The Stranger Behind My Orgasm

Chapter 257: NUMB

Finnegan

The machines kept Mother alive for just three days. Three days of watching the rise and fall of her chest driven by tubes and pumps and the numbers on the monitors dropping steadily over and over.

Apparently Devin had been wrong. Mother wasn’t dead. Not yet. Gina Wolfe had survived the surgery. The bullets had been removed and the bleeding stopped but she never woke up. The doctors said she had suffered traumatic brain injury.

I didn’t know why I stayed in that room watching the monitors beep hour after hour. Mother or not, she had tried to kill me and her own granddaughter.

On the third day at three in the afternoon the heart monitor gave one long flat note.

I was standing by the window when it happened. I didn’t turn around immediately and just stood there with my hands in my pockets and listened to the sound of my mother’s life ending.

Nurses rushed in and doctors followed but I already knew. I could feel it in the air. Gina Wolfe was gone.

I don’t know what I had expected to feel but I was mostly numb. I felt nothing.

No, that wasn’t right. I felt something. I felt tired. So deeply and completely tired, like I had been carrying a truck on my back my entire life and had only just now noticed the weight of it.

"Mr Wolfe," the doctor said quietly, "I’m so sorry for your loss. Would you like some time alone with her?"

I glanced at the bed. They had covered her with a white sheet. "No," I said and my voice sounded distant to my own ears. "No, thank you."

I found myself thinking about my father and what he would make of all this if he could see us now. His wife was dead. One of his sons a fugitive being hunted by the police.

I had tried so hard since I was a boy to hold this family together and I had worked until my mind frayed and my hands bled and I had nothing left to give and it was never enough.

I was never enough for her. Never ruthless enough or cold enough or quite the son she wanted me to be.

"Finn?"

I opened my eyes. Abigail stood in the doorway with her face pale from exhaustion and dark circles beneath her eyes.

She hadn’t left my side in three days and had slept in the uncomfortable chair in the corner and handled the doctors and the paperwork and the reporters who circled the building like vultures. She had been my voice when I had none because I genuinely hadn’t been able to say a word to anyone but her.

She was my anchor.

"Come here," I rasped and pulled her close the moment she was within reach.

"I spoke with the funeral home," she murmured against my shoulder.

"They’re ready whenever you are. And the medical examiner needs some decisions about the autopsy. I told them you’d call tomorrow."

"Thank you," I said roughly.

She had every reason in the world to hate my family after everything they had put her through and yet here she was, carrying my burdens without a single complaint. "Thank you so much."

"Do you want to go home?" she asked, rubbing my back gently.

"We can leave everything to the funeral home. You need to sleep, Finnegan. You look like you’re about to fall over."

"Yeah," I whispered. "Home sounds good."

"No, no, no!"

We pulled apart and found Victoria in the doorway, sobbing with tears streaming freely down her face.

"You," she gasped and pointed a trembling finger at me. "You did this. You killed her! You and your little whore finally killed her!"

I arched a brow and said nothing. I was done with all of this.

"She’s gone," Victoria sobbed, moving toward us.

"Your mother is dead, Finnegan! Dead! How could you? How—" She raised her hand toward my shirt.

"Don’t you dare touch him." Abigail stepped in front of me and her small frame was somehow immovable.

"You don’t get to speak to him like that," she said with ice in every syllable, "or I will overlook every reservation I have about making a scene and rip those extensions clean out of your head."

Victoria recoiled with her eyes wide.

"You don’t get to stand here in your self-righteous delusion and blame him for choices other people made. You don’t get to pretend you weren’t all planning to get rid of him. That wasn’t the plan? If you open that mouth one more time to say this is his fault you are going to find out very quickly that I can be a much bigger problem than you."

Victoria’s mouth opened and closed in shock.

"Now," Abigail continued and wove her arm through mine and I had never felt so proud of another person in my entire life, "you will step aside and you will let us leave or I will have security remove you from this building."

Victoria stumbled back with her face twisting in fury. Abigail turned to me and her blue eyes softened immediately. "Come on, darling. Let’s go home."

We had barely reached the door when Victoria’s voice cracked across the room.

"You think you’ve won? You think you can ride off into the sunset with your little secretary? I know everything and I will expose you. The great Finnegan Wolfe, sleeping with his employee while his mother lay dying. The board will love that. The press will tear you apart. I will destroy you, Finnegan. I will destroy everything you love starting with that pathetic little slut standing next to you—"

I had heard enough. I turned around slowly.

"Do it."

Victoria blinked. "What?"

"Do it," I said again. "Call the press. Call the board. But if you take that shot at me you had better not miss, dear wife. In case it hasn’t occurred to you yet, your protector is gone. So go ahead. I will dismantle you down to nothing, Victoria. You can either take the divorce quietly and settle, or you can take one last swing at me. But we both know which one of us walks away from that."