Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 79261 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 396(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79261 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 396(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Fear quickly took over my body the longer I tried to find her. I sprinted down the hallway into another room, trying to ignore all the bodies, gore, and blood surrounding me.
Fucking praying I wouldn’t find her among them.
I opened fire, shooting men I didn’t recognize. It was an endless stream of shots coming at us from all directions. My club was unrecognizable from the mayhem with blood flying everywhere, not knowing if it was theirs or mine.
I was numb.
I was seeing red.
I couldn’t get to her fast enough without feeling like I was failing her somehow.
She shouldn’t have been there. I knew better, and I still brought her into my world that had so much darkness, but she felt like the light.
“Duchess!” I screamed as loud as I could.
“Luke! Behind the bar!” James yelled. “I saw her behind the bar!”
He nodded a silent gesture to go to her and that he was covering my back before he tossed an assault rifle to me. I threw the empty guns to the ground and tucked the other one in the back of my slacks.
A rush of adrenaline coursed through my veins, throbbing into my bloodstream as I hurried toward her. My heart pounded against my chest. I took down every motherfucker who was in my way.
No one was going to stop me.
My vision tunneled, seeing nothing but death around me.
“Duchess!”
The smell of blood assaulted my senses.
Ten feet.
Twenty.
Fifty.
When all of a sudden, nothing but the sounds of cars and Harleys began taking off in all directions, the gunfire finally ceasing all around me. They were leaving from the hell and anarchy they brought upon me.
It didn’t matter.
This wasn’t over.
It was far from fucking over.
In fact, it’d only just begun.
“Luke!” she screamed, coming out from my hiding spot behind a concrete wall.
She immediately ran to me, and I saw it happen before it actually did.
“NO!” I shouted, running as fast as I could to her.
I would remember this split second for the rest of my life. I watched with tormented eyes as a red laser dot suddenly shined bright on Duchess’s forehead.
They say right before you died, you saw your whole life play out in front of you. Except this wasn’t the first time I was in a life-and-death situation. It was like a ticking time bomb of memories unfolding in front of my eyes. From childhood to adolescence, it all flashed before my terrified gaze.
Once I reached her, I reacted out of pure instinct. I had no choice in the matter…
My heart chose for me.
In one hard shove, I knocked her out of the way, and the next thing I knew, I was tucking and rolling with an intense throbbing pain. I blinked through the agony, realizing very fucking quickly that I just took a bullet…
For her.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
DUCHESS
At first, I didn’t even know what happened.
One second, I’m running toward Luke, and the next, he’s hauling ass toward me. I thought I was going to jump into his arms, so when he forcefully pushed me out of the way, it didn’t register why. It wasn’t until I roughly crashed onto the tile beneath me that I understood what was happening.
Nothing could have prepared me for the string of events that happened one right after the other. My vision tunneled, and all the blood drained from my face as I watched Jameson’s body jolt back from the sudden impact of the bullet in his shoulder.
“Luke!”
My voice broke.
My heart crashed.
My soul shattered.
The despair in my voice recoiled off the walls now caving in on me. My heart jackhammered its way up to my throat, and for a few seconds, time seemed to stand still.
Everyone ran toward him, including me. There was an undeniable sense of awareness penetrating through the room.
Death.
Another gunshot blasted nearby, bringing everyone’s attention to its source.
Except mine.
I pushed off the ground with a heavy heart. I staggered to my feet, moving on autopilot toward him. Nothing or no one could stop me. A force much stronger and more powerful than either of us could ever understand was literally propelling me to him.
Was it love?
By the time I got to him, so did his men, and they sprang into action. They got us the hell out of there. There was no time to talk to him and see if he was okay. He simply grabbed my hand and basically dragged my ass out of there. I could barely keep up with his pace in my heeled boots.
After we were in his bulletproof SUV, the driver sped off like a bat out of hell. From there on out, it was straight business. Luke spent the entire time on the phone yelling at someone as I applied pressure on his wound with my bare hands and the sweater of mine I found in the back seat.
He didn’t pay me any mind. It was as if he wasn’t in any pain. However, he did keep his hand on my thigh, and every few seconds, I could feel him gripping it. I knew it was the pain he was feeling, and it was the only way not to succumb to it.