Joel reached the door and pushed it open slowly. Which was also when I heard a pained moan coming from the bathroom.
I jumped into action, flying up and onto the teetering mattress and then sliding down the side. I raced past the nightstand and mess below to the bathroom where Joel now knelt over my father’s prone form.
There was blood smeared and pooled all around my father’s mostly naked body. A towel was wrapped around his waist as though he’d been taking a shower.
“Dad!”
My father pushed up weakly, and Joel helped him turn over and sit up. There was a huge gash in the center of his forehead and blood congealed all around it, having dried after pouring down his face and chest.
“Dad!” I cupped his cheeks, and he blinked several times.
“Faith?” he croaked.
His nose was smashed and swollen to double its size, blood trickling out each nostril. He spat and heaved to the side. Blood sprayed out over the white walls and tile, along with a tooth that shot out. It pinged against the wall and fell to the floor in a grisly display that would appear in my future nightmares.
I gagged and covered my mouth instinctively in order not to throw up.
“Eden…they took her. I heard them.” He slumped against Joel who kept him upright. “I was in the shower when I…I heard the shouting. She cried, cara mia. Over and over. My grandbaby was screaming for her papa!” He sobbed in his misery, blood dribbling out his mouth from an unseen wound.
I clung to my father’s hand, hoping and praying he’d be okay once we got him help.
“I fought one of them in the room, cut my hand on the broken glass from the vanity they’d trashed.” He lifted the hand that was still oozing blood. I reached for the towel over the sink and wrapped it around his wound quickly, stanching the flow.
The huge mirror above the sink had a plate-sized crater right in the center, the glass splintering out like a spiderweb from the hole in the middle.
“Then another rushed me, and I fell against the door. Which is when he grabbed me from behind and smashed my head into the mirror.” He looked at the broken glass. “Then it was lights out. I tried, Faith. I tried to fight,” he howled, his body shaking with the effort as shock started to hit his system.
“Was it Aiden? Did you see him take Eden?”
He shook his head as police sirens could be heard approaching.
“It was his goons,” he wheezed as his head wobbled and his eyes rolled in the back of his head. Then he passed out.
“Dad!” I cried, holding his cheeks as a team of paramedics entered the room seemingly out of nowhere, though I was beyond grateful at the sight of their presence.
Joel took charge, allowing the medics to tend to my father as he pulled me up and away from them while they worked.
I shook like a leaf in the middle of a windstorm as they loaded the most important man in my entire life onto a stretcher. His skin tone was pale, and once they lifted him up, there was so much blood congealed on the floor around him I didn’t know how he could have had any left in his body. The paramedics were fast and efficient, getting him through the mess in what felt like seconds.
Before long they had him loaded into the ambulance, and the doors were slamming closed.
“Come on. We’ll follow them to the hospital,” Joel announced and pulled me toward his limo.
The ride to the hospital was a blur of flickering lights laced with agony over my father’s well-being and not knowing where Eden was. Except, I did know where she’d be. In the arms of the enemy. The devil himself. The exact place I’d spent almost the last four years killing myself to avoid. And I’d led him right to her. By coming back to Las Vegas, I’d put a big shiny bullseye right on my family. I’d known it was a risk coming here for The Marriage Auction. I’d known all along he’d use them to get to me, but this was so much worse than I’d ever imagined. I’d truly thought I could get in and out without so much as a peep from Aiden.
I was wrong. So terribly wrong. And now I’d pay for it. With the kidnapping of Eden and my broken and beaten father.
Joel sat at my side, one hand clutching mine as he barked orders into his phone. I looked down at our interlaced fingers and noticed the blood smeared and crusted around our hands.
This man was so much more than I deserved. He most certainly didn’t deserve this hell. He was a good man. Wanted to show me and Eden a wonderful life in Greece. A fairy tale I’d believed in for the last twenty-four hours. But girls like me didn’t get Prince Charming in the beautiful white castle overlooking the Aegean Sea. They got the twisted fucking monster that reigned with brutality and greed from his tower over Sin City.