Page 60 of Ugly Truths (The Veiled Truths Trilogy #2)

Elena

“D avey and Paul just finished up a call with Silas and are headed to bed,” Natalie announces, not looking up from her phone as she types away next to me. The tinted windows darken the interior, early morning light struggling to penetrate the glass.

My eyebrows shoot up. I’d assumed Silas had been in the gym when we left, but it turns out he was in his study.

It’s been just over a week since the emergency board meeting. Only yesterday did they manage to get someone on a plane to Sierra Blanca. The delay was frustrating. They had to strategize to avoid drawing unnecessary attention and couldn’t risk scaring off the team at the facility.

Despite his eagerness, Silas couldn't attend the meeting with the contacts we'd extracted from the server files.

Leaving town for an undisclosed location, especially at such a critical moment, was out of the question.

Plus, the press was more intrigued than ever by our relationship and were following him like bloodhounds.

As soon as they received the green light, Davey and Paul booked flights to El Paso.

They had an entire day of meetings, and we’ve barely heard from them since yesterday morning.

Depending on how the conversations went with the team at the facility, Silas and Davey needed to devise a plan to discreetly wind down the operations and then decide what to do with the building .

The slow pace grates on me, and I’ve not been shy about expressing it.

Silas keeps explaining why rushing could worsen things or make them unfixable, but understanding the strategy doesn’t ease the knowledge that people are suffering this very moment and will continue to until it’s completely shut down.

Cillian hums in acknowledgement from the driver's seat. “Good. I’ll call Silas while you’re working out and fill you both in on the way home.” He flicks on the turn signal and checks the rearview mirror before taking a left onto a side street.

Natalie yawns, briefly glancing at another message before locking her phone. The streets are quiet, but that will change soon as the morning rush begins.

“Jeff’s lucky I like him,” she mutters, stifling another yawn. “This is an insane time to be awake, let alone working out.”

Jeff is having maintenance done in his gym’s bathrooms. He didn’t want to stray far while the work is underway, so he asked to shift our training sessions to an ungodly hour so he could supervise the plumbers.

We didn’t realize he meant at the crack of dawn when we initially agreed.

By the time he told us, it was too late to back out.

Neither of us was interested in his relentless teasing if we changed our minds.

Cillian felt comfortable with our security since we’d be the only ones in the gym.

That’s why we’ve stuck with it this week.

Luckily, today is our last session before we go back to our normal routine.

I can't help but chuckle as we approach the main road, Ironworks looming up ahead. “Usually, your brother has already worked out and headed to the office by now.”

“He’s also a psychopath,” she shoots back, as if that explains everything. I press my lips together, holding back another smile.

As we pull up to the gym, Jeff is already there, unlocking the front door. With so little traffic, he hears us approach, looking over his shoulder with a broad smile. He waits patiently as Cillian pulls into a street spot right in front of the door; one of the only perks of being up so early .

Cillian fumbles with some messages on his phone, so Natalie and I hop out without him to greet Jeff.

Despite our grumbles about the ungodly hour and morning chill, Jeff greets us cheerfully, proclaiming, “Beautiful morning, yeah?” Natalie blinks at him, adjusting the gym bag on her shoulder in mild annoyance.

“Reel it in, sunshine,” I answer with an eye roll.

Jeff smirks. “I almost forgot how much of a peach you are in the morning,” he taunts.

“Can’t wait to show you how much of a peach I am on the mat,” I retort, my lips curving into a small smile.

The car door slams behind us as Cillian finally gets out and rounds the front of the vehicle.

The quiet is briefly pierced by other distant sounds—a car or two stirring in the streets.

Just as Natalie opens her mouth, presumably to try and wiggle out of her cardio as she does every session, Cillian's voice slices through the air.

I turn to him, but he’s looking down the road behind me. His body tenses as if ready to sprint when a sudden force yanks my arm, and suddenly I don’t know which way is up.

A loud buzzing sound in my ears almost drowns out the several sharp pops, and I’m slammed to the ground by an unseen weight.

On instinct, my forearms fly up to my face just as the air is ripped from my lungs.

I heave, chest burning and arms stinging.

The pressure on my back is so intense I can't tell if the weight is preventing me from sucking in a breath or the wind had been permanently knocked out of me.

Then, as quickly as it came, the pressure lifts. With a gasp, I roll onto my back. My ears ring. The building edges and the clear sky spin in my vision. I squeeze my eyes shut and then open them again to look for Natalie.

She’s less than a foot away, on her stomach. Her breathing is ragged, eyes wide with confusion and fear. There’s a smear of red across her cheek and on the cement below her face.

I reach for her, placing my hand on her forearm and squeezing. Everything seems to move in slow motion for several heartbeats while I try to figure out what happened, but then her gaze shifts past my face, eyes widening in a fresh wave of panic.

When I turn my head, reality snaps back. Cillian is kneeling over Jeff, who lies face down, his head turned away. The sting of the cold air fills my lungs as I suck in another breath and scramble to my knees. Blood coats Cillian’s hands, and the metallic smell of iron hits me with full force.

Cillian’s voice cuts through the shock, panic growing in his eyes. “Get in the car! We need to move him and get out of the open. Now!”

The back of Jeff’s sweatshirt is riddled with holes, blood soaking through the fabric.

I’m already crawling toward him, a string of whimpers leaving my lips as I reach Jeff’s face. The relief I feel when I see his bright blue eyes open only lasts a second before he gasps under the weight of his injuries and Cillian's desperate attempts to stem the bleeding.

My fingers find his face, the warmth of it seeping into my palms as I force him to look at me. His eyes are glassy and unfocused. My hands shake, heart seizing in my chest as tremors rack my body.

Cillian screams Natalie's name. She's instantly on her feet, springing into action in a way I can't focus on, because Jeff's eyes are already fluttering shut.

“Jeff,” I whisper, pressing my fingers into his skin to hold his attention. I don’t get a chance to see his reaction because Cillian is grabbing my arm, pulling me up with enough force that it snaps my head back to him.

“Elena! Focus!”

I shake my head once.

Cillian rattles off instructions to me. We’re going to lift Jeff into the backseat to lie flat on his stomach. “You have to apply pressure to the wounds,” he tells me urgently. “Focus on the one near his chest. Can you do that?”

I nod, swallowing hard to muster the semblance of control I need.

With Natalie’s help, we hoist Jeff's limp body. He moans—a sound that tears at my heart. The arm wrapped around his back is warm and wet, and blood trickles a path under us, webbing out over the sidewalk. Cillian’s focus shifts between us and the empty roads with a predatory focus.

I’m not even sure how we manage it, but we get Jeff into the SUV.

I climb in behind him, bracketing my knees around his hips for the best leverage to apply pressure.

Cillian slams the doors shut, and within seconds, he’s in the driver’s seat with Natalie next to him, peeling out of our spot and back onto the streets.

I press my hands firmly against Jeff’s back, concentrating on the wound near his chest and trying to cover the others, but two are near his lower back, and the other is in his shoulder. Each bump in the road sends a new ripple of fear through me, but I hold steady.

Natalie reaches back to help as she frantically gives Cillian GPS directions to the nearest hospital. Despite the clear roads, we're still fifteen minutes away from the nearest ER.

Cillian curses and slams his hand against the steering wheel, leaving streaks of blood, before hitting the accelerator harder.

Tears blur my vision. Jeff's face contorts with pain against the cold leather of the seat.

His eyes open only when jolted by Cillian's frantic maneuvers through the streets.

My hands, warm and sticky, press down desperately.

I close my eyes and suddenly Drew is behind my eyelids—her pale face, her already cool blood between my fingers, my own screams echoing in our empty living room.

I blink. The boundaries of reality and my nightmares blur so much that I can’t even see straight. The SUV’s tires screech as Cillian takes another sharp turn. Jeff groans. It’s the only thing that anchors me back to the present.

“Why would you do that?” I hiss, voice trembling. “How could you be so fucking stupid?” The anger spills out, cracking on the last word.

Somehow, this makes Jeff laugh. It’s a gurgled, harsh sound that's more of a choke. “I told you… I always got you,” he manages to say between strained wheezes.

Something inside me begs to break. Jeff has been there, right from the day I walked into his gym. He accepted me as Scarlett. As Elena. As whoever I needed to be at any moment. There were never any pretenses. He took me in, hid me, healed me. He is family. My only family.

And his life is literally slipping through my fingers.

I shift closer to his face. “You better not fucking die,” I rasp. “We said no more hero stunts. That included you.”

He responds with a weak smile, teeth stained red.

No, no, no .

The tears well up again, but I fight them. Crying now won't help. Jeff doesn't need to see it, either.

I swallow the lump in my throat and force my breathing to steady, even if I can’t find the words to reassure him with much of anything.

“Lauren’ll… never date again,” Jeff suddenly mumbles, each breath getting wetter and wetter. “You need to find… a nice guy to change… her mind. No one… better looking than me… though, okay?”

“Shut up,” I snap just as soon as he finishes the last word. “You’re going to tell your wife that yourself, so she can kick your ass for saying it.” His laughter, weak and pained, follows my outburst, and more blood trickles from the corner of his mouth.

Then, softer, gentler, he says, “I’m proud of you… you know.” His words cut through me, tearing open the well of emotions I've kept dammed up for five years.

I can’t do this again.

I can’t survive this twice.

The next several minutes are spent with Natalie dangling over the center console, her hands pressed on the wounds near my legs that I can’t reach. We both take turns telling Jeff to open his eyes, but each time, there’s more silence, and his jokes lose all their muster.

Cillian cut down some of our time, but we’re still four minutes out when Jeff speaks again, voice cracking, “Don't take me to… Insight. I don’t… want her… see me like this.”

Lauren’s hospital.

Dread douses me. The certainty in his strained words tells me nothing I do will help.

Nothing at all.

I abandon my pressure on his wounds as Natalie crawls to replace my hands, and I drop into the cramped foot space near his head. There’s no stopping the sob that rips through my throat when our eyes meet.

“You aren’t allowed to go. You need to stay.” I place a blood-stained hand on his shaved head, his skin far too cold and slick with sweat. “What about Lauren? What am I supposed to tell her?”

Jeff slowly reaches for my forearm, giving it a weak, reassuring squeeze. “It’s okay,” he soothes, his eyes watery, lips coated with a thin sheen of blood as they shiver. “Elena... it’s going to… okay.”

Tears stream down my cheeks, and I lean my forehead against the side of his. “It’s not.” My voice breaks. “Please, J. Don’t.”

“Tell Laur… love her,” he wheezes, eyes squeezing shut as he tries to find the breath to finish his thought. “You too… kid.”

Three heartbeats barely pass before his eyelids relax and his tattooed hand grows slack, slipping from my forearm and off the side of the seat.

I whimper more pleas, pulling it back into mine, but his fingers and wrist limp. My tears run down his temple, mixing with the smear of blood I left on his scalp.

Underneath my wet lashes, I can see the contours of his face.

If I say it enough, I could convince myself he’s sleeping.

I found him many times on the recliner in his guest room, sitting with me in recovery, taking a nap in the sun that streamed through the windows.

All I have to do is throw a pillow on his lap, and he’ll jump up from his spot to tell me he’s been awake the whole time.

It’s only when I pull back enough to look at his frame, already pale, coated in blood, and so still, that the illusion shatters.

And suddenly, the world stops spinning.