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“No fucking thanks to you, asshole,” he growled.

I looked at him, confused.

“Not now,” Amelia scolded. “You’re alive … you’re all alive.”

Minutes later, we were in the garage of the building and I was being lifted out of
the back by Joey and Micah.

“Jesus Christ!!!”

“Sorry, we’re trying!” Micah yelled back, lifting my leg with his right hand just
like Joey was doing on the other side, my arms around their shoulders.

“I can fucking walk!” I shouted.

They both dropped my legs as I breathed in the pain that was now engulfing my body.
They stayed beside me, leaving my arms around their shoulders for support.

“Let’s just hurry the fuck up!” I hopped on one foot, holding my other one off the
ground.

We all moved fast, stuffing into the elevator.

“You’re a crazy son of a bitch,” Joey snickered as we rode the elevator up.

“What the fuck happened?” I asked, completely clueless. “Who shot me?”

Joey and Micah both looked at each other before Joey answered.

“I did.”

I looked at him like I could kill him with my eyes alone, already lunging towards
him.
Fucker!!

Micah was quick to hold me back. “Chill the fuck out,” he warned.

“I had to!” Joey threw back at me. “You were going fucking ape on Antonio—I had to
act like a part of the ring—that’s our job.”

“So you were going to fucking kill me?”

“If I wanted to fucking kill you I would’ve,” he pointed out. “I shot you in the leg
so you would fall, getting you out of the sight of others, because you sure as shit
would’ve been killed within seconds if I didn’t.”

I closed my eyes, calming down slightly. I got it. I dodged the plan, I knew that
much.

And I should’ve been killed.

I was lucky that I wasn’t.

“Thanks, man,” I told him, genuinely after opening my eyes.

He shrugged his shoulders.

As soon as the elevator doors chimed opened, two guys with suits were waiting on the
other side. Immediately I was on edge again, thinking that Antonio’s gang beat us
here, but was slightly calmed when they started shooting orders, obviously not wanting
to kill us all.

“Carry him over to the couch,” one said while the other said something else to Miles.

Before I knew it, my hand was being poked with a needle, an IV bag was held up by
Kayla next to me, and one of the dudes tore my pant leg off.

“Fuckin’ A!” I yelled once he started to examine my leg.

“It’s going to take a minute for the pain meds to kick in. I have to start taking
care of this, though. You’ve already lost a lot of blood.”

I gripped the cushions on each side of me as hard as I could, trying to channel the
pain somewhere. I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. It hurt too fucking bad.

The doctor sighed.

“What? Is everything okay?” I heard Amelia ask next to us.

“He’s lucky,” he told her. “Straight shot. Two holes. Entrance and exit, missing any
big arteries or veins.”

“So you don’t have to take the bullet out?” Kayla asked.

“There’s no bullet to extract. I just have to get him stitched up so he doesn’t lose
any more blood.”

I started to speak, but my lips were too heavy. My eyelids felt like lead. I was fading.
The pain was gone. I felt like I could sleep for days.

I saw Amelia’s face above mine. She was smiling. I wanted to grab her beautiful face
and pull her close to me, but my arms were dead weights, too heavy to lift. I tried
to speak, but nothing but choked noise escaped.

“Close your eyes, babe. Go to sleep,” she whispered, and that’s the last I remembered.

When I woke, the sun was shining through the small gap between the curtains. I lifted
my hand to scowl at the needle still taped to it and turned to see the IV pole that
it was attached to beside the bed.

I sat up in panic, but my heart immediately eased when I saw Amelia on her side, facing
me in the bed. I was alive and so was she. I tried to move my legs to get out of bed,
but stopped. It hurt too damn much. I swept back the blankets to at least see the
damage. I was stripped down to just my briefs with a huge white gauze bandage wrapped
around my thigh.

I still couldn’t believe that I was shot. I didn’t remember it. I tried to play back
the night but still only could remember the same as before. Not fucking much.

“Oh good, you’re awake!” Kayla came barging into the room two seconds later.

“Amelia is …” I began to say, but she was already starting to slur.

“Morning, beautiful.” I leaned over, resting a kiss on her forehead.

A smile immediately crossed her face as she reached her arms above her head, stretching.

“Jesus Christ!” I yelled, shielding my eyes from the light that Kayla let in when
she opened the curtains.

“Sorry, but you guys need to wake up. You need to see the news! I can hardly believe
it!” she gushed, continuing to ramble so fast that I had a hard time keeping up.

Amelia and I both looked at each other, confused, as Kayla sat down at the end of
the bed and used the remote control to turn the TV to the news station. The top of
the screen read “Breaking News!”
in bold print with a picture of the art studio on the screen, bodies covered by white
sheets being carried out on gurneys.

I sat up straighter. “Turn it up!”

She did, bringing the volume to where we could hear the news anchor.

“Last night, the remainder of New York’s biggest gambling ring was brought down. The
leader, Antonio Antonacci, and his gang were found dead in the basement of an art
studio now known to be their location in the early hours of this morning. The case
is still ongoing with no information yet on what caused the incident leaving over
ten men dead, however, some of the bodies were identified as belonging to a similar
ring from California. The police are urging anyone with any other information regarding
this incident to please call the Midtown New York City Police Department at 212-555-8400.”

I couldn’t fucking believe it. As much as it was exhilarating to watch and see, I
still had my doubts.

“What? Why are you not jumping up and down right now?” Kayla asked. “Other than the
fact that you literally can’t.” She peered down to my leg.

“It’s not confirmation that everyone is … gone.”

“They are,” she was quick to respond. “Stewart talked to Miles just a little while
ago. The FBI team that he used to work for flew in this morning, confirming the known
mafia members. It’s done. You guys did it!”

I looked at her like she head ten heads. I was dumbfounded. How the fuck did we pull
something of that magnitude off?

Amelia rubbed my back, getting my attention. She was looking at me with a huge smile.
“We did it, babe,” she said.

I wrapped my arm around her shoulders, squeezing her as close as humanly possible
into my body, kissing her head and face over and over. “We did it,” I whispered, finally
grasping the fact. “We fucking did it.”

Tears began falling from her eyes again, but this time they were the happiest fucking
tears … making her smile glow even more than usual against her beautiful, flawless
face.

I held her cheeks, cradling her face close to mine. “I love you so fucking much,”
I murmured before pushing my lips hard and hungrily against hers. It felt amazing,
like the first time—a kiss of freedom, a future, and the life that I always dreamt
of having with Amelia. The fight was finally over. The fucker was rolling over in
hell, and I had my baby. I had her all to myself.

It was late morning when Stewart arrived at the apartment. The doctor from last night
had just stopped over, assessing my leg again, making sure that I was healing accordingly,
and most importantly, giving me more pain medication.

Miles and Kayla met Stewart in the foyer, intrigued to see him there.

“I had to personally congratulate you guys,” Stewart said with a proud grin on his
face. “Pretty damn impressive.” He snickered.

“So you doubted us?” I questioned, amused, from the couch.

Stewart walked in further, Miles and Kayla following to. Amelia was sitting next to
me, wearing a smile that hadn’t left her face since she woke.

“Doubt?” he said with an inquisitive stare. “I wouldn’t say that, but I definitely
wasn’t fully confident. It was a big endeavor—dangerous for sure.”

I smirked. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Take it as you will. It definitely deserves praising. Probably not something I should
condone among civilians, but it did take one less case off the FBI’s hands, so with
that, I’ll thank you on their behalf.”

I extended my hand over the back of the couch. If I could move on my own, I would
have stood, making it more personable. “You’re the guy we really need to thank,” I
told him, an appreciative smile covering my face. “We wouldn’t have had nearly the
knowledge or resources if we didn’t have you working alongside us.”

“It was my pleasure,” he genuinely responded, his face almost reminiscent of a proud
father’s.

I was kind of in awe of Stewart. He didn’t have to help us. He was a contact of Miles’—he
didn’t know me. He didn’t know Amelia. He could’ve got in some serious shit if anyone
found out, but he did it anyway. I couldn’t imagine why—maybe he still had the passion
of eliminating every mob alive deep within his soul … I didn’t know, and it didn’t
really matter. He helped us. He saved not only my life and Amelia’s life, but everyone’s
involved, too. He was a blessing to all of us anyway you looked at it.

I snickered. “You’re good in my book, Stewart.”

“Well, I appreciate it, but I should be going. Curt and I have a flight leaving in
an hour. I just wanted to stop in before we left.”

I nodded in response while Amelia stood to give him a hug, showing her appreciation.
He kissed her forehead and looked at her happily, more than any stranger would. I
looked at them, puzzled, before peering over to Kayla for some inkling of information.

“Thanks, Uncle Stew,” she whispered quietly, stepping back from their hug.

I shifted my body as much as I could, trying to get a grip on the arm of the couch
to stand. I was confused as fuck with what was going on. “Am I missing something here?”
I finally asked, making Stewart, Amelia, and Miles look at me and smile. Kayla looked
as lost as I did.

“Stewart is my uncle,” Amelia said matter-of-factly, patting old Stew the retired
FBI agent on the back.

What the fucking hell?
My head tilted and my eyes squinted, still not understanding why I never heard about
this once since this whole shit scenario went down.

Stewart was first to respond. “My apologies, Merrick,” he said warmly. “I’m not retired.
I’m still on the force. I wanted to help my niece as much as possible, but I couldn’t
blow my cover, you see? I couldn’t give the FBI any indication of my involvement with
an illegal take down.”

Amelia bit her lip and looked at me apprehensively. I could see her worry. She was
hoping that I wasn’t going to be mad with the little … HUGE fucking piece of information
that she kept from me.

I looked to Miles and Kayla.

“Did you guys know about this?” I asked them both.

Kayla shook her head no while Miles nodded his head yes.

“Stewart and I do go way back,” Miles explained. “He’s a good friend of the family.
When I called him the first night and told him your names, he was eager to help, wanting
to protect his niece.”

“So he didn’t know anything about this then? Not until that night?”

Amelia shook her head. “No,” she said shamefully, with her eyes starting to look towards
the ground. “None of my family knew. I wanted to tell them, but I guess I was too
scared of the unknown and what could’ve happened—even though it did anyway.”

I exhaled heavily.
Holy fucking shit!
My world just kept getting fucking crazier and crazier every fucking day, but I could
see the pain on my girl’s face. She was again blaming herself for her father’s death.
The whole situation was a clusterfuck of insane, but I wasn’t about to let her tear
herself a part again no matter how fucking confused and overwhelmed with this information
I was.

“Amelia,” I started to say, looking at her point-blank, but she cut me off, her bright
and happy face from this morning nowhere to be seen.

“No! A lot of things could have been different if I just let people help me—you, me
… my father.”

Stewart turned her to face her, his hand squeezing her shoulder for comfort. “There’s
always different ways of doing things, sweetheart, but who’s to say what the outcome
would have been.” He looked at her, his caring eyes full of wisdom yet sincerity too.
“Yeah, I could’ve helped you, and maybe would have been able to find a safe place
for Ken, but we don’t know how it would have played out, or even if it would’ve saved
him in the end. You can’t look at the ‘what-ifs.’ You can only look towards the future,
and enjoy the life you have now,” he finished with a smile.