Semua Bab His Tamed Wife, The Wild Heiress: Bab 181 - Bab 190

Chapter 182KIERANI understood this slowly. The information arrived in pieces—the ceiling where the floor should be, the window at an angle that was wrong, the specific position of my body relative to where it was supposed to be.Pain arrived.Not from one place. From several. The ribs—immediately, with the specific sharp authority of fractured ribs making their presence known. Something in my left shoulder. My head, which had impacted something in the sequence of the roll and was reporting the impact with the escalating insistence of a concussion establishing itself.I turned my head.Penny.She was unconscious.The seatbelt was holding her—upside down, suspended in it, her face pale and still and a line of blood coming from somewhere in her hairline. Her hands were slack. Her breathing was—I watched her chest and it was moving. She was breathing. But she was unconscious and bleeding and the baby—I didn't

Chapter 184DAMIENI cleaned the site with what Yusuf had in the kit.I picked up the scalpel.The crowd had gone very quiet.Not entirely—there was still the murmur of people and the sound of the city and somewhere the sirens getting closer. But the immediate space had gone quiet in the specific way that spaces went quiet when something was happening that required attention.I made the incision.Fifteen years ago I had done things that I had chosen not to continue doing. I had made that choice for specific reasons and had maintained it with the consistency of someone who had understood that the line between the person he had been and the person he was choosing to become required maintenance.Today the maintenance was paused.Because the alternative was a woman dying on a road and a baby dying with her and an eight-minute ambulance and Kieran standing beside me with fractured ribs and a concussion doing exactly what I told him to do

Chapter 186ADRIA"Adrian," I said.He didn't respond immediately."Adrian," I said again.He turned. His face had the expression I recognized from the moments when information arrived that required management before it could be shared—the brief, controlled quality of someone deciding how to proceed."Turn that up," he said to Sophia.Sophia looked at the television. Then she stood up and went to it and found the volume control on the set and turned it up and the audio came through and what it was saying was—The screen was showing aerial footage.The specific quality of aerial footage—the slightly imprecise angle of a helicopter camera, the wide frame that showed geography rather than individual faces, the news chyron at the bottom running text that I was reading before I had fully decided to read it.*BREAKING: Serious accident on elevated Highway 7. Multiple vehicles involved. Live footage.*The footage showed a section of elevated highway.A car. Upside down, on the road below the

Chapter 188ADRIAYusuf came through the hospital entrance first.He was moving with the specific urgency of a man who had somewhere to be immediately after delivering his current passengers—the forward-leaning efficiency of someone whose next task was already running in his mind while he completed the current one. He had his phone in his hand and he was looking at it with the focused attention of someone checking a route or a message.Behind him, Kieran.Kieran came through the automatic doors moving wrong. Not dramatically—he was upright, he was walking, he was holding the baby against his chest with both arms in the careful, absolute way of someone who had been given something fragile and had made a decision about it—but wrong in the specific way of a person managing multiple physical injuries through sheer decision. His left leg had a quality to it. His right arm moved with more care than the left. The bruising on his face that hadn't been there two days ago had been augmented by

Chapter 190ADRIA"Yes," he said."We have more information than they think we have," I said. "Which is an advantage.""Yes," he said.I looked at Yusuf."I'm going to find him," I said.He looked at me for a long moment."Yes," he said. "I believe you."The police arrived at two fifteen.Three officers—two in uniform, one not, the one not wearing a suit that communicated detective. They moved through the hospital entrance with the specific purpose of people who had a location and were moving toward it, and they found us in the waiting area with the efficiency of people who had been given a description."We're looking for individuals who were present at the accident on Highway 7," the detective said. "We have information that several of you were at the scene."He looked at Kieran first. Then at Yusuf. Then at me."I was at the scene," Kieran said. "I was in the vehicle that was involved in the accident.""And the woman? The pregnant woman who was transported here?""She's being admitt