“I know,” she says, grinning. “Don’t be mad at him.”
“I’m not.” She dries my tears. “I could never be mad at you or him. Neither one of you would ever sell me out.”
She mulls over my sentiment as she blinks. “Would Iris?”
“No.”
Her head bobs as she tries to accept my answer. “Are you sure?”
“I’m positive.”
Leaning in close, mere inches from my face, she says, “Then you go after her when all this is over, and you do what you need to do. You don’t let anyone stop you. Not your father. Not the boys. You chase her love, and you don’t stop. Don’t ever stop.”
“Who is the great love of your life?”
“I never found a man I could love more than my son. And now, his best friend, who might as well be my son,” she pauses, stroking my curls. “But we’ve done things, so that’s not exactly right.”
“I have no regrets, G,” I whisper, using the initial of her full name.
“Neither do I, L.” Planting a kiss on my forehead, she repeats, “Neither do I.”
21
Adversity & Agony
July 11
Waking up in ICU, I peer at my hands in a drunken state. My left is tightly bound with tubes; the right looks like I had a war with a nail gun, and it won. The spikes cause my trembling and shaking in fear.
“Laaaa!” I yell, frightened by my failure. The tube in my mouth is shocking like I went in for a simple surgery, and something went wrong.
“She’ll be right here,” Marla says, writing down vitals. I’m moaning in agony. “Shhh! She’s coming sweet.”
My eyes open wide as I try and lift my arm. “Wh—??”
“I’ll tell you,” Dr. Lani says. “But I need you to calm down. Your blood pressure is a little high for my liking. Can you do that for me, please?”
I blink as Trudy walks up.
“We were in surgery for over six hours. Your infection in the left wasn’t as bad as we first anticipated, but I went ahead and put the irrigation and discharge tubes in for forty-eight hours. If everything stays the same, they’ll come out then.”
“What about the right?” Trudy anxiously asks.
“You’re right hand didn’t fare as well. You have severe ligament damage, bone displacement, and Boxer’s breaks on three out of the four fingers. I have your hand put back together with metal—that’s it. It’s trashed, Sal. It looks like your right hand has had previous multiple traumas with gross amounts of scar tissue and by that, I mean it’s been broken—crushed—several times and not treated. I didn’t reset the middle finger yet, but I highly recommend it.”
I shake my head, scared of an epic failure. Thing is this wasn’t even my fault. I didn’t ask to get jumped by Handcock, but I concede I have been negligent in maintaining the care of my hands. “Nooo…”
“I know you didn’t want the cage, but we went in, and it was bad. I know you are in prison. I can remove the rods and cage, leave the pins, and we see what happens, but you should know the whole hand is extraordinarily delicate at this time. If you do not behave, there is a risk it will collapse without the rods and cage. And what I’m telling you goes completely against medical advice. This risky, insane plan is customized for your dangerous self.”
“That’s why we keep you on staff,” Jack says, studying the post-surgical films. I see the bones and pins, and it sickens my stomach to think I’ve got some robotic hand. “Because you think outside of the box to the team’s needs.”
“If you take the rods out and set it with the pins in…”
“His hand may make it a year with normal use if he’s lucky. But we’ll have to go back in and do surgery and keep the cage on when he’s done with the case. It is one of the worst hand injuries I’ve ever witnessed. Almost all of the bones in his right hand have been broken or are broke now.”
My left, too.
“That is why we kept you tubed. I needed to know what you wanted to do. It’s one of the most severe injuries I’ve seen. This isn’t your ankle. That was an easy two screws.”
Trudy touches my toes. “What do you want to do, sweetheart?”
“Stay in the cage and abort the mission?” Lani asks with her best bedside. “Or do another surgery when you are finished?”
“Th—pe.”
“He’s asking about therapy,” Trudy translates.
Lani rolls her eyes back to me. “You can try after the cast comes off, but if you move them wrong at all, it could be awful.”
Trudy adds, “The pins could pop out.”
“More or less,” Lani concedes.
With a snarl, Trudy interjects, “She means if you knock the fuck out of someone with the right, you may end up stabbing his eyeball with a pin.”
Lani sighs. “Cage. Yes or no?”
I shake my head no as Trudy gives me a nod of approval. She comes closer as Lani commands, “We’re going back to surgery in less than five, people.”
I grunt loudly and tap my finger on my left hand. “He wants a tablet,” Marla says, and I try to smile.
Pecking slow, I show them. “No cage. On second surgery, reinforce the bitch.”
“You want permanent pins?”
I nod.
“… Can you do that?”
“We can…” Lani reluctantly says.
Understanding what I am thinking, Jack grins. “Knowing you the way I do and how well you respond to therapy, you’re going to end up with that hand being a lethal weapon.”
It already is because I am.
My eyes light up as I type out, “It’s fucked either way. We should reinforce it. Not Lani’s fault the patient is a steadfast bastard.”
I slightly tilt my head as Jack erupts in laughter. “I love you, Kid.”
I know you do.
I just wish I had complete trust in you.
Trudy leans down, planting a kiss on my head, and whispering, “I’m proud of you, killer. Don’t forget how tough you are. You got this. I love you, Nero.”
The second awakening is far less traumatic, but I’m freezing my ass off. I’m in my private room. Both hands are packed in ice.
“Hey, sport,” Trudy says, looking like she hasn’t slept in forty-eight hours. “Want some ice?”
I open my mouth for the spoon. My throat is killing me. “They gave me drugs.”
“Hell yes, they gave you drugs,” she stresses, wiping my head and cheeks. “You have a pump through tomorrow.”
“Are…the tubes…out?”
“Not yet,” she informs. “You spiked a bit of a fever a few hours ago. Lani wanted to wait and make sure it wasn’t something bad. You gotta stop scaring us with the BP and temp skyrockets, babe.”
“Sorry.”
“You don’t have to tell me, but you need to talk to someone about how that hand got that bad to begin with.”
“Who does a guy got to fuck to get into the Raniero room?” Dom jokes, walking in. “They have six cops out there in the hall. I had to pull my card out to prove who the fuck I am.”
Trudy smiles, but she isn’t happy. “I’m going to go get some coffee. Give you boys a few minutes alone.”
She kisses my cheek and does the same to Dom.
“I heard about the super-brawler hand you are building.”
I laugh. “Makes sense considering what I do.”
“Even if you never hit another person, I think the reinforcement rods are a good idea. It’s going to take a lot of work.”
“I’ll be okay,” I say, reaching for the cup of ice. “I’m tough.”
Dom doesn’t help me, and I don’t expect him to. With his below the knee prosthetic legs, he proves every single day what is possible and I got to say, I admire him for it.
I want to believe he won’t turn on me, and we are good, tight, and solid. I suppose if I reverse the situation, he could very well have the same concerns about my legitimacy. Heaven knows it would be easy to use the resources of The Unholy to garner the connecti
ons, take over our fathers’ businesses, and run them as our own.
Hell, it’s even possible—though far less likely—that Nicky could do it, too. Or Jas. And Deacon…Baby Saint would never fuck me over.
“I need to ask you a question, and you may not have the answer,” Dom says, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Why is Iris in San Francisco, Sal?”
Immediately, I’m concerned as to how he knows. Nico and Jas are the only two with access to my Sibyl account. “I was wondering the same thing.”
“I called to talk to her about your condition.”
“And?”
“If you abort, she is coming home,” he informs. I close my eyes, wanting to draw my hands into fists, but instead, I clench my jaw, grinding. “I think I’ve managed to convince her that would be a bad idea—for her safety and yours.” His hazel eyes focus on my hands packed in the ice. “What happened?”
“I got jumped by a guy named Handcock.”
“Timothy Handcock?”
His words grab hold of my attention. “You know him?”
“Yeah, he’s bad fucking news. Used to run drugs for Saint, the elder, until he ended up stealing a quarter of a mil. Saint swore if he ever saw him again, he’d cut his balls off and shove them up his ass. He’s from the swamp.”
“… Do I need to ask?”
“I didn’t say Bayou.” He smirks, pointing a finger at me. “I said swamp as in his entire family revolved around the swamp. And that’d be okay, but his Daddy had a thing for making little girls disappear. Until one day, he got so desperate for a hit that he took his seven-year-old daughter out into the swamp and tore her up bad. Mama found out and took the rifle after his brain. Timothy tried to stop his mom, following her out into the quagmire and watching the whole thing. Mama was so upset about seeing her daughter like that, she went home and put the barrel of a pistol in her mouth. Cops had two bodies, a cleaned-up little girl, and only one story from Timothy Handcock.”
“Holy fuck… what happened to the girl?”
“… Megan?”
“How do you know her name?” I ask, bewildered.
“Her name is Megan Folly now because she was adopted, and Megan Handcock would’ve been a terrible name. I know all this because I got called in on the case years ago. They found her living alone in the swamp.”
I’m shocked. “How long had she been there?”
Silence fills the hospital room as he remorsefully admits, “We found her twenty-seven months after the murders. We have no idea how she did it.”
“You saved her…” I admire, knowing how this job eats away at our souls whether we win or lose. Dom needs to hear it. He needs to know I understand.
“I did,” he says, acknowledging the praise. “She ended up in with a wonderful family in Lafayette, and last I saw of Megan Folly, she had taken an assignment as a House Slave at Gage Boudreaux’s place.” My eyes gawk wide as he swipes open his phone. “This was when we found her. It’s the original picture from the case file. Her hair was a matted mess, and she was the filthiest kid I’ve ever seen.”
“Sometimes, I just don’t understand how they fall through the cracks.”
“Well, her brother left, and the police didn’t find out about her until they went to serve a murder warrant. When her parents died, Timothy was old enough and the only available family to take custody. The cops believed his story that Mama thought someone was trying to rob the house, and she accidentally shot him. His story was she realized the mistake she made and went inside to blow her brains out. They never had a reason to check Megan, and it wasn’t like she could speak.”
I furrow my brows and question, “Was she mute?”
“For a long time,” he confides as we bond over the case. It feels good. “I think she said her first words at fourteen, but her adoptive family spent a lot of time and money getting her the help she needed,” he adds, flipping to the next picture. “And this is Megan Folly about two years ago.”
“Holy hell…” I gawk, starring at her gorgeous mocha hair, pale skin, and arctic blue eyes. She looks nothing like the girl from the swamp. “Unbelievable.”
“Yeah, she’s stunning.”
The picture with Dom, Megan, and Delilah takes my breath away. “You sent her to Delilah?”
“I did,” he says, smirking from the corner of his mouth. “She was eighteen and knew I was involved in the fetish community and asked for my recommendation. I sent her to Delilah, gave her a few lessons, and Boudreaux bought her outright. “If I ever regret losing one…” He lifts his phone and shakes it several times. “This one.”
The conversation may have started concerning Timothy Handcock, but what ended up occurring was Megan Folly re-taught me the value of hope. I’ve been quick to dismiss it as of late.
If ever a name was inaccurate, it was the girl buried at The White Rose Cemetery. Despite teaching me many things, Kaci Hope didn’t reinvigorate my life with an energetic zest to thrive in adversity; she taught me how to survive in agony.
And those two words – thrive and survive – kept entirely different meanings.
22
22 Silks
Early in the morning on the fifteenth, I’m feeling restless from the drugs. The tubes are out of my hand, but they’re both still on ice for twenty-minute increments every four hours. The Sibyl surgical team left after having dinner with me, and Trudy finally checked into a hotel to shower and get some rest.
Cameron and Martinez are alternating shifts with their teams, guarding outside my door. From what I hear, it’s tough to get clearance even to send me a note, much less see me. I do have a phone, but it’s not my own. Trudy brought me some gray sweatpants, a vegetarian pizza, and a burner phone while the Red Sox game was on. She even managed to find me a ball cap I’ve had on the last two days.
Warden Jolly—Kit has called every day to check on me. It’s a nice touch that I’m sure few prisoners ever receive. The inmate in the infirmary passed away. Naby is running the laundry, and Ronnie is keeping a close eye on him. Kit even mentioned Mock expressing concern as he was running the vacuum through the offices.
Right now, I’d kill to talk to someone because I miss everyone.
Iris. Deacon. Amber. Jaid.
Unfortunately, they’re all inaccessible.
I have Emily’s digits committed to memory, but I’m not to a place of forgiving myself yet. I don’t think I did anything that bad, but it certainly wasn’t my best judgement. She was a one-night stand and a weekend of fun.
But we’re not just on different pages in the same book; we’re in different books. I’m in Italian, and she is some translated jargon of my past. If I call Emily, I have to deal with the memories of broken bones and blue bruises, and I’m damn sure not ready for that.
Hell to the no.
I stare at the phone. It’s 1:07 AM. “Fuck it!”
Punching in the numbers, I call someone familiar in rescuing my ass from the abyss. I lean back and listen to the ring. “Pick up…”
“I did,” she mumbles with a giggle. “The second I heard the ring.”
“… Where are you?”
“I’m doing a shibari shoot in the British West Indies with the Kasai brothers, why? Where are you? Aren’t you locked up?”
“I’m in the hospital, and I need you.”
“I’ll get on the first flight in the morning, Sal.”
I laugh under my breath. “I wasn’t asking you to leave now.”
“It’s already done; I just bought the ticket to Houston.”
“I’m in Lubbock.”
I hear her clicking keys in the background. “Connecting flight is booked. Should I get a car?”
“Ya, I won’t be driving anything soon.”
“What did you do?”
Tears flood my eyes as I haven’t been able to say it. “I shattered practically every bone in my hand, Allison.”
She gasps loud enough for me to hear. Her voice trembles as she says, “I’m coming.”
�
��How long have you been sitting there?” I mutter, staring at Allie. Her blue eyes make a slow pass over my face as her rose lips spark into a smile.
Allison Ruth Randall. Thirty-five. Born in Cornwall. Shibari submissive. And remarkable hand therapist. Little discussed.
And there is a reason for that.
“Long enough to read the chart and study the x-rays.”
“Can you fix me?”
Her expression lightens as her lips part, and she thinks of what to say. “I can. Well, I can try. I need to know all of the damage.”
Tossing my head back on the pillow, I roll my eyes as she gets up and goes to talk to Martinez standing outside the door. She closes and locks it. “Talk away. What you say is patient confidentiality.”
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” I mention as she pulls her hair back and washes her hands. She takes her time in life like a graceful swan on a lake, dipping, and twirling.
Allie never rushes.
“Lift from your shoulders, straight up,” she says at the end of the bed. “Any pain in the shoulders? Elbows?”
I study her sizing me up. I love watching women in their element; it’s an amazing turn on. “Nah.”
“I need full disclosure,” she prods, grabbing my toes through the blanket.
“I know, but there isn’t.”
“Okay, because sometimes we compensate. Weak shoulder leads to too much pressure on the hands, the same thing with hips and feet. It’s all connected.”
Smirking, I snicker, “I’m not compensating for anything.”
Her eyes open wide as her lips line together, and she cracks a smile. “You’re such a flirt.” She moves to the tray table and pulls back the blanket before unwrapping my bandage. “If I hurt you, let me know. How is the left?”
“Sore, mostly,” I reply as she catches my gaze.
“How did it get infected other than you were incarcerated?”
I stick out my bottom lip, and after a few seconds, I confess, “I…um…picked at it…”
Famous Last Words (a Tomb of Ashen Tears Book 2) Page 18
