by Seth Eden
Third degree burns, the gifts that keep on fucking giving.
“I’m fine,” I lied. “If you’re not going to let me take you home, I’ll wait with you at the bus stop.”
“You really don’t have to—”
But I cut her off. “Yes, I do. Lead the way.”
For a minute, I thought she’d continue to argue with me, but finally, she relented, marching across the street to the covered bus stop. At least it’d protect her from the weather. She sat on the bench, and I sat next to her, noticing the relief that crossed her face as she took a load off.
“Must suck to stand on your feet all day,” I commented.
“I’m used to it.”
Right then, an old car drove by and I heard what sounded like a gunshot. Christ!
“Get down!” I shouted at her, shoving her off the bench. I reached for my Glock, only then remembering that I didn’t have it with me. I hadn’t thought scoping out and purchasing a bistro in the best part of town would require a weapon.
“What are you doing?” Kelly demanded, looking put out. “It was just a car backfiring.”
Backfiring?
I paused, my eyes picking the ancient Pinto out of a line of newer vehicles as it vanished around the corner. I examined the area around us, seeking out any potential threats, only to find that other than a handful of taxicabs parked down the street, we were alone. I blinked, realizing she was right.
I’d totally overreacted. Maybe my nerves were more frazzled than I’d thought.
Kelly stood behind me, hands on her hips, seeming both annoyed and indignant. Which impressed me, in all honesty. Beneath that meek veneer lay a spitfire made of sterner stuff than I would’ve imagined.
I took in her overall appearance, noting that she was bleeding from her left knee. She must’ve scraped it on the cement when I pushed her down. A minor wound but still my fault. It made me feel like shit for being the cause of it.
I also felt like shit for other reasons.
When I’d believed we were under attack, I’d been caught up in the moment, adrenaline pumping wildly into my system. But as my adrenaline rush passed, I had to acknowledge that my quick movements had done something detrimental. I’d felt a ripping sensation, and now the level of my discomfort had ratcheted up so much I had trouble concealing it.
I’d really done a number on myself this time. I was half afraid to look at it, even.
I felt a weight land on my burned shoulder, and I jerked away from it, snarling at Kelly when I realized the weight had come from her hand. “Don’t touch me.”
Breathing hard I sat, attempting to get a grip. But the damage had been done in every sense of the word. She took a step back, the hand she’d laid on my shoulder raised in the air palm out, every line of her face announcing what she thought of me.
And I knew my worst fears had come true.
Whether because of my bloodline, the icy brutality my father had inspired in me, or the physical scars I now wore, I really had turned into a monster.
5
Kelly
Intense Suit Guy—Marco—sat on the bench inside the bus stop, his entire body hunched up in pain. Every move he’d made in the last couple of minutes had made him wince, and on instinct, I’d reached out to him, hoping to help. But I hadn’t helped, not even a little.
I’d accidentally made things worse.
Something was wrong with this guy, like horribly wrong, so I made my way around the bench to kneel in front of him. His features were twisted and beaded with perspiration, and if I hadn’t just spent several hours around him, I’d probably believe him to be coming down from something. But I’d seen no indications of him being high earlier, so there had to be another explanation.
I sincerely considered calling an ambulance.
The bus chose that instant to pull up, and I huffed out in exasperation. I couldn’t leave a man this obviously unwell. I waved it away, keeping my attention on my boss.
At the noise of the bus’s engine revving up, he opened his eyes, goggling at me. “Why didn’t you get on? Wasn’t that your ride?”
“It was,” I told him, pursing my lips. Did he really think I’d be so callous as to abandon him while he was in this condition? He looked like death warmed over. “Listen, Marco, I know we don’t know each other, but I need you to tell me what’s wrong. Do you want me to call nine-one-one? Or I can call my brother. He’s a cop.”
Keeping his gaze averted, Marco didn’t respond. Was he in that bad a shape? Then, I comprehended for the first time that what I was doing might be remarkably foolish. I mean, this guy was a complete stranger.
The only things I legitimately knew about him were that he wore a suit, had lots of money, and now owned my bistro. Granted, he apparently wanted to make sure I made it home, too, which was a point in his favor, but still. How could I be expected to trust him?
The name Varasso banged around my brain again, and while it seemed vaguely familiar, I still couldn’t pinpoint where I knew it from.
“No. I’ll be all right,” he said. At least he was honest enough to admit to not being all right at the moment. He reached out to the load-bearing pole holding up the roof of the bus stop so he could get to his feet. When he started to shuffle down the sidewalk at the snail-pace of a little old man, I followed him.
“You sure about that?”
He scrubbed a hand down his face, seeming surprised to find it damp with sweat. “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen. I need to get home, but I need to know you’ve gotten safely home first. So I’m either going to drop you off, call you a cab, or you’re coming with me. Your choice.”
Wow. I wasn’t sure if I should be flattered by his conscientiousness or insulted by his lack of trust in me to take care of myself. Because of him I’d missed the last bus of the night, and I didn’t like paying more for a taxi unless I had no other choice. Cab fare from here to my parent’s place would cost me nearly thirty bucks one way, a huge waste of money in my eyes.
Then, there was him. He wouldn’t specify what might be wrong with him, so I was left with a bunch of guesses. It seemed more physical in nature. At first, I thought he might be sick, but now I didn’t know. One thing I felt fairly sure of was that he shouldn’t be driving. I decided I’d try one more time.
“If you’ll just tell me what’s wrong...”
“Christ!” he interrupted me. “It’s just pain. What are you? The nosiest person on the whole planet?”
I ignored everything but the pain part. I’d spent years dealing with difficult people and this didn’t feel all that different. “So you’re in pain. It hurts to move, I take it.”
“Yes.” He sounded miffed, but I could handle it.
“I can get you some over the counter pain pills. There’s a twenty-four-hour grocery store down the block.”
Then, he laughed. It was a gasp-ridden, ironic laugh, but definitely a laugh. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re obstinate as all hell?”
David called me that nearly every time we saw each other. I shrugged. “Occasionally.”
As his laughter died away, I scrutinized him, seeing how weary he looked. He was a big, tall, strong-looking guy, but right now, even five foot two me could take him. I should probably feel more frightened of him than I did, but his protectiveness of me had basically erased any trepidation I’d felt earlier.
“Kelly, I can tell that you’re attempting to be nice, but Tylenol and aspirin won’t do much for me.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have third degree burns.”
I stared at him. His face, neck and hands, the only parts of his skin visible, didn’t appear to be burned. “Where are they?”
He sighed. “On my back and shoulders.”
Lord. “Why are you out and about with third degree burns? Aren’t those really serious? Shouldn’t you go to a doctor?”
He released another ironic laugh. “I’ve been in and out of the hospital for nine months.”
“
And they’re still not healed?”
“They’ve improved some, but they’re not entirely healed, no.”
I touched his hand since I knew that part of him hadn’t been injured. “Marco, I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
For the majority of our discussion, he’d been glancing away, but now he looked into my face. Our gazes locked. Those dark eyes no longer seemed predatory. Instead, they seemed open and younger than they had. I felt like I was seeing him for the first time, the real him, and while there may be some rough edges to Marco Varasso, there was more to him than that.
A lot more.
He seemed fascinated by my concern for him and something else. Startled by it. As if he didn’t anticipate such a thing from me.
“You’re a kind person, Kelly Carr. And I’m sorry about your knee.”
So he’d noticed the scrape, good to know he wasn’t the type of guy to remain oblivious to his own actions. Still, I knew it’d been an accident. “I have my moments,” I said. He smiled, and while it brightened his features to a certain extent, it was also tinged by his discomfort. “Where’s your car?”
“Not far.”
I walked with him to his parking space beneath a streetlight. Along the way, I saw that what I’d taken as awkward movements were actually him trying to keep his back and shoulders stiff, as if he wanted to immobilize them. I didn’t know much about burns other than the sunburns I’d received as a child too foolish to wear sunblock, but I’d seen a few disturbing pictures.
Were Marco’s burns as bad as the images I’d glimpsed on the internet? I sincerely hoped not. What I remembered of those photos were… horrific.
His sedan was extremely nice, a luxury model I’d never been inside before. He sat behind the wheel but sitting didn’t seem to offer him much relief. “I know how to drive if you need me to take over,” I told him. He didn’t respond to this, instead, he handed me his phone. He’d activated a navigation app.
“Put in your address.”
I hesitated. Maybe it was silly at this point, if he’d wanted to harm me, he could’ve done it numerous times. “You’re not a serial killer, are you?”
“Nope. I only kill other bad guys, not sweet little servers from bistros I purchase.” I giggled at his joke. Good to know he had a sense of humor. “Besides, I have access to all the employee files. I could look you up the hard way, though I’d prefer not to go to all the trouble of that.”
Giving in, I plugged in the address to my parent’s apartment complex, and we were off.
6
Marco
For a while there, I thought I’d never get Kelly to let me give her a ride home. But being truthful with her had paid off. She seemed to trust me more than she had, and as I drove through the city, I felt grateful. I concentrated all my attention on following the route, doing my best to not think about anything else.
My doctors had told me that separating myself from my pain could help me when it got to be too much, and I was generally good at compartmentalizing my thoughts. Sometimes, it almost worked.
It was better than yelping like a terrified dog at any rate.
I drove northeast out of City Center and toward what used to be the working-class neighborhood of Fishtown, then east to an area I knew to be less than desirable. In fact, as I pulled into the complex Kelly had listed, I felt a sinking feeling around the region of my sternum.
This was one of the more impoverished areas of the city, a run-down section that had long ago begun to attract crime. I knew this because one of our main drug distributors, a contemporary of my father’s named Chai, brought a substantial amount of our product to complexes like this. Chai made lots of money from these places, and by extension, so did we.
Poor people tended to need an escape from their dreary and depressing lives, and we offered them a vast selection to choose from. I didn’t typically feel guilty for such things, business was business, but I did now. Knowing that Kelly lived in the midst of a drug den we’d helped create didn’t exactly give me the warm fuzzies about dropping her off here.
I’d never tell anyone this, especially not my brothers, but there’d been a brief period of time when I’d given grave consideration to the idea of taking some of what we sold. Oxycontin, specifically. Especially since I knew I could get it without any real difficulty.
It’d been when the first skin graft had failed to take, and I’d thought I’d have to live with open wounds and the constant fear of a fatal infection for the rest of my life. None of us had ever partaken of these drugs before—Varassos were sellers, not users—and I knew precisely what the side effects of it could be. Yet, I didn’t care.
The agony I’d been going through had been beyond what I could ever hope to describe, and the thought of never having any alleviation from it had nearly driven me out of my mind. Luckily for me, the next skin graft did take, renewing a tiny bit of hope for my future.
There didn’t appear to be a lot of hope in this neighborhood, though. One turn away from my destination sat a graffitied street corner with trash in the gutter. I was sorely tempted to not go into the complex at all. Even though it wouldn’t be practical, and would also probably freak her out, bringing Kelly home with me seemed far preferable.
At least then I’d be assured that no one would jump her on the goddamn front porch.
I stole peeks at Kelly frequently, gauging her reactions. She didn’t seem bothered or embarrassed at all by where she lived. Instead, she came across to me as very matter of fact about it, as if this was simply the way things were in her life.
“You can let me off here. I’ll walk the rest of the way.”
“No,” I told her in no uncertain terms. “I’ll take you right to your door.”
Now that we were inside the fenced walls of her apartment complex, the environment improved slightly. The place might not be the Taj Mahal, but there was no litter in the gutters and the façades, while forlorn and in need of paint, weren’t delipidated to the point of having boarded up windows or being condemned.
It didn’t give me much solace, but it was something.
I did as I’d told her I’d do and brought her as close to the door of 555C as possible. When I stopped, she twisted toward me in the passenger seat. “Thank you for taking me home,” she said. “I hope you can get some rest and feel better.” Then she did something I could never have predicted. She brushed her lips across mine. “See you at work.”
Kelly hopped out and darted along the short sidewalk up to her door. She unlocked it, gave me a quick wave of her hand, and disappeared inside.
I touched my fingers to my lips, a little dazed. It’d only been the most fleeting of kisses, an innocent peck that had likely been nothing but a gesture of gratitude from her, but I could still feel the warmth of her lips against mine. It had caused a tingle to radiate outward from the point of contact, making me want more.
Making me want her.
I hadn’t experienced such a reaction from a mere kiss in all my life. For a second, it’d almost made me forget about my burns, about the pain I was in. Almost.
I hadn’t had sex with any woman since the fire, hadn’t had the most miniscule of inclinations in that direction. Since my back still resembled an overcooked piece of meat, getting naked with someone hadn’t appealed to me at all. The notion hadn’t even entered my brain.
Yet one swift peck from Kelly Carr and suddenly a healthy dose of some naughty-bad-fun sounded good again. Better than good. Amazing.
Even if it was currently impossible.
All the way home I fantasized about her doing more to me than that one kiss. It enabled me to sidestep the stinging sensation I was experiencing, to muffle it, to keep its volume down to a low roar. I entered the mansion and made it up to my room without anyone realizing I was home. Then, I stripped everything off from the waist up, went into my bathroom, and squinted at my reflection in the mirror.
Christ.
I’d been right. I’d torn a section of my most recent s
kin graft loose on my left side, exposing the red unprotected layer of what I’d learned to call subcutaneous tissue. No wonder it’d been searing like a sonofabitch.
I stepped out of my room, intent on seeing if Greta could do anything about this or if I’d need to go back to an actual surgeon, when Molly appeared in the hallway. Wearing a white terry cloth robe, she carried the bundle of my nephew on her shoulder, bouncing with him and patting him on the back as he fussed.
“Marco, I didn’t know you were up.”
I did a brusque about-face, hoping to keep her from noticing the damage I’d done. Although Molly wouldn’t try to tell me what to do—that’s not how the hierarchy worked—she was technically married to the man who might.
Luca had seemed hesitant to let me go back to running errands like I used to, but I’d convinced him I was up for the challenge. If he knew about this, he’d relegate me to off-duty status again. And I was going stir crazy being cooped up all the time. I needed to get out of this house and away from anyone wearing a white coat or scrubs for a while.
My eldest brother was the patriarch of our clan and a much more equitable and even-handed leader than our father ever had been. I appreciated that fact, and unlike Angelo, I knew Luca gave a damn about me. So did Sandro and Gabriel. Hell, Molly did, too, for that matter. Unfortunately, that also meant they seemed to delight in sticking their noses into my affairs.
Especially where my health was concerned.
But I knew how to handle this. The best defense was always a good offense. “Antonio okay?” I asked her.
“Yeah, he’s fine. Just needs to burp, and I didn’t want to wake Luca or Anna. Where are you going?”
“To the gym.”
“At two in the morning? And in your dress slacks?” she asked, incredulous. Dammit, I was too tired to think of a plausible story. How could I get out of this?
“I couldn’t sleep, Queenie,” I said, maybe I could fake it till I made it. “I thought I’d take a little stroll around the track.”
