Crash (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 1)

by Susan Fanetti

  Hospitals were mandated to report injuries due to obvious violence—and a gunshot wound certainly was that. It meant police reports, investigations, possible arrests and everything that followed.

  “Okay. Okay.” She went to the pool table and pulled on a pair of latex gloves. Griffin was already there, already gloved, waiting to be her assistant. Her Igor.

  Rad was sweating; his skin, usually an olive tone, was a pale greyish-green, like wax. He wasn’t wearing his kutte, and the full front and one sleeve of his light grey t-shirt was sopping blood.

  With a shaking hand, she set her fingers against his throat and checked his pulse. Rapid and shallow. She set the stethoscope in her ears and listened to his heart to confirm. Regular but too fast. She listened to his lungs—and they were clear. Thank God.

  She picked up a pair of medical scissors and cut his shirt down the middle, spreading it open—and nearly fainted from relief. The wound was high and to the side—in his shoulder, not his chest.

  Setting the scissors down, she put her hand on his shoulder, above the wound, and gently slid her hand under, seeking an exit point. Please, let there be an exit point. But as she searched for one, she could see that his t-shirt was not soaked in blood on the back. The bullet was still in him.

  “Fuck. I need to find the bullet.” She looked up at Delaney, who stood on the other side of the table. “I’ve never done this.”

  “Can you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.” It was Rad! If she did something and hurt him more…

  “Sure you can, baby.”

  His voice was almost too weak to be even a whisper, but Willa heard and swung her attention to him. His eyes were closed, but a hint of a smirk canted his mouth at an angle.

  “You can do it. I know you can.” He found a little more strength to put into those words.

  She leaned close and put her hand on his face, and his eyes fluttered open. Seeing her right there, his smile stretched out.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Already feels like a hot poker goin’ through me. Don’t think you could make it worse.”

  She absolutely could make it worse, but she would do what he wanted. “I’m going to use some Novocain and try to numb it.” She didn’t know if she could get the numbing to go as deep as he would need it to be, but she would try.

  He moved his head in a scant suggestion of a nod. “Do your thing.”

  Griffin handed her a vial of Novocain and a syringe, and Willa prepared the injection. She was going to send Griffin’s black market supplier a fruit basket or something, because they were now fairly well set up. She was kicking herself that she hadn’t asked for IV morphine, or IV anything—but she hadn’t thought she’d be performing surgery in the damn party room.

  She leaned close to Rad again. At his ear, in a soft, calm voice, she said, “You’re going to feel a sharp poke where you hurt. That’s the Novocain. It’ll make it better after it makes it worse. I promise.”

  He chuckled weakly. “I can take it. I’m a tough fucker.”

  “Yeah, you are.” She pushed the needle into the wound and suppressed the plunger—when the drug went into the tissue, he moaned weakly.

  “Fuck, fuck. Jesus fuck.”

  “I know, it burns. I’m sorry.”

  “This is the chaos, Wills.” His voice had weakened even more—he was losing consciousness again.

  Recalling their conversation the day before, when they’d decided to keep the baby, she said, “I know. I’m not scared.” That was a lie in this moment, but the truth overall.

  “Me either. You’re gonna be a great mom,” he mumbled and was out.

  She looked around at the people watching them: Delaney, Griffin, Mo, Gunner, Eight Ball. They lifted wide eyes, almost in unison, from Rad to Willa.

  So much for waiting to share the news.

  But she had more important things to worry about, so she sent them all a tight smile and got to work.

  ~oOo~

  Rad moved in and out of consciousness throughout her work, moaning and trying to fight when she had to dig down to get hold of the slug. Willa was glad, actually, despite knowing the pain he must have been in, because his consciousness suggested strength—and no shock, which meant the blood loss wasn’t catastrophic.

  She got the bullet without doing too much additional injury, and she determined with some degree of confidence that it hadn’t damaged any bone. Then she stitched him up and let Griffin and Mo make him comfortable while she checked on Slick and Becker.

  Griffin had been a great assistant. He knew more than he thought he did. So did she, for that matter.

  Becker had road rash, and it wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t the horrific kind of injury that it could have been. In the ER, she’d seen cases where all the skin and tissue had been abraded completely away, down to the bone, or torn away in long, flapping strips. Becker’s arm looked like ground meat and would likely scar, but it would heal. Joanna had cleaned it up and done a good, detailed job. Willa had to pluck out only a few small—and painful—bits of debris she’d missed. Then she bandaged him and gave him some antibiotics and the choice to get Percocet and leave off the Jack Daniels or get Tylenol and keep drinking. He chose Jack. She was not surprised.

  Slick had a long gouge along the side of his head, about the width of a finger—or a bullet. It was bloody, but in the scheme of the night, it was the least of the injuries. He complained of a headache. She didn’t see signs of concussion or fracture, so she cleaned up him up. She couldn’t suture the wound, but his blond hair was short enough that she managed to get it bandaged. He chose Percocet.

  And then she was done and exhausted.

  It wasn’t until then, when she was cleaning up the last of her medical mess, that she realized there were strange men in the clubhouse. Three large men, silent and angry, in dress pants and filthy, bloody dress shirts. They sat at the bar, staring down into their drinks.

  Simon came up and stood at her side. “Russians,” he said. “We lost Kirill. His body’s in D’s office. Things are tense, to say the least.”

  “Kirill?”

  “Their boss.” Simon shook his head briskly and seemed to realize that he shouldn’t have been talking to her about that. “You did good work again, Doc.”

  “You need to stop calling me that, Simon. I’m not.”

  “To us, you are. You did good.”

  She turned and considered Rad’s sleeping body, still so pale. God, she hoped she’d done well. She hoped she’d done enough.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Rad came out of his dream with a start and grunted as his clenching muscles activated all the pains ravaging his body simultaneously.

  The dream had been nothing—just a collection of images from the day spliced together randomly, and flashing by quickly, as if a schizophrenic on mushrooms had been in the editing booth. The bright beams of bike headlights sliding in behind them. Standing in the barn in Nebraska watching Kirill climb up from the gun bunker. Riding in the back of the box truck, the pounding agony jolting through his body with every bounce of the speeding truck, keeping him conscious and sapping his will. Astride his Dyna, headed home, letting the infinite, eternal Plains landscape lull him into ride hypnosis. Willa’s sleeping body as he got up that morning, the cover sliding to reveal one round breast, its perfect, barely-pink nipple tightening against a sudden chill. Kirill’s body lying next to him in the truck, his unseeing eyes wide, a hole in his forehead.

  Kirill was dead. Killed in Bulls trouble. Kirill, son of the head of the Volkov brotherhood, and her second in command. If Irina blamed the club, they were all in deep shit.

  He blinked and tried to see. When he couldn’t see much, he nearly panicked. Then his eyes focused on the glow of the neon Harley sign over the bar, and he understood that he was in the clubhouse, and it was simply dark.

  With clarity coming on him, he knew, too, that he was hardly alone—he could hear and sense bodies sleeping around hi
m. And he was on the pool table. His forty-year-old back, which had taken some abuse of its own, was none too happy about its location. But that ache was the least of his pains.

  Right. Remembering how he’d gotten where he was, he lifted his head to verify—and then dropped it back down when his shoulder caught fire. But he’d seen enough to know that Willa was sleeping at his side. Keeping his head on the pillow, he turned it so he could see her. She was sitting on a bar stool, folded over onto the pool table, with her crossed arms pillowing her head.

  His beautiful woman. His healing angel.

  He lifted his right arm—the one that he could lift—and set his hand on her head. She reacted at once, with a little flinch before she opened her eyes. When she saw him looking, she smiled.

  “Hey. How do you feel?”

  “Like I got shot.”

  She laughed lightly and caught his hand, bringing it to her mouth, where she kissed the center of his palm. Despite his racking pain and weariness, and his worry about the blowback they faced, his cock twitched at that gossamer touch.

  “I’ve got Percocet for you for pain. Can you sit up a little to swallow them?”

  Sitting up sounded like torture, but water and pain pills sounded like heaven. So he gritted his teeth until he could lean on his good arm and get the pills down. He drank about half the bottle of water before Willa took it away.

  When he was settled again, she said, “Delaney has the slug. He said you keep them.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  He started to shrug and then thought better of doing that to his shoulder. “Three times now, somebody’s put a bullet in me, tryin’ to take me out. And here I am.”

  “What—you think you’re immortal?”

  “No, baby. I think I only got so much luck. Gunner says he’s got nine lives, and he goes lookin’ to shave that number down. Maybe I got some extra lives, too. But I’m keepin’ count. Don’t wanna lose track.”

  “I don’t want you to lose track, either. Getting shot three times should be a maximum lifetime limit, don’t you think?”

  He smiled and drew the tip of his finger over her bottom lip. “You thinkin’ about changin’ your mind? Not too late.”

  “The baby?” At his nod, she frowned and pulled her head back, away from his touch. “Do you want me to change my mind?”

  With no qualms about his answer, he said, “No. But I’d understand if you did. I’d be on your side about it. The hit yesterday, the lockdown, me gettin’ shot—we’re still in the middle of that trouble, Wills. Don’t let the quiet in here make you think we’re through it.”

  “I know we’re not. We’re locked in the clubhouse with angry Russians who won’t let us leave. The guy who died is important. And it was Dirty Rats who did all this, wasn’t it?”

  He nodded as he tried to fit this detail about the Russians locking them into their own clubhouse into his understanding of the situation—an understanding made imperfect by his pain-fogged brain.

  “So this is all my fault.”

  “No. Willa—this is not on you. Smithers would’ve been dead by now regardless, at my hand. So what’s goin’ on now is club warfare. Smithers is the crux of it all. Not you.”

  “That’s still me. You wouldn’t have cause to fight with the Rats if not for me.”

  He reached out and grabbed her arm, grunting as the move stretched his chest and shoulders. “Stop it right now. Only way this doesn’t come to a head like this is if you and me never meet. Is that what you wish?”

  “No.”

  “Then shut up about it. We’re together, I wouldn’t have it any other way, and it ain’t your fault Smithers was a fuckin’ psycho. You didn’t answer my question. Did you change your mind?”

  “No. I want this baby. I want you. I’m not afraid of your life. And I think it was too late to change my mind the minute you held your hand out to me and helped me up from the highway.”

  No kidding. “Yeah. I know how you feel.” Finally, he could feel the drugs moving through him, pulling back the claws of pain. He sighed and reached for her.

  She was too far away. He pushed the thin blanket back and patted the table next to him. “Get up here with me. I’m lonely.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Then get up here.”

  She did, settling in the crook of his arm, on his good side. It added some hurt to his chest, but the comfort and closeness was worth it, and the pain was backing away. Rad closed his eyes and let tomorrow’s troubles come with the sun.

  ~oOo~

  Irina Volkov arrived at the Brazen Bulls clubhouse shortly before noon. By then, Rad was up and moving around, more or less. He felt like last week’s roadkill.

  In the few hours between the club’s waking and Irina’s entrance, Rad had gotten himself back with the living, though frustratingly unsteady on his feet. With Willa’s assistance, he’d had an awkward and arousing sink bath in the downstairs bathroom, and he was dressed in blood-free clothes and a fresh bandage.

  Gunner had cleaned his kutte for him. The ragged hole where the bullet had gone through, just above his road-name flash—now spattered with brown blood—showed the orange of his club t-shirt. Willa’s eyes kept drifting to that hole every time she looked his way. He’d have to patch it soon.

  After breakfast, the Bulls had gone into the chapel, and he’d gotten caught up. With the Volkov men in the party room, no one had wanted to say much.

  Now he knew that Kirill’s body was no longer in the clubhouse. He was at the Stowe Brothers Funeral Home, a club-friendly mortuary that had helped the Bulls out in the past, being prepared for a trip back to New York. Misha was guarding the body.

  Delaney had spoken at length with Irina in the middle of the night. With the Rats still an open issue, he’d agreed to keep the lockdown going and to wait for her arrival. Willa had been wrong that the Russians weren’t letting them leave, and Rad had assumed as much. Delaney would never have allowed anyone, not even Irina Volkov, to keep the Bulls hostage in their own home.

  “If she puts Kirill’s death on us, she’s playing it close to the vest,” Delaney had said. “I don’t get the sense that our relationship is blown up. Or she could be coming here to tear the place to the ground. She’s a cool customer, and it’s hard to read her. Either way, it makes sense for us to stay low until we know the Russians’ thinking and have a plan for payback on the Rats.”

  The woman who came into the clubhouse, accompanied by only one guard, might not have been recognized as a powerhouse. Barely more than five feet tall, with the kind of figure you’d expect on a woman nearing sixty, she looked at first like somebody’s grandmother. But then you looked closer and saw that her pearl-white hair was short, but stylishly cut, not that puffy style everybody’s grandmother seemed to have, and you saw that she had one of those beautiful aging faces that people called ‘handsome.’

  And then you saw her eyes—ice blue and intense as all fuck. When she turned those things on you, your balls shrank right up and quivered in your gut.

  Rad had only been face to face with her a few times, and he wouldn’t ever admit it out loud under any kind of torture, but that little old lady intimidated him, no mistake. Out loud, he called it respect, and that was true, too. She was smart and savvy and goddamn ruthless.

  He’d never seen her dress either flashy or frumpy. She dressed like a businessperson, in pantsuits and unremarkable shoes. Her clothes were probably every bit as custom and pricey as her son’s, but she wasn’t as obvious about it. Today, she wore a black pantsuit and a black top. She was a businesswoman in mourning, and in Tulsa, she had to do both at once.

  She greeted Delaney and Dane and accepted their condolences. Then, without further preamble, she wanted to sit down and talk business.

  Rad was surprised when she waved all of her men present—the two who’d been on the run with them and the man who’d arrived with her—away and went into the chapel on her own.
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br />   Her men had been surprised as well; a few Russian words had been exchanged, theirs urgent, hers firm.

  In the chapel, she sat at the far end, directly opposite Delaney. The men sat after her, and they all waited. Rad had refused a renewed dose of painkillers because he wanted to be sharp for this meeting, but now the throbbing agony in his shoulder was dulling his focus. He clenched the arm of his chair and marshaled his will to the task.

  He wasn’t sure who was leading this meeting. It was Delaney’s table, but, just as the power had tipped to her son when he sat in this room, Irina had the gravitational pull now.