Chapter Twenty-Two
“Iloveyou...”Claire’ssweet voice trailed off in a broken whisper, gurgled up on bubbles of blood and shattered promises. I dropped to my knees beside her, frantically patting her bruised face, trying to wake her up, to have another moment of her attention, but I was too late. The room stunk of gunpowder and blood. Unnatural heat clung to the air like the devil stood watching in glee at the destruction he wrought.
“I love you too! I love you too!” I shouted, hoping the desperation in my plea would bring her back to me, but she remained silent, growing paler by the second. Pushing up her blouse, I found the bullet wound. I needed to stem the bleeding. Rivers of crimson poured from her, leaving a puddle beneath her. I shoved my jacket off my shoulders and into the pool of her blood. Ripping off my dress shirt, I bundled it and pushed it against her stomach. I let out a wretched wail when she didn’t flinch in pain.
Someone came up beside me, “Sir, the ambulance is here.”
“Could they take any fucking longer?!” I shouted, practically crazed.
“Sir, it’s been four minutes. Their response time was above average.” Tears pricked my eyes, but I held them back. I wanted to beat James to a bloody pulpfor defending the ambulance driver, but loyalty was hard to find and it wouldn’t help me or Claire to take my frustration out on him. A flurry of color filled the room as two EMTs brought in a stretcher and bags of medical supplies.
I stepped back, feeling like the separation might kill me, while they loaded her onto the stretcher and worked over her.
“Cops?” I muttered.
“All ours.” He gestured to the men working over her. Plenty of public service members were indebted to or in the pocket of the crime ring secretly running this city. Getting the right one where you wanted them was easy if you knew who to call.
“I’ll ride with you.” I told the pair of men prodding at the love of my life.
“Sorry, sir. There is not enough room. Meet us at North Central.” I wanted to argue, to fight them, but I understood what they suggested though couldn’t say. She’s dead, and we don’t want to be in a small space with Mason Sharp when he realizes his girl is gone. They were right, they didn’t. The world was not ready for what I would become without her.
They wheeled her out, and I turned around to face the pathetic sack of shit that took the light out of my existence. The tiny hole in his forehead and the much larger wound in the back were not sufficient. Nothing would ever be enough. His lips settled into a peaceful expression, somewhere near a smile, and I was surer than ever the devil stood over me watching in twisted satisfaction. If an afterlife existed, Charles sat with his maker now, regaling each other with their stories of murdering innocents. I would sit at their table one day, but not today.
“You should leave.” I barked out, not checking if James listened. My hand reached for my gun of its own volition, emptying the clip into Charles’ gut, blowing his organs apart much like he did tomyClaire. I kicked his limp body to the ground and stomped on his skull until he was unrecognizable blood and bits. The mess coated the bottom of my shoes, and probably the rest of me too, but I didn’t care. Nothing in the world mattered without her.
I sat on the shitty linoleum floor for an indeterminable amount of time when I sensed a presence over my shoulder. “Sir, we’re going to need to clean this up, and we need backup.”
“Call whoever you want. I don’t give a fuck anymore.” Loaded silence settled between us, filled with the warning he wanted to give. This debt would be too large to pay back easily. Was this what I really wanted? Did I need to ruin his skull and fill his gut with bullets when I should have claimed self-defense? None of it mattered, not without Claire.
“Sir, the EMTs called. Ms. Green is at the hospital and is going into surgery now.”
“She’s dead.” I barked out, unwilling to let the hope winding in my gut crush me further.
“They revived her, and she’s in surgery, sir. It’s touch and go, but you should get down there.”
I shifted off the ground. “Switch shoes with me.” The blood on my clothes would be easy enough to explain, but the skull and brains coating my shoes would be another matter. James slipped his off without question, and I pushed my feet in, satisfied we wore the same size.
Being in debt with the Syndicate is not a place anyone wants to be unless they have a death wish. Which I did until a few moments earlier. A debt with no number attached is just a fancy way to spin indentured servitude. Jump when we say so until your knee caps are too busted and you have no value left. Now that I knew Claire might make it, I had only one way out of this mess: up through the ranks, until I owned my own fucking debt.
3 days later
“Sir, you need to leave. Visiting hours are over.” I shot the doctor a disgusted look, and if he was anyone other than the man who pulled the bullet out of Claire’s stomach and sewed her back up, I would have done a lot worse. The nurse already told me the same thing, but after I told her to fuck off, she scurried out like a frightened mouse. I couldn’t blame her. My best behavior and I parted ways three days ago.
“I’m not going anywhere.” I didn’t spare him a glance. My eyes stayed immovable, focused on the center of my world, lying in a hospital bed with monitors beeping on every side of her. Each tiny blip signaling her beating heart soothed like a treasured gift and stung like a biting curse, all at the same time. She lived, but her broken body needed constant medical supervision.
I paid for a private room for her on the top floor where senators came to die of heart attacks and strokes. She laid in a wider and plusher bed than the typical cot, and the chair I sat in was about a thousand times nicer than the regular hospital room. Apparently, the price for some fucking peace was steeper.
“Sir, I’ll call security.” I looked at him, and something in my expression made him take a step back. I almost laughed at the thought of the security guard he would sic on me.
“No, you’re going to turn around and forget I’m here. Tell the nurses not to bother me.” I waved him off. He left the room, and I took a deep breath, wondering what to do if he actually called security. My explosive temper concerning Claire caused no shortage of problems lately. I always believed my past would come calling, and loving her would forever be my greatest weakness. The past came calling, but in the way Ileastexpected.
I inched my chair closer to the bed and dragged my fingers along the back of Claire’s perfect but icy hand. Needles and tubes stuck into her skin, with tape and sticky pads holding them in place. I carefully avoided anything that might cause her discomfort,though she was unconscious and had been for the last three miserable days.
She lost a lot of blood. She needs time. It’s better she’s asleep. She would be in too much pain right now.The nurses’ platitudes ran through my head as I lifted Claire’s gown to check if her bandage needed to be changed. It looked clean and tightly placed, so I lowered the fabric and tried to take a deep breath. The thought of what lay beneath thegauze twisted in my gut as if my own organs contorted to match hers.
My gaze drifted over her perfect face. Her eyes lay shut. One swelled to twice its normal size with a dark purple bruise. A cherry on top of the shit sundae of this entire ordeal. The edges were yellowing ever so slightly, and it would take weeks to fade entirely. I clenched my hands, my knuckles whitening as I flexed them open and closed, trying to quell the ineffectual rage burning through me.
Red, violence, and death were the only things I saw for so long. After I put that life behind me, it haunted my every step. Violent memories and urges cropping up in clean corporate offices were part of my normal. I enjoyed keeping fat cats honest, encouraging them to pay their taxes and do things the right way. Corporate law was a good use of my skills and a slap in the face to my father who went down for embezzlement.