by Tate James
But the rest of it? My history with Chase and what all had led us to the Timberwolf massacre five years ago? None of his fucking business.
My phone vibrated again, this time with a call from Zed, which I accepted.
"All okay?" I asked, holding the phone to my ear as I toyed with my coffee mug.
"Yeah, fine," he replied, then gave a short yawn. "I just spoke to Seph, and she said you're ignoring her calls. What do you wanna do about that?"
I wrinkled my nose. "Dunno. She's still safe with MK, right?"
"Yes, sir. I spoke with Archer, and he's aware of the risks. She's safe there as long as we need."
A small sigh of relief rushed out of me. As much as I was avoiding my sister’s calls, her safety was—and always would be—my number one priority. Always.
"Good. Get some rest and meet me at Copper Wolf in the morning. I've told Alexi to come in for a meeting." Just the thought of that meeting was making me tired. In reality, though, I was going to need a meeting with my entire freaking gang. First an undercover FBI agent and then a traitor guarding Lucas? I didn't believe for a second there weren't any other moles.
Zed scoffed a laugh. "Rest. Sure. Call your sister and stop her blowing up my phone. It's past her bedtime."
I rolled my eyes and ended the call. He was right, though; I couldn't avoid Seph forever.
"Everything alright?" Cass asked when I drummed my fingertips on the table a couple of times, thinking.
I arched a brow. "Of course."
"I wish you'd let me help." He scowled.
With a bitter laugh, I ruffled my fingers through my hair, then took a long sip of my coffee to collect my scattered thoughts. "Somehow, Saint, I doubt you can help me explain to Persephone that I've been fucking her high school crush for the last two weeks without telling her. And that because of me, he was abducted, tortured, and almost killed. Oh, also that my ex-fiancé—who she doesn't know played a heavy hand in her near-sale to a Saudi pedophile—is back from the dead and gunning for me." I bit my tongue to stem the flow of words that suddenly wanted to pour out of me, then took a deep breath. "If you can help with that, by all means, I'll happily listen to suggestions."
His only response was to stare at me intently. Sometimes I seriously wished I could crack his skull open and see what in the hell was going on inside there during moments like this.
Then other times, like when he’d declared that I needed to come to the hospital, his words hit far too close to the truth and I'd rather he kept them inside.
My phone buzzed again, this time with an unknown number, and I answered cautiously. To my relief, it was the hospital calling to let us know that Lucas had been transferred to a private room and we could visit if we wanted.
I quickly downed the rest of my coffee, and Cass tossed some money on the table before following me out of the diner.
"This is stupid," I muttered to myself as we crossed the street back to the hospital. "He's not going to want to see me right now."
Cass gave me a slightly pitying look, shaking his head. "You always lie to yourself like that, Red? Or is this a new thing?"
I flipped him off and stalked ahead of him, making my way straight over to the nurses’ station to get directions to Lucas's room. Clearly Cass wasn't going to let up until I actually saw Lucas, and... yeah, if I was honest, I also wanted to see he was okay with my own eyes. It didn't change the fact that I was probably the last person on the earth he would want to see right now.
"The doctor asked me to give you this," the nurse told me, holding out a plastic bag containing a folded-up, green butterfly knife.
My stomach flipped, and I needed to swallow heavily before I could take it from her.
Cass grimaced when he saw it in my hand , too. "That's one of Phillip D'Ath's blades," he correctly observed.
I gave a jerking nod. "Yep."
"Let me guess," he rumbled, walking with me over to the elevators. "This one belonged to Chase Lockhart?"
"Close, but no," I replied reluctantly as we stepped into the elevator and Cass stabbed the button for the seventh floor. "This one was Zed's."
4
Lucas wasn't awake when we reached his room. Cass still nudged me inside, though, then waited in the hallway to give me... I don't know what. Privacy? To talk to an unconscious guy I barely knew but had almost gotten killed?
Awkward didn't even begin to touch on how I felt standing there looking down at Lucas's bruised face, still and calm in sleep.
"Nope," I muttered to myself. "This is weird." It wasn’t like he was my boyfriend; he was just a guy I was fucking. Right? Right. He was just an addictively good lay who had gotten caught in the crosshairs of a burgeoning gang war.
"Hayden." His hoarse voice stopped me dead in my tracks as I tried to sneak back out of the private hospital room again. Despite how I'd just mentally labeled him as nothing more than a good lay, the sound of his voice hit me like a thousand volts of electricity. "You're here."
With a cringe, I turned back around to face him, guilt flooding through me harder than any drug I'd tried. Nothing could have prepared me for the look on his face, though.
"Yeah," I replied, backing up a step, getting closer to the door and my escape. "I just wanted to make sure you were... you know... alive."
The pure, unfiltered look of relief and joy on his face only got more intense as he smiled. Wow. Just wow. It should have been illegal for a guy to have that good a smile while beaten and bruised in a hospital bed after a near-death encounter. Straight up illegal.
Not a flicker of hurt or accusation showed on his gorgeous face, and that only made me feel all the more guilty for my part in his torture. He didn't blame me, and he should. He should be goddamn terrified. He should be running as far and as fast as he possibly could. But no... No, all I saw when I met Lucas's sea green eyes was something scarily close to love. Which, obviously, was insane.
No one fell in love at first sight. That shit was reserved for fiction and fiction only.
He stretched out a weak hand to me, his fingers limp but the gesture clear that he wanted me to come closer. The last thing I wanted to do was get any closer to Lucas than I already was. Physically and emotionally. Yet my traitor feet moved me across the room without my permission, and I stifled a small gasp when our fingers met.
Fuck. Fuckity fuck shit, I was doomed.
With a groan of despair, I sank into the chair at his bedside and dropped my forehead to the mattress. "Lucas, I'm so sorry," I mumbled into the sheets.
"For what?" he asked, his voice rough like he'd been screaming all night. Hell, he probably had. That brand on his chest would have been straight up blinding agony. His fingers trailed through my hair, gently offering me comfort, like I deserved it in the least. "You're not the one who did this. It was that deranged fucking eye-patch dude."
My shoulders stiffened, and I lifted my head to look at him. "What?"
He blinked sleepily at me, that soft smile still on his lips. "Fuck you're beautiful," he mumbled. "I thought for a second I had died when you appeared in that room. You looked just like an avenging angel."
His words were slightly slurred, and there was a glassiness to his gaze that betrayed how heavily drugged he was for the pain. Shit. He probably had no idea what he was even saying. Still, I was desperate to know what he might have seen or heard.
"Lucas," I whispered, linking my fingers through his and squeezing gently. "What eye-patch dude? Did he tell you his name?"
His smile slipped a little, a small frown touching his brows. "No. No, he was..." He gave a small headshake, then blinked a couple of times like he was trying to fight the urge to sleep. Shit, I should just leave him alone. I was already pretty confident I knew what he would tell me, anyway.
Just as I was about to make my exit, his fingers tightened on mine. "He kept calling you his. He kept talking about his darling."
Bile rose in my throat, and I shoved it back down with Herculean effort. "Chase," I whispered, my voic
"He was pretty messed up," Lucas told me, his voice still a sleepy mumble. "Did you do that to him, angel? Did you take his eye and scar him up like that? I hope so."
That made me bark a short laugh. His lids dropped closed, but another smile touched his lush lips.
"I'm so happy you're here," he whispered. His fingers tightened on mine again, and even when his breathing had evened out into sleep, it took me a long time to force myself to pull away.
When I finally did, I sat back in the chair and just stared at him for the longest time. He was so... innocent. It should have been a major turn off for me. It should have creeped me out and made me run a mile in the opposite direction. Everything about him screamed nice guy, and that was firmly not my type.
And yet... here I was, watching over him as he slept in a hospital bed wrapped in bandages and covered in the marks of my ex's fists. Here I was, dreading the thought of ever pushing him away, even if it was to keep him safe.
I couldn't even put a finger on when it'd happened, whether it’d been the night we met, or just now, but he'd firmly surpassed the just a good lay category. He'd become a weakness... because goddamn it all to hell, I cared about him.
The soft click of the door opening behind me interrupted my train of thought, and I tilted my head up to see Zed there. Then glared at him.
"I thought I told you to rest," I whispered.
He just gave a casual shrug and nodded to Lucas's sleeping form. "Had to check on my little brother. How's he doing?"
I grimaced, then pushed up out of the chair. We could speak outside the room so we didn't wake Lucas up, seeing as he'd just come out of surgery. The best thing for him now—aside from painkillers—was sleep.
Zed closed the door behind us again when we stepped out, and Cass looked up from where he waited, leaning on the wall opposite. The tilt to his head was questioning, and I indicated he should follow us down to the end of the hall.
"He's pretty foggy and shit," I told them, crossing my arms under my breasts. I still wore Cass's jacket, which was so big on me it probably looked ridiculous, But it was also comfy as all hell, so I hadn't offered to give it back.
Zed noticed it, too, giving the Reaper patch on the left shoulder a hard look before frowning at me with irritation painted across his face.
"To be expected," Cass said, responding to my statement and ignoring the way Zed was glaring at me. Or I thought he was ignoring it until he shifted his position to lean on the wall a whole hell of a lot closer to me than he'd been a moment ago. "General anesthesia takes a bit to recover from."
I gave a sigh, rubbing at my temples where I could feel a blinding tension headache building. "Yeah, well he was lucid enough to mention he'd been hurt by a scarred man with an eye patch." I winced just at the thought of Chase surviving the bullet I'd put in his face. "Oh, and the nurse gave me this." I pulled the bagged knife from my pocket and handed it to my second.
Zed just grimaced and pocketed the bagged blade without even looking at it. He already knew what it was; he'd had to stare at it sticking out of Lucas's chest the whole way to the hospital.
"So he's alive," he murmured, resigned.
"It would seem so," I agreed.
Zed just nodded, silent. Cass said nothing, but watched me with an intensity that made a shiver run down my spine.
"We need to send someone to check on Lucas's mother," I finally said, breaking the tense moment between us all. "She uses a wheelchair, and he's her primary caregiver."
Zed jerked a nod. "On it. You want someone posted to keep watch or...?"
I thought on it for a moment, then shook my head. "No, see about getting her moved to a care facility, even just temporarily while Lucas heals. Then have Dallas run a health check on the security at the facility in case Chase decides to target her there."
"Yes, sir." Zed was all business as he pulled out his phone and got to work.
"What can I do?" Cass asked, seeming to move closer still. Or maybe that was just my imagination now that I'd met his dark gaze.
A handful of completely inappropriate ideas flitted across my mind, but I kept them to myself. Not the time or the place. So I just smoothed out my face and pushed aside my baser instincts to focus on business.
"Nothing," I told him firmly. "We've got this from here. You have a gang to run. How's that search for a second-in-command going, anyway? It's been over a year."
Cass's glower was pure death, because he knew damn well what I was doing. I was reestablishing the political lines that had become so very muddied in the last day and a half. He had his place, just like I had mine. It was about damn time we stepped back into them.
"I'm taking my time," he answered after a few beats. "No one has impressed me enough so far, and I'd hate to accidentally appoint a turncoat now—especially given how many people seem to be secretly working for the resurrected Chase Lockhart."
I shrugged like it didn't make an ounce of difference to me if he had a second or not. "Your funeral, Cassiel. Not having a second makes you an easy target. Make smart choices."
His lips curved in that sly, sexy smirk, and he huffed a short laugh at his own advice on my lips. "Cute. This isn't over, Red."
I tilted my head to the side, playing dumb. "What isn't?"
His eyes narrowed. "This. Us. I know you've got bigger things on your mind right now, but I'm not taking no for an answer."
The audacity of some men was astounding. After all the chances I'd given him... I shrugged. "Well, you know what to do, then."
He gave a brief frown of confusion, then quickly realized what I meant. "I thought you were joking about writing you that letter."
I had been. But he didn't need to know that. "And I thought you weren't interested." I started along the corridor toward Zed, who was on the phone sorting out my requests. He gave me another hard look, and I understood his silent reminder. Pausing, I slid Cass's jacket off and tossed it back to him.
"See you around, Saint."
5
It was harder than I’d expected to force myself away from Lucas's hospital room. But sitting in his room watching him sleep simply wasn't an effective use of my time. There were plenty of other things I could be doing, plenty of things I should be doing. So I left.
"I've got Boris and Rixby here watching the hospital," Zed informed me as we exited the building. "One of them will head up to Lucas's room now and keep physical eyes on him until further notice. The hospital staff will send through any and all updates from his doctors when they check on him in the morning too."
I drew a deep breath, feeling the ache of stress in every damn muscle of my body. "Good. Good thinking. Thanks, Zed." I yawned heavily, then scraped my hair up into a high ponytail to try and stop messing it up. Running my fingers through it was a stress fidget and tended to result in me looking like a lion.
He unlocked his Ferrari with the key fob, then held the passenger door open for me to get in. I didn't argue at the chivalrous gesture; I was pretty used to it from him by now. Instead, I just sank into my seat and cranked the heater up while he circled around to the driver’s side.
"Did you call Seph back?" he asked as he drove us away from the hospital and in the direction of our neighborhood.
I wrinkled my nose. "No. She should be asleep, anyway."
He just gave me a sidelong glare, calling me on my bullshit without even needing to say a word. Yeah, whatever.
"Why aren't you telling her about Lucas anyway?" he asked, his eyes back on the road but his attention fully on me. "She knows something has happened."
Ah crap. Zed was going to be totally insufferable when I told him Lucas was in high school with Seph... and that she had a huge crush on him.
I wasn't in the mood to deal with that, so I just shrugged and avoided looking at him while I lied. "No reason. I'll talk to her in the morning."
Zed slammed his foot down on the brakes hard enough to make me jerk against my seatbelt, then moan in pain at all my bruises.
"Shit," he muttered, cringing. "Sorry. But did you just fucking lie to me?"
Wincing, I rubbed my chest where the belt had just assaulted me. "What? No."
Zed gave a dramatic gasp. "You did it again!"
Rolling my eyes, I huffed. "Like you're one to talk right now, Zayden. Can we please just go? I want to get home and sleep for about six years."
His frown dipped low, but he did as I asked and accelerated once more. Except he wasn't heading in the direction of my apartment anymore.
"Zed..." I said his name in a low, suspicious growl.
"I'm not taking you back to an apartment that Chase has already proven isn't secure. You can stay at my place until this shit gets sorted." His tone was firm and unyielding, and I was too tired to argue. So I just shrugged and settled in for the ride. Seph was safe with Madison Kate, Lucas was safe in the hospital, and hopefully Demi was on a plane to Italy with her wife by now. Everyone I cared about was safe.
Or as safe as they possibly could be in our world.
Besides, Zed had a point. My apartment was no longer secure, while he lived in a veritable fortress. His house was on acreage outside Shadow Grove and had been built to mimic a Scottish castle, but in a modern, architect's-wet-dream kind of way.
About half an hour of silence passed until we reached his front gate, within which time I had fallen asleep and jerked awake about a dozen times. I hated sleeping in cars.
Zed had a similar biometric access panel at his gate to allow access, and I yawned heavily as we waited for the decorative wrought iron gates to open.
"Take my room," he told me as we headed into the house. He didn't have any staff because of trust issues, but his lights were motion activated so the house lit itself up before we got inside. "I haven't made up any of the guest rooms, and you look way too tired to wait for me to find sheets."
I should have declined, but fuck it. What were best friends for if you couldn't occasionally claim their nice, cozy bed? So I just nodded, yawned, and started up the grand staircase without waiting for him.
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