On a crash course, Hudson launched himself at Julian with brutal force. The two men collided, and using the full weight of his body, Hudson shoved Julian hard against the mantel. Picture frames clattered to the floor and a crystal vase took a dive. One hand wrapped around Julian’s throat while the other caught his wrist. The veins in Julian’s neck bulged and Hudson tightened his grip, hoping like hell the fucker would go hypoxic on him. But the son of a bitch wasn’t going down without a fight. He locked eyes with Hudson and twisted the gun between their bodies.

*   *   *

Allie’s world stopped spinning at the sound of the gunshot. The thundering noise echoed in her ears, and the smell of gunpowder burned her nostrils. For several agonizing seconds she stood frozen, watching the two men locked in a violent embrace with a gun lodged between them. Then a scream was ripped from somewhere deep within her as Hudson fell to the floor, blood soaking through his shirt in an ever expanding circle.

She dropped to her knees beside him. His eyes were closed and his body was so still. “Hudson . . . stay with me.” The words lodged in her throat as she tried to choke them out. “Please. Don’t leave me.” Tears blurred her vision as she placed both hands over the wound, trying to stem the flow of blood. Beneath her palms she felt no heartbeat, no rise and fall of his chest, only a wet pool of crimson.

Julian grabbed her arm. His fingers dug into her flesh as he tried to pull her away.

“No.” Allie struggled against his hold. “Let go of me.”

“Get up,” he snarled, yanking her to her feet and shoving the barrel of the gun beneath her ribs.

“We can’t just leave him like that.” Tears flowed hot and steady down her cheeks as he dragged her down the hall. “We need to call an ambulance.”

Julian ignored her, but she could see the panic in his eyes. Sweat had formed on his brow and upper lip, and his breath came in short, shallow pants. If she could reason with him, even offer him a way out, maybe it wouldn’t be too late.

“Please,” she cried, sobs racking her entire frame. “Don’t do this. He might still be alive. Let me call for help.” Her words tumbled out in a desperate plea. “You can leave with Philippe. I swear, I won’t tell anyone you were here. I’ll say someone broke in, or that it was an accident, just please . . .”

“Shut up,” Julian shouted. Lashing out, he backhanded Allie across the face. The force of the blow spun her toward the table, and she landed with a crash atop a place setting of china. “And stop crying, for fuck’s sake. I need to think.”

In the reflection of the cracked mirror Allie watched as Julian reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out his cell phone. He jabbed the screen with his thumb and almost immediately began barking orders. “Bring the car around back . . . No, in the garage. There’s a situation I need you to clean up.”

Allie pushed to her feet. Everywhere she looked she saw blood. Her mother’s, streaked across the wall in front of her; her own, dripping from the cut on her face; and Hudson’s, smeared across the white linen where her hands had tried to break her fall. Down the hall her husband lay dying, or maybe he was already dead. She needed to be by his side. Julian had taken her parents from her. There was no way she was letting him take the only man she’d ever loved.

Julian ended the call and strode to where she stood, her arms braced against the table. She drew a shaky breath as he reached for her, and when his fingers curled in her hair, hers curled around the knife resting alongside the cracked plate.

“Let’s go,” he growled. He yanked Allie up by the roots of her hair. She turned, ignoring the look of terror that registered in Julian’s eyes as she plunged the knife into his heart.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Allie rode with Hudson in the ambulance. At first they’d tried to tell her she had to follow in a different car, but after a few quietly spoken words from Max, she’d been ushered to a seat in the corner of the rig and told to stay back and allow them to work. She had no idea what he’d said to them, or to the police for that matter, but he’d made it possible for her to stay with her husband, and for that she would always be grateful.

Max had arrived shortly after she’d called 911 and immediately took control of the situation. His confident and calm demeanor was her lifeline amidst the bedlam that erupted after what had seemed liked hours but in reality had only been a matter of minutes. Paramedics and police, loud sirens and flashing lights. Allie blocked them all out and kept her focus on the man Hudson trusted most in the world, relying on him to see her through the darkest moment of her life.

The ride to the hospital was a blur. Allie sat in the corner as instructed, wearing the jacket Max had given her to cover her torn blouse, and offering silent prayers. A team met them when they arrived, and she watched in fascinated horror as the scene before her played out like one of Dick Wolf’s television shows. Words that had no meaning to her were barked by men and women wearing hospital scrubs or white coats. There were a million questions she wanted to ask them, but before she had time to form even one, Hudson was being whisked through a set of double doors.

She followed his gurney down a wide hallway and into a large trauma room. Once inside the room, the team moved at a pace that could only be described as organized chaos. To her it looked like total confusion, everyone moving in different directions and all talking at once, but to them it was a series of well-choreographed maneuvers. And at the center of the storm was Hudson. She could barely see him through the mass of bodies, but at one point she caught a glimpse of his left hand. It lay unmoving at his side, unadorned of the platinum band she’d slid on his finger only nine days before.

“You can’t be in here,” someone called out.

Allie didn’t move. She didn’t even breathe.

“Ma’am, you need to wait outside,” a man said from beside her.

“There’s so much blood,” she murmured. The room shifted beneath her feet and she swayed.

Hands gripped her shoulders. “Let them do their job. And come sit down. You don’t want them to have to stop because you’ve passed out, now do you?” the man said, gently coaxing Allie back out into the hall. “Here, have a seat. Someone will be out to update you as soon as we know more.”

She took a seat on a padded vinyl chair at the nurse’s station, but kept her eyes trained on the closed trauma room door. No one came in or out, yet she knew that despite the room’s calm exterior, inside the team of professionals was still working hard to keep the man she loved alive. Or maybe it was over. Maybe they had lost him, and instead of an update someone was going to come out of that room at any minute to tell her she was a widow. Tears brimmed her eyes as she rocked back and forth in her seat, willing them not to fail. Please . . . please save him . . .

Behind her the automatic doors swung open on a sharp buzz.

“Allie!” Nick jogged toward her. His hand was linked with Harper’s, and even from where she sat Allie could see his white-knuckle grip. “What’s going on? Max’s message said to meet you at the ER, but he didn’t tell me what the fuck happened.”

She stood and took a deep breath, trying to find the strength to say the words out loud. “Hudson was shot,” was all she managed to squeeze past the lump in her throat.

The blood drained from Nick’s face. “How bad is it?”

Allie blinked away her tears. She had to be strong for Nick. No matter what the outcome in the room behind them, Nick was her family. And just like Hudson, she would do anything for him. “I don’t know yet,” she said, trying her best to keep her voice level. “They’re still working on him.”