61. Emily

61

EMILY

"… i f I'm careful enough, you'll sure make for one pretty corpse."

The tip of the knife gleamed beneath the fluorescent lighting at the same time recognition slipped past the fogginess of my brain and settled on the tip of my tongue. I couldn't tell you what clicked the final piece of the puzzle into place. Maybe it was my very real demise I saw staring back at me from the corner of the room. Or maybe some part of me had known all along. Knew and refused to accept it.

It didn't matter. Because all that knowledge did was make things much, much worse. For me.

"Cohen! Wait! I… I lost the baby…"

His pupils dilated and his nostrils flared as he sucked in a harsh breath. His glare flicking from my reflection in the knife to my face and back again. I could feel the moisture pooling beneath my lashes, dripping down my cheeks and onto my chin. I didn't bother to wipe it away as I waited for my words to land and stick just long enough to give him pause.

Then I grabbed for his wrist and pivoted myself underneath his arm, putting as much distance as the space would allow between him and the blade still clutched in his palm. I knew there was nothing stopping him from rushing forward and driving the tip of that same blade into my gut over and over again.

My heart was pumping too fast, my body buzzing with a sudden surge of electricity and I knew in that moment that the bunny on the tv didn't just lie there and wait to die. She squealed and thrashed and clawed. She'd gnaw a limb off if she had to. Because that need to survive was innate. It kept her struggling for air even as she slowly suffocated. Kept her scrambling across the room long after logic told her she was trapped. Had her fighting for her life even when she knew there wasn't a chance in hell she could win.

And right now I was that little bunny, while Cohen was the predator looking to tear me apart.

He forced out a laugh through his tight-set jaw. A sound I didn't recognize coming from a man who was briefly a lover and ten years a stranger. "You didn't lose shit, Emily. Our kid wasn't a packet of gum you accidentally ran through the rinse cycle. No, you allowed some quack to shove a tube up your cunt, blissfully doped up as he tossed the little chunks of shredded meat in a container with the rest of the medical waste. Like it was nothing. Like I was nothing." Cohen gestured around the room that had become my prison. "Now who's nothing."

"I didn't?—"

The first blow to my face echoed off the stone walls and left me dazed. While the second had me tasting copper as I instinctively tried to swallow it down. And before I realized what I was doing, I'd already returned the favor. My palm swollen and throbbing. His cheek marked with the raised imprint of each of my fingers and his mouth bleeding at one corner.

I watched his tongue peek out and swipe along his bottom lip, a deranged smirk tugging at one side of his face as he stalked forward while I continued to stumble back. Until I was pinned against the closest wall, my chest heaving and my glare defiant.

Cohen grabbed my jaw between his damaged fingers and squeezed until my lips were pinched tight and puckered. "Don't fucking lie to me, pet. I saw the records. I know the date, the time—and good luck finding the fucker who signed off on that shit. He's been rotting in a shallow grave for nearly a decade now. A life for a life. Seemed fair."

Now I was the one laughing, the strangled noise vibrating low in my throat as he continued to squeeze my mouth closed.

"What the fuck is so funny?" he hissed, shoving my head back so hard against the wall I was surprised my skull didn't crack open like an egg fresh out of the carton.

"You. You and that goddamn ego of yours. Seems not much has changed, has it?"

"Make your point, Emily, or I'll make one for you. A nice sharp, shiny point. Jabbed through that smart-ass tongue of yours."

I pushed at his chest, watching as Cohen shuffled back a step, and brushed my wild hair behind my ear as I got my first good look at the man behind the name. Tilting my head to one side as I eyed him from head to toe. Feature to feature. Scar to eye socket.

His jaw was more defined with age, as if he didn't know what it was to smile. Not that he'd smiled much in college either. He carried a different kind of arrogance on his shoulders, though. Almost as though his posturing was a shield instead of the blatant egotism that used to straighten his spine.

But his eye, his one piercing blue eye…

Other than the fact its counterpart was missing, that piece of him was the same. Nothing changed when it came to the way he looked at me, no matter what hatred he was spewing from his lips. His glare was hitched on my every move like it hypnotized him. Like he didn't know what it was to be in this world without me. Like I was the one reason he woke up in the morning. What kept his heart pumping in his chest and the air filtering through his lungs.

"I don't know what it is you think you know, what you think you saw in the medical records I'm sure you obtained illegally, but you might want to read them again. Maybe get a second fucking opinion from someone who isn't so caught up in themselves they fill in the blanks instead of seeing what's right in front of their fucked-up face." I crossed my arms over my chest, my attention laser-focused even as I felt the little droplets of blood trickling down from my forehead before sliding down my chin. "Go on, Dr. Michaels. Phone a friend. I'll be waiting right fucking here with bells on."