Coup De Grâce

Text copyright ©2015 Lani Lynn Vale

All Rights Reserved

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Dedication

To my mom. Thank you for reading my sex scenes and not gagging. Love you.
      

Acknowledgements

Dearest FuriousFotog, you are a blessing. Thank you so much for taking these photos for me. They’re unbelievably beautiful.

Andrew England- when I first started writing, you were the first person that I really took notice of…I always said that one day I would have you on the cover of one of my books, and here you are, lucky number 18. <3

Dearest readers,

I know you’ve been waiting a long time for Michael’s book, and I hope you enjoy reading about him as much as I loved writing his story.

As you know, this is the last in this series, but don’t fret. You’ll see more of them in future books such as Kilgore Fire Department and a future spinoff series of all the ‘Free Kids.’

<3 Thank
you so much for reading this book, and all of my earlier work. Just know that it is you right now that made this possible for me.

Lani

I licked it. So it’s mine.

-Fact of life

Michael

“You’ll need to make sure you get to the house by six if you want to make it on time for dinner,”
my father said tiredly. “You know how your mother gets when you don’t show up on time.”

I winced.

I
did
know how my mother got.

Irrational
is what she got.

It’s as if she hadn’t been married to a doctor for the last thirty years.

I can’t name one single time that my father got to
any
event on time, whether it be a birthday, vacation, sporting event, graduation, or hell, even a fucking birth.

Not one time had I seen her lose it over my father being late, but her baby boy was late and suddenly the whole world stopped.

“I’ll try to be on time,” I told him. “But I’m not promising anything. I have to work until five thirty;
it takes nearly thirty minutes to get to your house from the station. And that’s if I leave on time. I told her to make sure she held the party later, but she wouldn’t listen.”

“Joslin wanted six,” my father told me hesitantly, opening the door to his office.
“And that’s when
Dean could be there.”

I squeezed my hands tightly into fists, trying my hardest to not punch a hole in the wall with my fist.

I had no earthly idea why my mother continued to invite my ex-wife.

Dean was at least my fuckin’ brother, and I could understand why he’d have to be there.

It was as if my mom didn’t care that Joslin was no longer married to me. Usually the family chooses the child over the child’s ex.

We were together for a little over a year and a half when I found out she’d cheated.

Granted, the reason she’d cheated had been my fault, or so she’d said, but that still didn’t give her the right to do that to me.

We’d taken vows. And I’d at least meant them.

Refraining from saying, ‘
Fuck Joslin
,’ I walked to the side doors of the hospital and to the ambulance bay with my father.

“I see,” I settled on.

My father’s face looked pensive, as if he wanted to say something, but didn’t know how to say it.

“Michael, I need to tell you something…” my father started.

I would’ve stayed to listen, but the mic at my shoulder started squawking.

“The nearest unit is needed at 5543 Pleasant Circle. Possible double homicide,” the dispatcher ordered.

Sighing, I turned and offered my hand to my pop.

“Gotta go, dad. I’ll try my hardest to get there on time, but I’m not promising anything,” I told him.

He nodded, looking for the world like he was upset that he hadn’t said what he had to say, and shook my hand before saying, “Be safe.”

My father, like my mother, hadn’t liked that I’d chosen to go into law enforcement.

They’d spent thousands and thousands of dollars to get me through medical school only for me to quit to join the Navy.

Once in the Navy, I’d continued my schooling. After I’d finished, and then got medically discharged due to some slight nerve damage in my left foot from a bomb exploding, did I decided that the medical field wasn’t really something I was much interested in anymore.

Which had pissed both my mother and father off.

Immensely.

But I’d hated it.

I’d only done medical school because it was expected.

None of my family could understand why I’d quit.

My mother was a nurse. My father was a doctor. My brother was a doctor, and my sister was a nurse.

They couldn’t see past the fact that I was happy. They could only see the millions of dollars I was flushing down the drain to be a SWAT officer.

Not to mention they were hardcore Democrats, and I was most definitely
not
.

My mind, however, screeched to a halt as I saw her.

Nikki.

She had long, rich brown hair, beautiful brown eyes, and stunning caramel skin.

Today, she was in her scrubs.

A dark gray color that, although it should look incredibly ugly, didn’t.

She was a phlebotomist and on the IV team.
A licensed paramedic that worked as a tech in the ER.
She went around doing IVs throughout the hospital, but mostly stayed down in the ER where she was needed the most.

She was also studying to be a midwife, and from what I’d learned from Nico, her brother and another member of the SWAT team, she was well on her way to graduating.

I was in love with the woman.

No if’s, and’s, or but’s.

So in love with her that I could barely be around her.

She was in love with me, too…or had been when we’d first met.

But I’d ruined that, like I always ruined every-
fucking
-thing.

See, I was an asshole.

A diagnosed asshole, but an asshole nonetheless.

I was bi-polar.

I take my meds religiously.

Yet, there were times…like when I told Nikki that I didn’t want to have kids with her… that the asshole slipped through, and took hold of innocent people, tearing apart relationships as collateral damage.

I’d not meant it to come out that way.

I’d actually meant it to come out the opposite way entirely.

I
didn’t want to have kids fathered by m
e
.

I didn’t want my children to suffer from what I had.

Being bi-polar was only the tip of the iceberg.

I battled with depression during the winter months.

I had ADD.

And swear to Christ I didn’t want to put a kid through that.

I was a prime example of a person that
shouldn’t
have kids.

But I was Nikki’s, even if Nikki wasn’t mine. At least not anymore.

She would forever have my heart, but I’d never hold hers.

It was better this way.

I was so fucked up that I literally couldn’t handle anymore.

And I didn’t want a woman like Nikki, someone so pure of heart, to have to deal with my shit. Because there sure the fuck was a lot of it.

Watching her until she went inside, I finally pulled out of the parking lot and responded to the suspected double homicide.

And once again it reemphasized the fact that some people really shouldn’t have kids.

Pulling into the yard that housed a double wide trailer, I walked up to the front door where an elderly couple was standing.

The old man had his hands wrapped around the old woman’s shoulders, and he was holding her comfortingly.

As if, if he were not careful, she might very well fall apart.

Stepping out of my cruiser, my feet crunched in the gravel.

As I made my way to them, I took a survey of my surroundings.

The land surrounding the trailer was clean and well kept.

Flowers lined the sides of the mobile home with red bricks surrounding the flower bed.

A bass boat sat to the side underneath an awning, with a trailer that had two four wheelers on the back ready to ride to the dear lease at a moment’s notice.

An infant swing swung on the front porch, being pushed by nothing more than the wind.

And I got a really,
really
bad feeling.

The moment I got within speaking distance, both of them started speaking at once.

“They’re dead!”
The woman cried, covering her mouth with her hand.

“Shot her, and then
himself,” the man said gruffly. “The baby too. We didn’t touch anything.”

Bile already making the climb up my throat, I said, “Please go stand next to my cruiser.”

They both readily complied, and I was thankful.

I could tell that the man was a hard man.

He had a Marine Corps tattoo on his right forearm, and what distinctly resembled a knife wound just above that.

His eyes were hard and his demeanor even harder.

But whatever he saw inside had rocked him.

Taking a deep breath, I stepped over the threshold of the mobile home, and immediately turned around to lose my lunch over the side of the porch.

I’m not ashamed I have a heart.

But any man would’ve lost it over what I’d just seen.

Taking a few deep breaths, I said a silent prayer, and once again stepped over the threshold.

This time I was able to take in more of the scene.

Earlier I’d stalled over the child.

This time I was able to move past the child that was in front of a sliding glass door across the room to the man that crumpled against the far counter.

He was on his ass, a revolver had fallen just to the right of his hand.

He had a large hole at the top of his head where the bullet had exited.

Moving past him, I saw the legs of a woman on the other side of the island.

Walking carefully into the room, I skirted around the island and closed my eyes the moment I saw the woman.

She was beautiful. Long blonde hair laid around her in a halo. Cute skirt and skin tight top clinging
closely to a very pregnant belly.

“Fuck me,” I breathed, dropping down to my knees.

Although I knew it was futile, I checked for a pulse on each of the parents.

But Rigor Mortis had already set in; I knew they were gone the moment my fingers met their skin.

Really not wanting to check the child, but knowing I had to do it anyway, I walked carefully over to the baby.

He was dressed in a red onesie that had little puppy dog prints on it.

His little feet were covered in a tiny pair of red socks, and I found myself thankful.

It masked the sheer amount of blood that was surrounding him.

His and his mother’s were mingling, and you couldn’t tell whose was whose.

But as my fingers met his cool skin, and I felt the rapid beat of his pulse, my whole body froze in shock.

He was alive!

Mother
fucker
.

He had a gunshot wound to his face,
but he was alive!