Page 64 of Unleashed By Eden

My eyebrows go up.

A situation.

That could mean anything from “Dameon locked himself out of his apartment” to “he hid a body and needs deniable muscle.”

I want to ask. God, do I want to ask.

But Beefhead One and Beefhead Two slide into the front seats, within perfect hearing distance. I have a basic interest in staying alive, so I shut my mouth.

For now.

The door closes with a heavy thunk, and the SUV eases out of the alley.

Madrid slips by in streaks of cold morning light. Normally, I’d be itching to photograph the old balconies, stone buildings, and graffiti properly, not just in the scraps of time I can grab between shows. But today, my brain refuses to stick to anything that isn’t the man sitting next to me.

What today means.

What happens if the news is bad.

What happens to him.

What that does to me.

I stare straight ahead. I hate Maeve more than ever. She spent her whole life making shitty decisions and drinking her way through them, dragging Carter down with her. Now there’s a chance she’s passed her damage on from the inside out, and the sheer unfairness of it makes my teeth grind.

He doesn’t deserve to go out the way she did.

Beside me, Carter barely moves. His sunglasses hide his eyes and the only sign he’s alive is the small bounce of one knee.

I reach over and take his hand. He interlaces our fingers together and squeezes once.

We don’t talk. There’s nothing to say.

Fifteen minutes later, the SUV turns down a narrow service road behind Hospital Fundación San Telmo. It’s modern and sleek, a private, high-end medical facility.

The three cars roll to a stop under a small, covered loading bay, away from the main entrance.

Beefhead One gets out first. Then Beefhead Two. They sweep the area with quick, efficient passes of their gaze, then open our door.

A woman in pale green scrubs is already waiting for us. She’s mid-thirties at a guess, brown hair pulled into a tight knot at the base of her skull, some sort of ID badge clipped to her pocket.

“Señor Ashford?” she asks in crisp English. “I’m Mariela, Dr. Soria’s assistant. Please, come with me.”

She leads us to an unmarked side door, swipes a keycard through the lock, and the light switches to green.

Every hospital has its own distinct smell. In here, though, the air is closer to Chanel No. 5 than bleach.

Every corridor we take is empty. Liam has certainly gone above and beyond to ensure Carter’s privacy.

We reach the elevator, where Mariela swipes her keycard again and ushers all of us inside. The men flank the walls while Carter stands in the middle, sunglasses still on, shoulders drawn up, almost bracing for impact.

I shift closer until my arm brushes his, and he closes the distance until it’s pressed firmly against mine.

Six floors up, the doors slide open to an empty hallway with frosted-glass doors and tasteful art. Mariela guides us into a private waiting room with floor-to-ceiling windows and soft white couches that look untouched.

Carter lowers himself onto the edge. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped tight, turning his knuckles pale. His head hangs low. The sunglasses make him unreadable, and I want to rip them off his face.

I only just got him back, and the thought of losing him now is a thousand small cuts, none of them fatal on their own, but all of them bleeding me out. I’ll take every jagged edge, every hard day that comes with him.