Bend: A Dark Mafia Romance

by B. B. Hamel

  “Fill out that form and take a seat,” she repeated.

  I could tell Tara was about to explode on her, so I stepped in. “Excuse me,” I said, flashing her my best smile. “Do you have any specials for veterans?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You’re a veteran?”

  “I sure am, ma’am,” I said. “I’m a Navy SEAL.”

  “Wow,” she said. “Very impressive.”

  “Thanks. I’m just hoping we can see someone about my son.”

  She chewed on a pencil, looking at her computer screen. “Doctors are all busy with patients,” she said, “but I can squeeze you in maybe ten minutes from now.”

  “That would be amazing.” I smiled big at her again. “Thanks so much.”

  “Fill out that form and bring it back to me.”

  “Of course.”

  I ushered Tara over to a seat before she could flip shit on that woman. We sat down and I started filling out the paperwork using a false name.

  “Thanks,” Tara said eventually.

  “No problem. Women like that usually respond to the military thing.”

  She just looked away.

  I couldn’t help but smile to myself. Tara was so pissed at me that she couldn’t see the lengths I was going to to make this right. That was fine though. I couldn’t blame her. Mason was sick and she was worried as hell.

  One form and ten minutes later and we were in a back room with a nice older doctor, his hair white as snow.

  “Well now,” he said, holding Mason, “let’s take a look at this little guy.”

  The doc went over Mason, checking his heart, his chest, his back, and finally taking out a little instrument to look inside his ears.

  “Ah,” he said as he looked away.

  “What is it?” Tara asked, worry all over her face.

  “Ear infection.”

  “Ear infection?”

  The doctor nodded, smiling. “Yep. Just an ear infection. His right ear is a little infected. Not too bad. I know the poor little guy is in pain, but the best thing for you to do is just to wait it out. Keep him cool and do your best to distract him.”

  Tara stared at him. “You’re telling me that there’s nothing you can do? He has an infection.”

  “I’m sorry, miss. We just don’t prescribe antibiotics for infant ear infections anymore.”

  “But you can,” Tara pressed.

  “Nine times out of ten, these pass on their own. It’s uncomfortable for the poor little ones, but in the long run this is better for them, helps their immune system.”

  “No,” Tara said, shaking her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Just keep him calm and wait. If his fever goes up past one hundred and one, come back and we’ll write a prescription.”

  I clenched my jaw.

  All this way, all this danger, and some fucking doctor was telling us that he wasn’t going to help?

  Fuck that. I’d tried fucking hard to make this right. I’d taken a big fucking risk bringing us to this hospital. I was getting this kid some medicine.

  “Doc,” I said, stepping closer to him, “I think you should write him that prescription.”

  “Why’s that?” he asked.

  “For two reasons. One, because I’m going to put two hundred dollars in your hands. Two, because if you don’t, I’m going to break every one of your fingers until you change your mind. Make this easy, doc. Write the script.”

  He stared at me for a second. “Three hundred,” he said finally.

  “Fine. Prick.”

  I reached into my wallet and counted out the bills while the fucking asshole wrote out the prescription. I put the money in his hand, he gave me the script, and we got the fuck out of there before the good doctor remembered his ethics.

  Tara was staring at me as we stood in the parking lot, waiting for Travis.

  “I can’t believe you did that,” she said.

  “Mason needed medicine,” I said. “I got it for him.”

  “Still, that was a lot, and he didn’t really need it.”

  “He did. We’ll stop and fill this on the way back.”

  She bit her lip and nodded.

  This whole thing was one damn clusterfuck. Poor fucking Mason was sick, and we were exposed as fucking hell. Not to mention I had just bribed a doctor for some fucking meds, which definitely would get everyone involved in some serious fucking trouble.

  But that was what I was willing to do for her and Mason. It drove me fucking crazy thinking about it, but I would do nearly anything for them.

  I was too fucking close, but there was nothing I could do. I was stuck protecting them, and I was going to do anything to keep them safe.

  Even if it meant doing things that went against what I thought was best.

  I was going to take care of her, like it or not.

  Chapter 21

  Tara

  I sat down with Mason in my lap on my bed and pressed the syringe of medicine against his mouth.

  “Come on, Mason,” I said. “Drink this. It’ll help.”

  He kept crying, but I managed to get the syringe into his mouth. I squeezed, and he swallowed the liquid. I pulled the syringe out and he continued crying, though less intensely.

  “There you go. All better,” I said to him.

  I knew the antibiotics wouldn’t really work for a day or two, and he wasn’t going to take every dose so easily, but I was happy we’d gotten one down. I felt a little bit better at least knowing that it was only an ear infection.

  I couldn’t believe how angry at Emory I’d been. As soon as he said that we couldn’t go to the hospital, I’d wanted to kill him. I couldn’t believe someone would stop me from taking my baby to see a doctor. I’d thought he was a monster.

  But that was wrong and I knew it. Emory wasn’t a monster. He was just trying to make the best of an impossible situation. Now that I had a little distance and the crisis was over, I knew that he meant well.

  Especially with how he managed to make things run so smoothly at the hospital. He took control immediately, got us to see a doctor quickly, and even bribed that asshole doctor into giving him the medicine. I was surprised, but I shouldn’t have been.

  Emory was doing everything he could to keep us safe. He didn’t want to see Mason suffering, maybe as much as I didn’t. But he had to balance that with the fact that The Network was still looking for us.

  I felt guilty as I rocked Mason, bouncing him slightly. I felt bad that I had put so much pressure on him, put him in the situation where he had to choose between his mission and being a father. I didn’t know what he would have done if I hadn’t pushed, and honestly Mason probably would have been fine if we hadn’t gone to the hospital.

  But he’d made the decision that I’d wanted him to make. Crazy as it was, dangerous as it was, I wanted to make sure Mason was safe, and Emory had made that same call.

  I wanted to go downstairs and thank him, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave Mason. It was getting late anyway, and I could already tell that I wasn’t getting any sleep. I didn’t need to subject Emory to that same thing. Besides, I still had lingering anger about the whole thing.

  I sat upstairs with Mason, reading to him and rocking him, trying to keep him as calm as possible. He ate a little, but not nearly enough, and went back to crying immediately after he was done. Hours slipped by that way, and soon it was nearly two in the morning.

  For some reason, Mason’s crying began to taper off and I could tell he was on the verge of sleeping. I softly placed him down in the crib and watched as he drifted off, and finally, for the first time all day, there was silence.

  I felt like I could finally think for the first time. I wondered briefly where Emory was, but it took me a second to realize that he would be sleeping like any other normal person.

  I should have been exhausted, but for some reason I felt more awake than I had in days. I stood up and stretched, moving around the room as quietly as I cou
ld. I didn’t want to risk waking Mason up, not when he was finally getting some sleep.

  I left the room, leaving the door ajar, and went to use the bathroom. I couldn’t help but think about Emory as soon as I got in there, though, as the memory of his body pressed up against mine in that room was still very fresh in my mind.

  I wished I was confused about the way I felt about Emory, but I wasn’t. My feelings for him were simple: I wanted him, and wanted him badly. The more I got to know him, the stronger the attraction became. It wasn’t just his body and his cocky smiles that drove me crazy, or even what he could make me feel with his tongue and his fingers.

  It was much more than that. It was his loyalty, the way he took to taking care of Mason, the way he was doing everything in his power to keep us safe. It was his strength. And we had similar backgrounds, which made me like him even more.

  It was the implications of my feelings that were confusing, not the feelings themselves. Feelings were simple, obvious. But what the feelings mean for people could be devious and difficult to come to grips with.

  My feelings for Emory were simple, but they were also complex. He was the father of my child and I had no clue what I wanted from him. I felt myself feeling for him more and more intensely, but did that mean I wanted him to be in my life all the time, to help raise Mason? That wasn’t exactly fair, or even likely given his job.

  There was no future with Emory. I knew that, had understood it the second I’d learned he was a Navy SEAL. The man was a fighter, a warrior, and he would always be a warrior. No amount of diapers could change that about him, and he’d always crave that action.

  I understood that, but it didn’t change how I felt. I wanted that warrior, wanted him to take me, to make me his. But I needed to think about what was best for Mason, and I didn’t know if Emory was best considering how much danger Emory brought into our lives.

  As I left the bathroom, my mind a clouded mess of confusion, I heard something from downstairs. It sounded like a creaking floorboard. I looked down the hall and noticed that Emory’s door was open.

  Silently, I walked over to it and stuck my head inside. There was nobody in there and the bed looked like it hadn’t been slept in.

  Curious, I softly began to move down the steps. He was just probably sleeping on the couch, and I’d just heard him tossing and turning. I got halfway down the steps and looked out over the living room.

  But he wasn’t on the couch. In fact, it was deadly silent downstairs, and totally dark.

  I felt something strange inside me. My skin began to prickle with goose bumps and every hair stood up on end. It was like I’d stepped into a static field, and my every instinct was telling me to run.

  I took another step downstairs and heard the noise again. It was definitely something strange, but it wasn’t a floorboard. I got to the bottom of the steps and silently moved toward the kitchen.

  And stopped dead in my tracks. I watched as one of the locks on the back door slowly turned, unlocking itself.

  That was the sound I was hearing, the locks on the door slowly being unlocked one at a time.

  My heart was pounding in my chest. I watched and saw a shadow cross the door’s small window. I caught sight of something black.

  Something like a mask.

  I turned away and ran. I didn’t think. I just ran upstairs, back into the nursery, and shut the door. I locked it and began to pace around, my heart hammering, mind spinning.

  What had I seen down there? The locks were opening one at a time, but that could just be Emory coming back home. But then again, I’d never seen Emory come in through the back, let alone wear a black mask.

  I wasn’t even sure it was a mask. It seemed like it could have been, but I only got a quick look and it was so dark.

  Everything felt wrong to me as I paced around the small room, terror running through my heart. I didn’t know if it was terrorists breaking in to kill us or if it was just Emory coming back from some late-night adventure.

  And I had no real way of knowing without leaving the bedroom again. I couldn’t do that though and leave Mason behind. Waking up Mason was out of the question, since he’d just start crying again.

  I tensed, terror running through me. I hated being locked up in this room, not knowing what was happening out there. I hated being so damn helpless, but what could a normal girl like me do against trained, violent terrorists?

  I had to stay strong and not panic. That was the best I could do. I had to keep myself together for Mason’s sake and hope that it was just Emory coming in through that back door.

  Because if Emory was missing and that was The Network breaking in, then I just might be dead already.

  Chapter 22

  Emory

  I moved silently through the neighborhood, scouting out the quiet houses.

  I hadn’t been able to get to sleep. I had tried, but I’d just kept hearing Mason crying upstairs. I could tune out loud, difficult noises, since I was trained to sleep under any condition, but there was something about him being in pain that kept me awake.

  Tara didn’t seem interested in talking, which was fine with me. She’d gotten what she’d wanted, even though it wasn’t completely necessary. I couldn’t blame her, since it was my choice to go to the hospital in the end.

  Still, I wished she could have been at least a little more grateful, or at least a little less pissed off. She didn’t seem to get how much danger we were in every time we so much as walked outside the safe house.

  I had no clue if we had been spotted or not. There was just no real way for me to know. I moved silently through the neighborhood, sticking to the shadows, but I found nothing.

  I was like a shadow in the night, deadly and swift. This was my element, my way of life. I was the stalker and the world was my prey. Nobody could stand before me and survive long if I wanted to destroy them. In the night, I was in control.

  I moved across the street and crouched down in the shadows. A minute later, another shadow peeled itself from a wall and crouched down next to me.

  “Captain,” Travis said.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Not bad. Quiet.”

  “Sorry about earlier. The hospital thing.”

  I could sense Travis’s discomfort. “I understand needing to take the kid to the doc, but was that the best decision?”

  I glanced at him. He was staring out across the street. “No,” I said, “it wasn’t. I told command that I’m too close to this, but they insisted on keeping me in control of the girl.”

  Travis nodded. “Blackfire knows his stuff.”

  “He does, but I’m worried he made the wrong call on this one.”

  Travis looked at me. “Are you too close?”

  I didn’t answer at first. My mind wandered back over the past few days and stopped on the moment when I finally saw Tara again in person.

  The excitement I felt, the fire in my veins, the heat. That hadn’t gone away, not one bit. If anything, it had only gotten hotter and stronger the more I got to know her.

  Then there was the way I felt about Mason. Holding him, feeding him, I’d never experienced that sort of emotion before. I wanted to take care of him, to protect him above all other things. I’d only ever felt that way about my squad before, but never to that intense a degree.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m too close.”

  Travis nodded. “I’ll relay that.”

  “Have you seen anything tonight?” I asked him, changing the subject.

  “Maybe,” he said. “Can’t be sure. Saw some strange car movement a few hours back, but nothing since.”

  “What happened?”

  “Two cars, one white and one black, driving around the area. Could have been lost people. Could have been The Network scouting. Can’t be sure.”

  “Omar?”

  “Haven’t seen or smelled him.”

  I nodded. “Got it. Keep an eye out.”

  “Roger, captain.”

  Travis melte
d back into the shadows and disappeared.

  I held my position for another minute, my mind wandering slowly. Strange cars, threats in the night. I was too close to this, too damn close to this, and yet Blackfire thought it was the right call to keep me involved.

  “Fucking hell,” I said as I disengaged myself from the shadows and headed back toward the safe house.

  Everything was quiet as I moved down the alley and jumped over the back wall. I landed on my toes without making a sound, crouching down and scouting out the yard.

  Everything looked fine. I moved across the backyard and stopped at the back door, reaching into my pocket for the keys.

  As I grabbed the handle, the door pushed open. It gave to the slightest pressure.

  Instantly I entered battle mode. My heartrate jumped but my breathing slowed, and I felt completely calm. My training took over and I began to asses the situation.

  The back door was open. There was no way Tara had opened it, which meant someone had broken in. There was no sign that the door had been forced, and so I could reasonably conclude that whoever was inside was trained to open doors silently, even doors with a bunch of solid locks.

  I slipped my knife from the sheath on my thigh and made sure that the silencer was on my pistol. Softly, I pushed open the door.

  The kitchen was empty. Like a shadow, I drifted into the space, moving along the counters, stepping silently. I pressed up against the far wall and edged toward the doorway.

  I looked into the living room and spotted him. One man stood near the front door, a submachine gun in his hands. I counted at least ten paces from here to there, and so I sheathed my knife and pulled out my gun.

  It only took two shots, one to his skull and one to his chest. He toppled to the ground, blood pooling around his motionless body.

  I moved into the room fast, staying low. I stopped against the far wall and listened.

  Nothing. No movements. No sound.

  I kicked the man’s corpse. He was wearing a black ski mask and a combat vest. The vest had absorbed my second shot, but the first was enough to put him down.