The Stranger Behind My Orgasm novel Chapter 257

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.

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