God of Pain (Legacy of Gods #2) by Rina Kent

I’ll never forgive myself if something happens to her because of me.

Swallowing down a choke, I turn around. “Let’s go.”

Jeremy watches me for a beat. “Are you sure?”

No. But I nod, letting my feet carry me down the stairs. Maybe I can get information about Creighton from the hospital staff or I can just snoop from afar.

Or maybe, just maybe, this whole nightmare will end soon.

“What are you doing here?” The familiar voice, now vicious, reaches me before I’m flung back and slapped across the face so hard that my vision burns.

Jeremy grabs the assailant, Ava, and bangs her whole body against the wall. Her face is red, probably from having the breath knocked out of her lungs, but she glares at me anyway.

Cecily catches up to her and only stares at the scene for a second before she comes running to pull Jeremy off her.

“Let her go!” She scratches at his hand, her voice raw.

I touch his arm and shake my head. As much as I feel hurt and want to cry, I don’t.

Jeremy reluctantly releases her, but Ava doesn’t pause before coming at me again.

This time, with tears in her eyes. “We trusted you! We let you become our sister from another mister, but you…you dare to shoot Creigh… How could you do that when he cared about you so much? Who the fuck are you to steal him from us?”

My brother tries to shield me, but I step forward and let her hit me. I don’t try to remain strong. I can’t. The harder she cries and hits, the more I let the tears loose.

“Ava…” Cecily tries to pull her off me. “If Aunt Elsa or Uncle Aiden sees, we’ll be in deep shit.”

“I don’t care!” she screams. “I thought this bitch would make Creigh happy and God knows he needed that, but she’s sending him to his grave!”

“I didn’t want… I’m so sorry…” I whisper between sobs. “I only…I only thought about saving my brother. I swear I didn’t want to hurt him. I swear…”

“Leave,” Ava all but growls, her face flushed, her cheeks tear-streaked. “The only reason we haven’t reported this to the police is because Landon is leaving the ball in Creighton’s court for when he wakes up, and none of us want to upset Aunt Elsa any further, so we said it was a robbery. But I swear to fuck, Annika, if something happens to Creigh, I’m gonna fly to the States and personally kill you.”

“Not if you end up dead on the way,” Jeremy says in a deadpan voice.

Ava continues glaring at me, but it’s Cecily who glares at my brother. “I suggest you take her and go.”

“And I suggest you shut the fuck up,” he says with chill-inducing calm.

Cecily meets his harsh eyes for one more beat, then drags Ava away. “Let’s go.”

“Don’t ever show your face around us again,” Ava whisper-yells. “Murderer.”

And then they disappear, leaving me with a choked sob and a pain so deep, I just want to…end it all.





30





AIDEN





“Sweetheart?”

Elsa doesn’t hear me. Her gaze is glued to our youngest son's unmoving body through the window.

He’s been hooked to those machines for two days now, and there’s still no sign of him coming back to life.

To us.

A fact that’s been stressing Elsa and slowly robbing her of the light that I’ve always loved about her.

The same light that Creighton put there the moment he came into our lives.

Now, he’s slowly but surely sucking it away.

“Elsa,” I call again, more firmly this time.

My wife finally slides her attention from the window to me. Her beautiful long hair has lost its shine in the span of forty-eight hours, her face is pale, and dark circles dim her usually electric-blue eyes.

They’re lifeless now, like the rest of her.

I’ll commit murder before I let anything rob away my wife’s life source.

At this very moment, that happens to be Creighton.

“You should go back to the hotel and rest.” It’s surprising how calm and collected I sound, considering the circumstances.

“No, I’m fine.”

“You look positively exhausted.” I grab her wrist and clench my jaw. “And your pulse has weakened.”

She pulls her hand from mine subtly but with enough force to have my entire body tensing. “Our son has been shot and he’s refusing to wake up. My whole life is in proper chaos right now, so my pulse is the last thing on my mind.”

“It’s the first thing on mine.” I wrap my hand around her waist and slam her to my side. “And what did I say about pulling away from me, sweetheart, hmm?”

Her worn-out face creases. “Aiden…”

“What the fuck did I say?”

She releases a long sigh. “That we can be mad at each other while you touch me.”

“That’s right. So don’t attempt that stunt again or we’re going to have a problem.”

“We already do have a problem.” Her voice becomes brittle and she trembles in my arms as she stares through the window again. “What are we going to do if he doesn’t wake up?”

“He’s Creighton, sweetheart. The same Creighton who crawled out of that gas-infested house because he refused the ending his monster of a birth mother chose for him. He’s the boy who accepted us wholeheartedly and called us Mum and Dad within the first month of coming to live with us. He chose us as a family, and we’ll have to believe that he’ll keep choosing us.”