Jay’s lips are tense. “I know who answered the ad, and who was responsible for her kidnapping.”
I drop my hand and pin a look to my right-hand man, waiting for him to drop the proverbial bomb. Dread washes over me, and I have a feeling this one might actually succeed in killing me.
“Max,” he says quietly.
My eyes close, and my control finally shatters, slipping through my fingers like sand in an hourglass. It was only a matter of time, and the last grain has now fallen.
Inky-black darkness corrodes every cell in my body until there is no light left within me.
Red consumes my vision, and I snap into motion. My laptop is launched across the hospital room, the loud crash from it slamming through equipment and into the wall swallowed by the roar ripping from my throat.
I convulse violently from the force of the piercing wail falling past my lips, so long and sorrowful that it tapers off into a silent scream. Heaving in a breath again, another thunderous cry explodes out of me as I grab the bedside table and launch that next.
Without sight, the IV pole follows, whipping it towards a window and nearly shattering it from the force, the pinch from the needle being torn from my skin imperceptible.
My hearing goes after that as if I’m underwater and all sound is diluted. The tide batters into me, drawing me into its clutches and sending me spiraling down into the black pit of despair at the bottom.
My hands grab at more equipment, all of it crashing to the tile as anguish tears through my chest.
This is my fault.
All my fucking fault.
Just as I stand, muffled shouting arises, and I feel several sets of hands grab my body at once and shove me back down. I fight against their hold, continuing to roar, but my blindness works against me.
Straps circle around my wrists and chest, imprisoning me to the hospital bed.
But I’m too far gone.
Despite the frantic hands attempting to hold me down beneath the binds, my legs swing over the bed and I stand, straining against the weight threatening to take me back down.
“Jesus, Zade!”
My chest heaves and my vision becomes spotty, allowing me only snippets of my blurred surroundings. Four frightened nurses and Jay crowding me, eyes wide and faces pale as I stand before them with a nearly two-hundred-pound bed strapped to my back.
I am…
I am no longer a man—only a beast succumbing to primal instinct. I am annihilation.
“Sir, please calm down!” one of the nurses pleads shrilly, her green eyes nearly black with fear. I pant, my chest tight from lack of oxygen and the strap straining against my chest.
I can’t, I can’t. She’s gone because of me.
How am I supposed to fucking live with that?
I shake my head, my energy depleting steadily. Words evade me and I stumble, struggling to right myself.
“Unstrap him,” Jay demands sharply, already aiming for the one secured around my chest. He waits until one of the nurses unclips them from my hands before he releases the buckle. The bed falls to the ground with a deafening boom.
Security guards come barreling into the room, skidding across the cluttered tile when they see the absolute carnage.
Jay gets in my face and shouts, "Quit acting like a fucking lunatic and get it together! Trashing a hospital isn't going to save her."
My vision clears, and the wreckage becomes apparent.
Shit.
That potent fury is still present, spewing from my pores, but I manage to keep it in check. Enough that it just steams.
“What the hell…” a security guard says, his young face painted with utter disbelief.
“He’s okay,” a nurse huffs out. She’s an older woman with short blonde hair and large wire-rimmed glasses that take up half her face.
She approaches me like one would a crocodile with its mouth wide open, her hand steady as she grabs my arm and lifts it.
A tiny trail of blood leaks down my arm from where the IV was ripped out, stemming from a tear in my skin no longer than half an inch.
“That… that is a nasty wound, sir. You better sit down so I can fix you up before you keel over and die where you stand,” she orders, her voice stern as she points me towards the skewed bed.
It’s just a scratch, and we both know that, but I sit anyway. I watch her as she grabs a bandage from a cupboard and begins to blot the blood.
A few of the guards question Jay and one of the nurses while the other two rush from the room, red and shaking. I can’t manage to feel an ounce of guilt.
Not when there’s a black hole in my chest where Addie once took up residence.
“Want to talk about it?” she asks quietly, dabbing up the blood with a piece of gauze.