I didn’t cry.
Not a single tear spilled from my eyes when the coroner zipped up the body bag with Tommy Moyet inside of it.
Even now, as I sat in the waiting room of the hospital, having been stitched up, I couldn’t feel a thing.
Nothing.
His face; blue, bloodied, and marred with a bullet hole in the center, haunted me, just like my father's had when I watched first hand George Dennis take his life away, and still I didn’t weep.
Emotionless, I kept my eyes locked on the door of the room the doctors had rolled Teagan into over five hours ago.
This was on me.
All of it.
Tommy was dead.
Teagan was… I didn’t even know what was happening with Thorn.
They'd taken her away from me the moment the ambulance doors had opened and I hadn’t been allowed to see her since.
And the baby?
I didn’t know a damn thing.
The cops had come and gone, several of them. All asking the same fucking questions with their tiny notebooks and beady eyes.
I'd answered all their questions.
I had nothing left to hide and only one thing left to lose – she was currently behind door 203...
"Did you recognize the man that shot you, Mr. Messina?"
"Yes."
"Do you know his name?"
"Gerome Javi."
"Several witnesses said they heard him mention you personally. Did he have some sort of vendetta against you?"
"Yes."
"Why would that be?"
"I beat him to within an inch of his life eight years ago and served a five and half year sentence for the privilege."
"And Tommy Moyet? Do you know of any bad blood between Mr. Javi and the deceased?"
"No. The only mistake Tommy Moyet made was befriending a guy like me."
Tommy was dead and the last words I'd spoken to him were on bad terms.
Tommy protected me when I should have been the one protecting him.
He could have told Javi I was there, but he didn’t.
I could have come out from under that table and stopped it, but I didn’t.
I did absolutely nothing as my oldest friend in the world had his brains blown out by a man after my blood.
All because I loved my wife too much.
Because I chose to put her life and feelings above everything and everyone else.
The worst part was knowing that if I had to do it again, I would choose her every damn time.
What kind of a heartless monster did that make me?
Knowing that I would rather watch the whole world burn before losing my wife?
Knowing that even though I was heartbroken my friend was dead, I wouldn’t change a thing because Thorn got to live.
From the age of seventeen, I'd been obsessed with her.
The girl next door.
The thorn in my side.
She was my best friend – then and now.
She was strong.
She was opinionated.
She annoyed the shit out of me back then and she challenged me on everything.
She was my biggest weakness and having her love me was my proudest accomplishment.
She was the only reason I'd had to keep my nose clean in prison.
She had to live.
"How's the arm?" Lucky, who was sitting beside me, asked, stirring me from my reverie.
"Still there." I reached up to touch the part of my arm just below my shoulder where the bullet had gone through. "Doc said the bullet went straight through." It stung like a motherfucker, but I wasn’t going to lie down on a gurney for the night and feel sorry for myself, not when my wife was inside that room. "It didn’t hit anything…important. Just muscle." The countless x-rays I'd had confirmed that. "He gave me antibiotics and called it a flesh wound."
"You were damn lucky you didn’t lose your arm, Noah," Lucky continued to say, eyes locked on the sling holding my right arm up. "That bullet could've ended your career."
Lucky was telling me the same damn thing I'd heard from the doctors earlier.
"You will need to undergo an intense rehabilitation and therapy program to get that arm functioning again, Mr. Messina," the doctor told me as I sat on the hospital bed, trying to take it all in. "Absolutely no fighting for the next three months..."
"I'm a fighter, Doc," I shot back. "It's what I do. You said the bullet went straight through, so just give me some antibiotics and let me get back to my wife."
"The muscles in your arm have been severed," the doctor countered. "This isn’t some playground wound you can treat with an icepack and painkillers."
"What are you saying?"
The doctor sighed heavily. "I'm saying that even with rehabilitation and intervention, there's a possibility that you may never regain full mobility in your right arm…"
"Do you think I give a damn about my career anymore?" I choked out. "When Tommy's dead and Teagan's…" My voice broke off. I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t even bear to think it. Shaking my head, I continued my silent vigil of watching her door.
"Teagan will be okay," Lucky countered quickly. "It's shock." He nodded his head, but his hands were shaking. "Just shock," he repeated quietly.
"The blood," I choked out. The thought of Teagan hemorrhaging on the floor caused a spike of adrenalin to rush through my veins. Clearing my throat, I continued to stare at the door. "She's pregnant, Lucky."
"Shit," he let out a heavy sigh. "How far along?'
"I don’t know." My voice was flat. Empty. "We just found out."
"It'll be okay." Lucky muttered under his breath. "Have a little faith."
"Faith is for the optimists." I cleared my throat again, hating the sound of my own flat voice. "I'm a realist."
"Mr. Messina?" a small, female doctor, clad in purple scrubs came to stand in front of me. "My name is Dr. Hardy. I've been taking care of your wife."
Immediately, I was on my feet. "Is she okay?"
"Yes, she's stable," Dr. Hardy replied. "Her blood pressure dropped significantly and it took a while to regulate due to the fact that she was severely dehydrated, but we've managed to stabilize her temperature and blood pressure, and we've administered an IV line with fluids."
"And the baby?" I managed to squeeze out. I was afraid to ask about the baby. She'd had no prenatal care. She'd consumed alcohol. She'd roughhoused around a goddamn gym and had jetted around the country for the past five or so months. I was afraid of what that doctor was going to tell me. "We...I -I don’t know if she's still …"
"Your daughter is just fine, Mr. Messina," the doctor replied with a smile. "Strong heartbeat and perfectly proportioned for twenty weeks' gestation."
"My…" My head began to spin. A daughter… "Twenty weeks?" Every emotion I'd been holding back impaled me in that moment. Daughter…
I felt my legs buckle beneath my weight and if Lucky hadn't been standing beside me to lean on, I would have collapsed.
"Hear that, man?" Lucky chuckled, wrapping his arm around my waist. "Your daughter."
"My daughter," I repeated slowly. "My…daughter."
I had a daughter.
Teagan was carrying my daughter inside of her.
I knew in that moment that whatever the future held for me, I was going to protect her.
I'd heard Javi's threats. He'd said they had something special planned for my wife.
There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that they would have to kill me dead before I allowed anyone to lay a hand on my wife or my baby.