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“They’re really starting to piss me off.” She rotates in my arms. “What happened to reassuring us and protecting us?”
“Exactly,” Savage snaps, the giant brooding man himself adding, “We need protecting like everyone else. We have real feelings.”
We all laugh and I kiss Harper while the car halts and the doors open. Savage and Smith exit first and I lean in close to Harper and whisper, “I’ll show you how real my feelings are when we finally get home.”
She doesn’t laugh or smile. She presses her hand to my cheek. “Yes. You will.” It’s a promise, that isn’t about playful flirtation. She’s talking about what’s going on with my father. She’s talking about how real this is about to get. He could be dying. I have to face that and she thinks that’s going to be brutal, which means when it’s not, because it won’t be, she’ll thinkI’mbrutal. It’s not a good thought, but I am who I am, and I’ve already decided that Harper has to face that reality. A savant and a bastard. That’s who I am and with that comes baggage. And a little brutality.
We exit to the hallway and Smith and Savage assume guard posts there at the entrance to the floor which is open to a waiting room. Davis, Grayson, and Mia are waiting for us here and immediately greet us, all wearing casual clothing and worried looks. “He’s in ICU,” Mia says. “And they won’t release further details to us. What’s going on?”
Grayson eyes me. “Get an update and then let’s talk.”
Davis and I exchange a look in which Davis tells me he can’t hold Grayson back. He tried. There is no damage control. Grayson won’t have it. I look at Grayson again. “The part where I told you to stay out of this—”
“Landed on deaf ears,” he replies. “We’re friends. You’re in this, I’m in this.”
“I didn’t do this,” I tell him. “You need to know that, but the press—”
“I know,” he says. “Check on your father. We’ll deal with the press later—together.”
My lips thin and I eye Savage and Smith. “Protect them. Keep them the hell away from the police and the press.” I give the entire group my back, and start walking toward a nurses’ station.
Harper is by my side in a flash, her hand on my arm, her steps matching my steps and it feels right. Like she belongs by my side. Like she has always belonged by my side. “Stubborn man,” I bite out.
“Stubborn friend,” she whispers. “And friends are hard to find.”
“Which is why I was trying to protect him.”
“Which is why he wants to protect you,” she reminds me.
I grunt at that and flag down a nurse who turns out to be an aide who leads us toward the ICU. In a few short minutes, she’s left to find us a nurse, and we’re standing outside a glass-enclosed room where my father lays in a bed and monitors track his breathing and heart rate, which is too slow. “And there he is,” Harper whispers, glancing at me. “How do you feel?”
“I don’t,” I say honestly. “Not a damn thing.”
“There you are,” a fifty-something nurse with bright red hair greets, stopping beside us. “I heard his son had arrived and wanted an update. I’m Kasey. I’m your father’s nurse. He’s stable. The police aren’t allowing me to offer more details.” Someone calls her. “Sorry. I have an emergency. We’ll tell you more when we can.” Kasey rushes away and leaves us alone again.
“That didn’t sound good,” Harper says, hushing her voice and stepping closer to me. “I think we need an attorney. A criminal attorney and a good one.”
Savage joins us before I can reply and I don’t ask how he got back here. He’s resourceful. “Interesting update,” he says. “Isaac called Gigi and told her about your father, Eric. She immediately rushed to the airport, but she didn’t get on a plane to New York City. She got on a plane to Italy. She’s running.”
The wicked witch herself, but wicked enough to have her own son killed?
Chapter eighty-two
Harper
Gigi ran?
I’m stunned.
She left while her son lays in a hospital bed. My hand goes to my neck, the sterile smell of the hospital suffocating me, when moments before it had not. This makes no sense. That woman loves her son. He was the king of the empire that she created. A million thoughts charge through my mind, and I can barely make sense of them. I wonder if this is how Eric feels when he’s attacked by numbers, consumed in the chaos of it all.
My eyes meet Eric’s. “I know you hate her. I know this makes sense to you because of that hate, but it doesn’t make sense to me. Why would she run? It makes her look guilty.”
“Or afraid. You said she sounded panicked when you talked to her, right?”
“Yes. I think she thinks she’s next. She thinks everyone in the family is going down. She thinks someone is coming for them. Or us. For all of us.”
“I’m still not a hundred percent convinced we’re not the fall guys for something this family has gotten into.”
