This was some in-between area that must have been built since I left the area. The houses were big, but all carbon copies of one another, three of them on the other side of the street still in various stages of construction. There weren't lights on in the other ones on this side of the street either, making me wonder if anyone was around, if anyone would help me if I got free, if anyone would hear me if I screamed.
But then I was pulled inside, the door slamming, a body moving in front of it, blocking any chance at freedom.
"Those fucking bastards," a voice raged as I was dragged through the house toward the back where we moved into a stark all-white kitchen that belonged in a design magazine.
You know, minus the blood drips across the floor, the bloody paper towels sitting on the lovely marble island.
"The fuck is this?" another voice asked, deeper, more commanding than the others.
"Doctor," the guy pulling me explained. "Can't bring 'em to the hospital. Gotta try something."
"For fuck's sake," the man said as his footsteps came closer, coming around my kidnapper, moving to stand in front of me.
He was a good-looking man.
I hated to think that of someone who was an accomplice to my kidnapping—and who knew what else—but there was no denying it, either. Tall, fit, wearing black jeans and a black button-up that made his tan skin pop. His face was all sharp angles. The inky black hair on his head matched the stubble on his jaw and the dark lashes framing his brown eyes.
"Alright, listen here, lil'mama," he said, sighing. "You do the right thing here tonight, and I am going to let you go. So keep your mouth shut, get that plug out of my man, and we're all good here, yeah?"
Mouth still covered, all I could do was nod frantically.
The leader gave a nod to the man behind me, making him drop me onto my own two feet, his hand falling from my mouth.
"So, you're a doctor," the leader said.
"I'm a vet," I clarified, voice quivering.
To that, he snorted. "Eh, we're all animals. Over there," he told me, jerking his chin back behind my shoulder.
Turning, I found a man laid up on the kitchen table, blood darkening his t-shirt over the lower part of his stomach near his hip.
Maybe I shouldn't have wanted to help. Maybe I should have been searching for exits, for weapons to defend myself with.
But I wasn't programmed like that.
If something or someone was hurting, and I could help, I had to help.
There wasn't even a hesitation as I rushed across the room, grabbing the man's shirt, and yanking it upward to look at his wound.
"He's bleeding a lot, yeah?" the man standing near him asked, voice tight.
"I, ah, I think it's a normal amount," I said, shrugging as I dug through the kit they'd provided, finding a set of tweezers and a bottle of alcohol, doing a crummy job of sterilizing them, then leaning over the wound, feeling my head start to get fuzzy.
It was like I'd told Niro.
Animals, I could handle.
People, well, let's just say I had to fight through it. Because I didn't think they'd take kindly to me fainting on them.
"I, ah, I can't see," I told them, swallowing back the bile rising in my throat.
"You heard lil' mama, get some fucking flashlights or some shit," the leader said, leaning back against the island, crossing his arms over his chest, almost alarmingly calm about all of this.
Meanwhile, my hands were shaking almost violently and when the guys around me turned their phones' flashlights on, it made it even clearer how badly I was handling this.
But my life very likely hung in the balance, so I took a steadying breath, thanking whatever higher power there might be for the man's unconsciousness, and dug the tweezers into the wound.
I swear I felt the pain of it myself even as the unconscious man jolted violently as I twisted the tweezers, digging, then finally finding the bullet. Saying another prayer that it wasn't doing more good than harm right where it was, I pulled it out, dropping the tweezers on the table, watching in a bit of horror as the bullet slid off the jaw of the tweezers and slowly—hindered by the blood—off the table then onto the floor.
"Yo, lady," one of the men with the phone flashlights called, snapping me out of my own mind.
"Right. Um. I need something to apply pressure with," I said, looking up at them, watching as one went to grab one of the kitchen dish towels. "Thanks," I mumbled, balling it up, then pressing it hard against the wound.
"You gonna stitch it up or what?" another of the men asked.
"You got a fucking medical degree now?" another shot back at him.
"What? You think it's in her best interest to save one of us?" the first one said back.
"Enough," the leader snapped, voice like a whip in the open space, making me jolt. "Can't stitch it when you can't see through the blood, idiota." There was a pause, then a snap, making my head lift, finding another of the leader's men move in at his side, both talking in hushed whispers, but the leader's eyes were on me, penetrating. I felt almost naked under his inspection.
"Can you put your hand here?" I asked the man at my side, motioning to the wound. "I, ah, I need to check his pulse," I said, hoping it was okay, that he would pull through this. Because I was pretty sure I wouldn't if he didn't.
"What's the verdict, lil' mama?" the leader asked, moving closer.
"Um, I need to stitch it. But his pulse is okay, considering. He's lost a lot of blood. But I think... I think he will be alright. I mean, some antibiotics would be good. None of this was sterile," I added, waving at the table and the items gathered.
"We can figure that out," he said, nodding his head at one of the men. "This sewing kit good enough?" he asked, waving toward it.
Honestly? It sucked.
But it was all we had.
"I will make it work," I told him, nodding.
"You better," he said, the words light, but there was no denying the threat in them.
"Ah, I might need someone to hold him down for this," I told them a few minutes later when the bleeding started to slow. Hands grabbed at shoulders and legs as I threaded the needle.
Then, taking a steadying breath, I cleaned the wound with the alcohol before leaning down and sinking the tip of the needle into his flesh.
The roar sent me flying backward, caught off-guard, as my patient gained consciousness, fighting against his friends as they struggled to hold him down.
"Get your ass back here and finish your job, mama," the leader demanded, voice calm, tone dry, completely unbothered by his man screaming in pain even as the sounds seemed to ricochet through my skull.
I had done stitches countless times in my life. But always on an unconscious patient.
My heart lodged firmly up into my throat as I moved forward again, grabbing my needle, and sticking it into his flesh once again.
By the time I was done, my ears were ringing, my whole body trembling, but the patient was unconscious again, and the sutures looked, well, ugly, but adequate.
"Sit, lil' mama," the leader said, kicking out a chair toward me.
I didn't even hesitate, just fell backward with every ounce of exhausted weight in me. I wasn't sure my legs would have held me for another minute.
"So, what's the prognosis?" he asked, looking down at his man's body.
"I don't know. I think he will be okay. With some antibiotics especially. The bullet, ah, it was lodged in the fat. So the damage wasn't too bad."
"What I'm hearing is it's a good thing this fucker loves his tamales?"
"I, ah, yeah, I guess," I agreed, feeling like my vocal cords were shaking along with the rest of me, making my words come out wobbly.
"Good. We'll get the antibiotics. You stay here and watch your patient like a good doctor, yeah?" he asked, turning and walking away, one of his men following, leaving me with three others who kept casting uncertain glances in my general direction.
I don't know how long I sat there.
B
ut as what felt like hours ticked on, the day started to catch up with me, making exhaustion work its way through every inch of my body until I was fighting to keep my heavy eyelids open.
I must have lost the battle at some point, because it was the leader's voice that startled me awake an unknown amount of time later, making me lurch up out of my chair before I was fully even conscious, let alone aware of my surroundings.
"Sit," he demanded, making my body comply without hesitation. "Good. Now, we need to have a conversation," he said, casting a glance down at his man. "After you've checked on your patient. We shoved some antibiotics down his throat an hour or so back."
"Good," I said, rising, every inch of me feeling weak and shaky as I reached out to press my fingers into his throat, finding his pulse stronger, steadier. "His pulse is good. His color too."
"So he'll live."
"I think so," I said, sitting back down because I didn't trust my legs to keep holding me.
"Alright so. We made a deal, you and I. You take care of my man, and you get to walk out of here."
"I, ah, yeah," I agreed, nodding, because he seemed to be waiting for me to answer.
"But you see my problem here, right? You've seen my face. All our faces. You know what the house looks like. You know we shot some people tonight."
"I won't say anything."
"Yeaaah," he said, drawing out the word as he reached to rub at the scruff on his face. "They all say that. Seems a lot of people get loose lips when they get a little space. Getting all brave. Talking to cops and shit."
"I won't. I promise. I won't tell anyone."
"I know you won't," he said, reaching out toward his seeming second-in-command, a tall, wide man who handed him a stack of what looked like pictures. "See, I got a handful of reasons you are going to keep that pretty mouth shut about ever seeing us, being here. Let's see. Ah, here. This your Mama?" he asked, turning a picture of my mom out to face me.
It was one of my favorites of her, the one I shared every Mother's Day. It was her in the backyard, cradling her cat Ford to her shoulder. It was the cat that had, in a way, brought my parents together all those years ago.
"Yes," I admitted, swallowing past the lump in my throat.
"And this," he said, producing another picture, one I had just shared online a few days ago, one of me and Hope who I'd needed to force into taking a selfie with me as we painted my bathroom. "She's a pretty thing," he decided, making my stomach twist. "And this..." he said, producing one picture, dropping it on my lap. Then another. And another. And another. "See, this is how we figured you out, lil' mama. My friend here recognized you from a fight a little bit back. Threw yourself between two fighters. Helped this fuck out of the ring. Niro, right? A biker."
"Please," I said, shaking my head.
"Please what?" he asked, brows raising, eyes looking innocent, but there was something evil in the way his lips twitched. "Don't snatch him like we snatched you? Don't bring him somewhere real quiet, and start hacking parts of him off while you watch? Don't do that?"
I couldn't manage words, just a horrified little whimpering noise. The visual was instantaneous and undeniable. Even when I squeezed my eyes shut, it was right there behind my lids, turning my stomach, making my heart hammer in my chest.
"No," I said, tears welling up and slipping out. "Don't do that," I begged. "Please."
"Well, that's up to you, isn't it?" he said, shrugging. "You walk out of here, you clean yourself up, you pretend you've never seen my face, never pulled a plug out of my man, never even walked down that street where the shooting started, and I won't have to. But if I so much as see a suspicious shadow behind me one day, lil' mama, I will find the dullest knife I can, and start hacking parts of lover boy off while you watch. It will take hours. Hell, maybe days if I'm careful enough. Choice is yours," he added, rising from his seat, leaving me to gather my pictures, holding them to my chest where my heart felt like it was attempting to jump ship, go find another body to animate.
"Let's go," his second-in-command said, waving a hand out.
With nothing else to do, I rose. I followed him through the house. I climbed into the trunk when he opened the top.
And then I walked into my apartment building with a numbness coursing through my whole body, tossing my bloody scrubs into the wash, walking naked to the bathroom, falling down on my knees in the shower, finally letting the tears and sobs escape.
It was sunrise by the time I climbed back out, going into my room to grab some new scrubs for the day.
Because I wasn't naive enough to think they'd just let me go.
They would be watching.
And if they were watching, I had to act like everything was fine. Normal. Status quo.
In my head, I could hear the voices of my loved ones. Telling me that I could trust them, that they could handle this for me, that I didn't have to carry this alone.
But anytime I looked at my phone like a lifeline to a dozen or so people who were more experienced in situations like this than me, all I could see was Niro strung up in a basement somewhere while someone cut off fingers, toes, pulled out teeth, peeled off skin.
While I sat there helpless.
No.
I couldn't risk that.
So I was just going to keep my damn mouth shut.
Like they'd told me to do.
Chapter Eleven
Niro
"Did you see this shit?" Fallon asked, coming out from his room, still pulling on his shirt. Most of us had decided to turn in sometime around two. When I'd headed off to bed, Fallon had still been raging.
"What shit?" Finn asked with a mouth half-full with Lucky Charms, sans the marshmallows because he had some weird aversion to them.
"The shooting last night," Fallon clarified, rolling his eyes.
"Some of us have been up for hours," Finn said, shrugging. "Yeah, we've seen that shit."
"What do we know about it?" Fallon asked, fully in boss-mode even though it wasn't technically his place yet, and the fact that he'd barely gotten any sleep.
I knew what he was asking for. Not the news report shit. The personal details that might impact us.
Description of perps.
Possible connections to crime families.
If any of the other organizations had gotten in contact, shared their concerns with us yet.
"It was out front of that pizza place owned by the Grassis," Seth supplied, dropping the name of the local mafia family.
"So it was mafia shit?"
"No," Seth said, shaking his head. "From what I'm seeing, it started over at the convenience store. Bodies aren't Italian."
"It seems like cartel shit," I supplied.
"Cartel? Since the fuck when do we have the cartel in town?" Fallon asked, pausing in his mission to go grab his usual cup of coffee. He pretended to drink that shit black, but he put more sugar in it than a grade schooler with a sweet tooth would.
That was a good question though. We'd kept an eye on criminal activity in the area, always wanting to know where possible new threats were coming from. Our town was ever-changing. Especially now that the second generation of each organization was rising to power, making new friends. And new enemies.
We thought we had a pretty good intel game.
Clearly, the ball had been dropped when we'd missed the Vultures moving in.
That was bad enough.
But the cartel deciding to stake a claim in this town? That could be a fucking nightmare. It could mean out and out war depending on what kind of shit they stirred up and what type of empire they planned to run. It could be ugly and long-lived, too, if they were connected to one of the bigger cartels somewhere in South America.
Let's face it, they probably were.
If we were going historically for our area of the world—the mafia handled imports and extortion, the bikers did enforcement and weapons, and the cartel did heroin or cocaine.
If that was the case, they likely wouldn't fuck with us, but y
ou never knew how a new criminal empire might impact the local dynamics, if the streets would become unsafe, if their personal wars would end up getting us all involved.
"Who were they shooting then, though?" Fallon wondered, coming back out of the kitchen, leaning on the door jamb. "There's no way two separate cartels moved in without someone seeing it. Us or Hailstorm at least. Not to mention the mafia, the loan sharks. There's no fucking way."
That was a fair point.
"I recognized one of the bodies they identified," Finn said, nodding toward the TV. "It was one of the idiots trying to revive Third Street," he explained.
Third Street was a gang the club had done away with a while back because they'd been the ones to kidnap Reign at Danny's—from the Vultures—command.
"Makes sense," Fallon decided. "They used to deal heroin around here. If the cartel wants to move in to do it, they'll take out anyone involved in it. Messy as fuck, doing it in the street like that."
"I'm more worried about the woman right now, though," Seth said.
"What woman?" I asked, only having gotten the CliffsNotes version from Finn when I rolled out of bed a little bit before.
"They took a woman," Seth said, shaking his head. "She and some other guy were out front of the pizza place. The witnesses say he was shot, and she was dragged away, screaming."
My gaze shot to Fallon who clearly hadn't gotten to that part of the news articles either. "Did they describe her? Did anyone check on our women?"
"It was vague. Blonde. Pretty," Seth said, rolling his eyes. "In scrubs, they said."
My heart surged into my throat as my stomach dropped. My hand was already going for my phone, scrolling for her number.
"Call her parents!" I barked at Fallon on my way out of the door. "Answer your phone, goddamnit," I hissed as it kept ringing and ringing.
Everything was a blur as I hopped on my bike, and took off in the direction of her new apartment.
I hadn't been there, of course. But I heard Reeve talking to Cyrus about it. I'd seen the pictures of the girls doing a housewarming and house decorating party. Which really seemed like it involved a lot of alcohol and take-out and very little actual decorating.
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