25. Kael

25

KAEL

I need to get to Paige, need to get her to safety. And this mother fecker is in my way.

Twisting the second gunman's arm hard enough to get his back turned to me, I apply a chokehold on the waste of space as I wrestle him to the ground.

Paige, please be hiding somewhere, please be safe.

This is all my fault. If I hadn't gotten so fixated on her, on that fecking kiss that got me so fecking hard, I wouldn't have had to calm down before following her.

Those gunshots and the fecking man grabbing Paige sure were quite the mood killer, though.

And they turned me into a killer too. The guy who dares put his hand on Paige is the first to go down. Three bullets to the head. Just one wasn't enough. He needed to stay dead.

Everyone after that are just obstacles in my quest to find Paige.

If she's hurt, I'll never forgive myself. If she isn't, this is proof enough that I was right keeping away from her. Away from everyone .

The first time I allow myself to be distracted by a woman, the whole world collapses on my head.

I failed. Failed Patrick, Failed Declan. Failed Paige.

A gun goes off too close to my ear, making it ring and making everything feel fuzzy and unreal, and I'm caught off balance for a moment.

Thinking fast, I push the man away from me with both hands, and he stumbles backward, his gunshots going wild, up into the ceiling.

It's enough to allow me to draw my gun and shoot him twice in the chest.

He goes down after firing a few more bullets, but they all miss.

Shooting him between the eyes to make sure he stays down, I have one concern in mind. Whirling around, I try to locate Paige.

If I have to stay away from her to keep her safe, that's what I have to do. That's what I will do.

It will kill me, but better me than her.

Suddenly, there she is. She has blood on her. Straddling her father's lap, she presses down on a bleeding wound that's not stopping. And she's screaming.

Still riding the adrenaline rush, I run over to them.

As soon as I'm able to assess the blood on her isn't hers, relief sweeps through me, and my knees almost fail me. The guilt crushes me that it's Patrick's blood.

Feck.

I failed. I was so absorbed in her that I failed the whole family.

"The medic says—" one of Patrick's men that I don't know well says, looking pale with his phone at his ear.

"Fuck the medic!" Paige yells. "Call an ambulance."

"But, Miss?— "

"Stop wasting time and do what I'm fucking telling you!"

I nod at the man, and he sighs, calling 911 instead.

Patrick has enough influence with the police and the hospital that it's the right thing to do.

"Paige." I squat down next to her. My voice comes out weak and hoarse. "Paige, let someone else do that."

"No." She shakes her head. "No. I've got pressure on it. If I move, he could bleed out."

"I'll take over." I kneel, and she shakes her head at me with wild eyes. "It's okay, Paige. I got you. Let me do it."

She slowly moves her hands, and I press mine over the wound. It squelches, which makes my stomach sick, and Patrick has gone almost gray he's lost so much blood already.

Paige puts her knees to her chest, rocking back and forth and trembling, and god, I wish I could go to her. I wish I could pull her in my arms and tell her everything is going to be okay.

But that would be a lie. I don't know if anything will be okay ever again.

The paramedics arrive after what seems like an hour, and they have to pull me off Patrick to help him.

I stand up and pull out my phone with my bloodied hand. Declan and Gray are my first calls. It kills me to admit that I failed to protect Patrick and Paige, but they need to know what happened here by me, by one of us.

When that's done, I start making calls to the guys in the force that Patrick has in his pocket, telling them what happened so that they'll be able to make this all go away.

Declan and Gray burst into the restaurant while I'm still on the phone with the cops, and I hang up immediately, going to stop them from getting to their father .

Gray fights past me, but I manage to stop Declan, looking into his eyes. "You have to let them help." I shake my head once. "It's bad, Declan."

"God." His hand's in his hair, pulling, as he paces. When he stops, there's a dead body next to his feet. He leans down and spits in the corpse's face. "This has to be Murphy's work."

I nod once. "I already arranged with the paramedics to get your da to All Saints."

"Thanks, man."

Patrick's put on a gurney and wheeled out.

Declan runs after them, hopping in the ambulance, and I look over to see Gray comforting Paige, pulling her into his arms.

Gray stands with Paige hiding her face in his chest.

"I'll take her to the hospital," Gray says, and I nod, heading outside to follow them.

On my way to All Saints, I can't stop thinking about Paige's wide, terrified eyes, how fierce she'd been when I tried to take over. It's going to take a long time for her to heal from this traumatic event, and I hate it for her. She's already been through so much.

And Patrick… God, he's been more like a father to me than my own father, and I can't imagine him not being around anymore.

Niall Murphy wanted a war, he's got one.

Lara, Paige, and Bree huddle up next to each other in the waiting room. The other girls showed up about half an hour after the ambulance.

Declan and Gray pace around the room .

Gray's eyes are on the floor before him as he goes. Hands behind his back. "It's Murphy."

Declan's a mirror of his brother as they cross each other's paths over and over again. "Of course, it is."

I take a deep breath. "I've already called the cops, told them what's going on. There shouldn't be too much of an investigation. I also called the cleaners on the way here. I don't think Ricardo, the owner, will have any trouble letting them do their job."

Declan looks at me, clapping a hand on my shoulder. "Thank you, Kael. Your quick thinking has helped the whole family."

My breath catches in my throat.

Declan can't know how wrong he is. How tonight is my fault. I shouldn't have been so distracted. Hell, I was fighting an erection as I watched Paige's ass jiggle when she walked away from me instead of paying attention to our surroundings.

She rattled me, and it was enough for all this to happen.

I hate myself. I will never make that mistake again.

But I can't say any of that to the Burkes.

Gray stares over at the girls, tightening his jaw. "Paige saw everything. She held pressure on the wound." He curses. "I never wanted her to go through anything like that, not ever."

My heart shatters because he's right, but my obsession with her got the best of me, and I failed the people who matter most in the world to me.

"So, what do we do now?" Declan asks. "We can't go after Murphy while Da is fighting for his life."

"We wait." Gray stops and looks at us. "We wait and keep all of Da's men here, protecting him. If I know Niall, he'll want to finish the job."

Declan shudders. "You're right. Right now, we have to protect ourselves with everything we've got. Retaliation can come later."

Gray's eyes have the fires of doom burning in them. "But there will be retaliation."

I nod. "I'm here for whatever you need."

Am I?

I want to be out there killing every last of Murphy's men, including the monster himself. More than ready for this damned war to be over, I'm more than willing to do whatever the family needs me to do.

But there's something else I feel in my bones I need to be doing. Someone I need to be protecting. My eyes fly to Paige for a second.

Even though I failed, I need to be the one protecting her. I don't think I could handle not knowing where she was at all times. And I can't bear the thought of anyone else looking after her. "I'll take care of Paige. You don't have to worry about her."

"I know. I trust you with my life. Even more, I trust you with hers. But I can't help worrying about her." Declan rubs a hand across his face. "This is the second time Murphy has come for her specifically. She was already in a bad place, and now this…"

"I'll keep her safe." There's no way this fecker will take her or get close to her again. Not on my watch. "I'll never let her out of my sight."

That's the problem, though, isn't it?

I had let her out of my sight back at the restaurant because of the damn boner she gave me without even trying. I missed five men lurking around the restaurant. I was distracted by Paige, distracted by how good she feels in my hands, how good her mouth tastes .

Because of me, she was almost taken, could've been killed in the crossfire.

Declan and Gray continue to talk about the next steps, both agreeing that it's too soon to go after Niall, that the focus for now needs to be on protecting the family and Patrick recovering.

The family needs to regroup from this huge blow, and things are still out in the open as we wait for news on Patrick. As we wait to see if we're preparing for a fight to avenge an injury or to avenge a death.

God, I hope Patrick makes it through. For me, yes, because the guilt is eating me up, but also because of Paige.

I have no idea if she can take any more blows without breaking for good.