“No, we don’t. You’ve got what you came to New York for. We’re done. Leave.”
I head back towards the only place I want to be and point my glass at the door for them, showing the goddamn way. Luca and Torrino stand there, guns in their hands in case anything else dares come through my fucking doors. “The boys will show you out.”
“Vico, she’s our sister.” And now Nathan’s joining in on the party.
I spin at him, looking the other two women over again first. Fucking family now, is it? What the hell have they ever done for her other than cause her pain?
“That doesn't mean anything to me. You leave her and go.”
Quinn stands. “No. We’re staying until this is finalized. Fuck you and your orders.”
I raise a brow at the tone, barely stopping myself from launching at him, and watch as Emily puts her hand on his arm. “Quinn, calm down. This isn’t the way.” No, it isn’t. But if that’s what he wants, I’m about ready to burn this whole fucking building down, so he can bring that shit on. I’m full of it. Anger. Confusion. Hatred and violence.
“What do you want, Quinn?” I ask, tilting my head at him and tightening my fists. “She’s not far off dead because of her.” I point at Emily, noting the look of contrition from her, at least. He doesn’t change a goddamn thing, antagonism rolling off his frame. “She stood in front of your woman to save her. Can you explain that to me? ‘Cause I’m fucking struggling with what that means.” He takes a step forward. It’s a goddamn fateful one given my mood.
“It was her, Vico. All the time. She set it all up.”
“I know. I knew before, and I still know now,” I spit, my body closing in on his. “You’re still alive, aren't you?”
“You damn well knew?”
“It was my fucking business. In my house, Cane.” I get in real close, letting him smell what's fucking coming if he keeps on at me. “I know everything in my fucking house.”
“Guys,” Nathan says, coming into my line of sight. I glare at him, then back at Quinn.
“My fucking house, Quinn. Mine.” I wave my hand behind my back to Torino and Luca, signaling them to get over here. They both do, guns ready to cause damage if that’s what’s needed. “You all get the fuck out of it before you don’t get the chance to leave at all.”
Silence then, other than the noise coming from the room Hope’s in. I look at it, watching as the three people in there start lifting her from the bed to transfer her to the other one. The sight makes me walk back to her and abandon the argument. I haven’t got the time or the patience for it at the moment. For once in my life I’m scared. What of, I haven’t worked out yet. Death maybe. Hers. Fuck knows why. I should hate the bitch for all this shit. Should have hated her when she told me about it all at the beach house. I didn’t. Still don't. I carried her all the way back here, my hand compressed onto the stomach wound, desperately hoping she wouldn’t die, and made Quinn call Daniel and get him here.
“Benjamin?” I swing to see Emily at the door, her eyes filled with unshed tears. “Is she… Is she going to be okay?” I shrug. I don’t know.
She lingers there, her foot poised to step into my space, so I turn away from her again, for some reason not caring if she comes in or not. Hope thought prudent to protect her, though. Maybe that means something to me now. I don’t know that either.
“Why did she jump in front of you?” I mutter, looking at Daniel as he starts feeding intravenous lines into Hope. One of the women takes blood, the other setting up some medical table with an array of tubes laid out on it.
Soft footsteps approach me, a hand coming to rest on my shoulder.
“I’m not sure. Maybe she was just trying to help. She told me to stay behind her.” I look at her, no idea why my Hope would do something like that for someone like Emily. “She did say one other thing.”
“Yeah. What?” I reply, looking back at Hope.
“She said that I didn't deserve this. None of us did.”
The words make me glare at the pale incarnation of the woman I know. We didn't deserve this. I could fucking laugh. If anyone deserves death it's me, not her. The shit I've done in my life, the people I've destroyed, yet here she is, choosing to save Emily instead of herself in the middle of this screwed up existence.
“I didn’t really understand that,” she continues. “She would have got away if she’d let the bullet hit me instead, don’t you think? The position we were all in? She could have run.” Yeah, but she didn't. She chose courage over fear. Looked that cunt straight on and waited for the bullet to land, knowing it could kill her. I stare still, feeling Emily’s hand slip from my arm. “I’ll leave you to it, then. We'll be just out there if you need us.” I turn back to her and frown. “If she really is their sister, Benjamin, it's family. Please. Quinn’s just… being Quinn. Give him a bit of leeway. He’s worried.” Is he fuck? He’s waiting to damn well interrogate her. That’s not gonna happen. But she smiles at me, reminding me of their bond. It’s disarming for some reason.
“You keep them out of here,” I mumble at her. “Away from me.”
“Okay.”
I walk closer to the bed, listening to the sound of the door closing behind me, and I pull my hands from my pockets. They hover at my sides, part wanting to touch her and part not daring to. She doesn’t deserve this feeling inside of me. She’s a traitor. A vengeful bitch who used me to aid her own game. A slight smile tips my lips, respect for that game coming from deep down inside where my own dirt lives. I understand it, the need for vengeance. It’s part of me, too, but I’ve always had the ability to act on it with no fear for my own survival. It’s what happens when you grow up like I have, a team behind you to back you all the way, through whatever comes. My father taught me that long ago, and he gave me the power necessary to make sure no one ever fucked me or my city over. She never had that backing. It was just her—her and her retribution. And now she's bucked that thought, thrown herself in harm's way to prove herself. Who to? Fuck knows. Me maybe. Those boys out there, definitely.
I lift my hand to touch her, honouring that thought alone at least. It’s one brave bitch that lies here now, fierce behind a shroud she chose to show me. She was never a good girl for me, never my good girl. She was a good girl for herself. Clever. Cunning. Courageous.
Perfect really.
“You’ll need to clean up if you want to touch her,” Daniel says from behind me somewhere. “I’ve got her, but I don’t need the complications of an infection. This isn’t a hospital.”
I snatch my hand from its position, suddenly noticing the blood and grime smeared all over it. It makes me look down at myself for the first time and frown. The white shirt and vest are covered, my trousers a mess of rust and filth. I nod at him and back away from the bed towards the wardrobe to grab at some clean clothes then cross for the bathroom.
The water means nothing as I soap and rinse myself down, but the time in here does. It lets me feel the need to get back out there to her. I’m hurrying rather than allowing the usual time I spend wiping shit like this off me. I usually relish cleaning guts off my skin, make it feed me more images, so I’ll stay focused on my city and the boundaries I’ve put in place. But not this time. Now all I want is out of this and back to her side.
I'm fucking proud, that's what I am.
It confuses me as I towel down and start pulling fresh pants on. I don’t know what it all means, but it’s the same feeling as when we’re at the beach house, an ache that doesn’t know what to do with itself. Love presumably. I snarl at its influence, unsure if it should hold such power over my being. Whatever this all is, or has been, she's too close for comfort.
“I need to talk to you about these test results,” Daniel says as I come out of the bathroom. I discard the shirt and look at her, dumping the towel I was drying my hair with in the wash bin. She’s no different than she was when I left that I can see, so I look at him.
“What about them?”
“They’re goo
d. Don’t worry. She’s all right. Some more time resting and she’ll be fine. Eventually.” I look at her some more, walking over and checking her myself. She’s still the same as she was, better in some ways. There’s a slight blush of colour in her face now, although nothing else has changed. I reach for her skin, touching her arm to see how warm she is as I listen to the bleeps and sounds coming from the machines around her. She was so fucking cold when I carried her back, not quite as bad now, though. “You said she couldn’t be pregnant, Ben. She is.”
My head swings back to look at him so quickly I almost lose my fucking balance.
“The hell did you just say?”
“She’s pregnant.”
I don’t even know what to do with that information. I stagger backwards a bit, eyes wide at the thought. She can’t be pregnant. She was, is, on contraception. Injections.
“You’re wrong.”
“No. She’s definitely pregnant. I don't know how far gone. We'd need to do an ultrasound, and quickly.” I glare at her there, feelings all over the goddamn place. “It's standard to test when there's abdominal trauma. Cover all bases.” I can't hear a fucking word he's saying. Pregnant?
My ass hits the chair, head spinning. She's fucking pregnant and she put herself in front of Emily?
“She might not even know, Ben.” My head swings to him, wanting to say something that I can't find words for. “It's relatively common to not know in the first trimester, especially if she's on contraception. It happens.”
“Wake her up,” I say. I need to look into her eyes, understand what the hell this is.
“She'll be better staying under. Rest and recuperation. I can get some gear brought up here and run the ultrasou—”
“Wake her the fuck up. Now.”
He nods and goes over there, starting to get drugs ready to feed into her intravenous lines. Baby. “No, wait.”
His hand stops. Jesus. Pregnant. I don't know whether to be furious or fucking elated. “You can do the ultrasound while she's under?”
“Yes.”
“Do that. I wanna know if it's still alive, and how far along she is.”
He picks up his phone immediately. I stand, hands rubbing my trousers to try to get to grips with this. Hope Winters. Pregnant. It's never even been on our radar. We’ve not fucking talked about it once. She said she had injections. That's it. No children.
“It'll be half an hour or so before it gets here. The moment it's done we'll wake her up. That'll be another hour or so, and she's going to be groggy as fuck when she wakes. You might wanna get a drink while we keep monitoring her,” Daniel says.
I can barely think let alone drink, and now I've got to wait another two hours? Fuck. Fuck. And what, go out there and talk to the Canes about shit I have no fucking interest in whatsoever?
My hands go to my head, fussing my hair around until I do the only thing I can think of. I grab some clean running clothes—Hope’s—and go back into the lounge. She saved her life. The least I can do is let the pair of them be clean after the fucking mess of the night.
“Go get yourself cleaned up,” I say to Emily, throwing some clothes on the table. I look over at Gabby, nodding. “You, too.” They both look shocked.
I know the goddamn feeling.
Twenty-Eight
I’m safe. Warm, safe and content. I don’t want to leave this place, wherever it is, but I can hear a ringing, a faint buzzing from somewhere. It’s disturbed me, and I can’t reach back to feel the embrace of safety. The buzzing gets louder until it’s a full-on throb in my head. One by one it feels like my nerves are coming back online, registering in my brain and delivering information I don’t want.
Pain.
My eyelids stick and scratch as I try to open them. I struggle, my mind beginning to replay my last moments. The boat. The men. The gun. Benjamin. My eyes snap open, the need to find him now overtaking everything else. The blurry sight in front of me doesn’t help me to orientate myself, but I know he’s here. The smell of his body wash fills my nose as I suck in air.
I blink my eyes, willing them to focus. Eventually, they do. I’m in our room, but not in our bed. There’s a beeping noise, movement, people I don’t recognise.
“Benjamin?” I part my lips to talk but only manage to croak out his name. A blurred man approaches me, checked shirt, a tie, his hand reaching for something.
“Hope, my name is Daniel Redman. I’m a doctor.” He moves left, then right, confusing me. “I’ve been looking after you since you got here.”
“Benjamin?” I ask again, needing to know he’s all right.
“I’ll go and get him for you.”
He disappears from my line of sight. The relief is quickly felt, but soon overridden with more pain as I try to pull myself up in bed. The movement draws attention to the left-hand side of my stomach, eyes looking downwards to the source of the throbbing ache.
My head drops back against the pillow, and I take more measured breaths to keep my stomach as still as possible. It all comes rushing back then—the deck of the boat, Emily’s face, her wide eyes. I did it. I stepped in front of that bullet, but I survived. Tears prick the backs of my eyes as memories of the guns and blood add to the sensory overload. Looking past the need to save Emily never occurred to me. I had to make up for my wrongdoing. I didn’t have time to consider all the possibilities of what would happen if I survived. Maybe because I didn’t expect to. It’s all a jumbled mess in my head now.
“You’re awake.”
I lift my head and see Benjamin in the doorway. He lingers there, naked from the waist up.
“Are you okay?” I croak, hoping he is.
He nods, a puzzled look on his face.
“What about Emily? Gabby?” I want to ask about Quinn and Nathan but hold that back for a moment.
“Both fine. Gabby took some scrapes.”
He finally moves towards the bed, standing at the foot and looking over me with his hands in his pockets. I can’t read his expression, but his body is taut, the lines of his muscles tense across his shoulders and down his arms. Even his jaw is tight, as if he’s stopping himself from speaking what he wants to say.
“Have they left?”
“No. They’re all outside.”
I nod as panic starts to wash over me. This stop-start conversation, his distance, his tension. My heartbeat picks up and echoes in the room with the sound of the monitor.
“You need to rest,” he says, starting to turn away. A small part of my heart breaks at the dismissal. After the beach house, I thought we’d be able to survive anything. I lied to him and betrayed him—two of the values he holds most dear—and he accepted it. We were okay before the fight night, or at least on the way to okay, but now. . .
“Benjamin, please? What’s wrong?”
His body stills as he turns back to me. His eyes—there’s no softness in them, no sense of closeness. “Not now, Hope. Rest,” he mutters, leaving the room. Watching him leave does nothing to ease my concerns.
The tears that were stabbing my eyes a moment ago now run a river down my cheeks. It wasn’t meant to be like this. I stepped in front of the gun to make things better, to ensure Emily would live, show my sorrow for the wheels I put in place. And Benjamin and I were okay. We were.
My despair grows as I think back to every movement, every word between us to see if I missed anything. There must be something to show me why he’s acting this way. He’s never been overly romantic or open with his gestures, but he just treated me like I was a stranger he was checking in on out of goodwill.
“Hey, is everything okay?” I look up through watery eyes and see Emily hovering at the door.
I swing my arms up to dash the salty tears from my face, sniffing them back, but the fast movement pulls at my stomach and forces me to slow down.
“Yeah. I’m fine. Just a little pain.” It’s not a lie. I am in pain. A lot of it. She smiles and comes closer, dressed in what looks like my running gear.
“I want
ed to see how you feel about some visitors. Quinn and Nate have refused to leave without seeing you.” Have they? I’m surprised, and a little apprehensive.
“Well that sort of depends. Are they going to finish the job I started or bring me a basket of grapes?”
Emily regards me for a moment, her soft features showing the draw the last day has put on her. More evidence of my screw-ups.
“Quinn needs some time. Besides, you sort of pulled an ace with that move of yours. Saving me is probably the one thing that would make Quinn reconsider his actions.” She props herself gently on the end of the bed. “And thank you by the way. You were incredibly brave to do what you did.”
I nod, taking in her words. “Or stupid,” I mutter. “Besides, I didn’t do it for that reason. I couldn’t let you die because of something I did. You might be married to Quinn, but my revenge was aimed at him and Nathan. Never you or Gabby.”
“Or Benjamin,” she offers.
Her hand begins playing with something, and I notice Quinn’s dice lying in her palm. “You said was aimed, Hope. Does that mean you’ve reconsidered things?”
“Seeing you all… together, puts things in a different perspective. You’re not what I thought you were. They’re not what I thought they were.”
She’s silent for a while, as if she’s weighing things up in her mind. I don’t know what. It’s never been about her or Gabby. It was always them.
“I have a question for you, Hope.” My brow scrunches, unsure what she would need to know. “Do you still want to hurt either of them?”
The boldness of the statement makes me see how deeply she and Quinn are connected. How she must see a side to him that no one else does.
“I’m not after that anymore, Emily.” She nods and raises herself off the bed.
“They’ll have more questions for you.”
“And I them,” I murmur, watching her back away. Again, she nods, this time with a smile. “If they think we’re suddenly going to play happy families, Emily, they’re wrong.”
Vengeful Eyes: A Cane Novel 3 Page 27
