhausted.
"When he's ready," he breathed. His eyes examined me from head to toe. "Any of that blood yours?"
"Yes," I whispered.
"Go shower. Be quick about it. I'll look you over as soon as you're out." Matteo took my uninjured hand and started to guide me away, but I gave him pleading eyes.
"I don't want to leave him."
"We'll hurry back, Angel." Pressing a kiss to Scar's forehead briefly, I let Matteo take me upstairs to shower.
✽✽✽
My eyes never left Scar's chest, watching the rhythmic rise and fall as the doctor stitched up my hand. "It will scar," he warned, and I shrugged. It wasn't the first time I'd cut my hand with a knife, and it wouldn't be the last. If I walked away from being taken by a crazed human trafficker who wanted me to be his wife with nothing but a scar, then I'd consider myself lucky. "Let me have a look at that head."
"It's nothing," I sighed.
"Doesn't look like nothing." I relented, turning in my seat so the doctor could poke and prod the wound. "Any loss of consciousness?"
"Yes. I don't know how long I was out, but I woke up in Adrian's bed." The room filled with Matteo's fury almost instantly, even from where he stood coordinating with his men regarding the cleanup at my house and Adrian's.
"Do we need to do an exam?" the doctor asked carefully.
"No." I shook my head. "He didn't touch me like that."
"You're certain? Maybe when you were unconscious?" I stilled, not having thought of the possibility.
"I don't—wouldn't I feel it? If he raped me?"
The doctor nodded. "Most likely, but there are no guarantees with these things. I'd like to do an exam—"
Matteo's bellow echoed through the room, and then he was punching numbers into his phone. "Ask the fucker if anybody touched Ivory while she was unconscious." He put the phone on speaker, and another man's screams of agony filled the room.