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“Jesus, Fox, baby, are you okay?” I tore off my shirt and tied it around Fox’s wound, staunching the blood flow.
“I’m good, I’m good.” Fox spoke through gritted teeth as he tried to stand but grunted in clear pain. “Look.” I helped him sit back down but followed where he was pointing to.
“Someone’s in the water.”
It was Pierre, and the bastard was struggling to keep afloat, gargling for help in between gasps for air.
34 Gabriel “Fox” Morrison
I’d never been shot before. I was blessed in saying that, considering I’d spent a good chunk of my life in an active military zone, where gunfire, mines, and grenades were an unfortunate and dark way of life.
So I had nothing to really compare this to, except the time I had broken a kneecap. That shit had really fucking sucked.
But getting shot?
Yeah, that sucked a whole lot more.
I hadn’t even realized at first until I looked down and realized I was standing in a puddle of my own blood. I’ll admit, I saw those black speckles at the edge of your vision that come right before passing out. I was close. But when Jonah told me he needed me, when he asked me to get in the captain’s chair, I knew I had to snap the fuck out of it, blood loss be damned.
And so I did, and we managed to make it out of that mess alive. Shaken, bleeding, but fucking breathing.
To top it off, we were about to go fishing, our catch already at the end of our hook.
Jonah pulled the boat up to Pierre’s side, who looked like he was about to give up. A deep, dark part of me wanted to leave him here, let him meet his maker after trying to force us to meet ours. He almost took Jonah from me. One of those bullets could have hit their target, and they could have taken him out. Hell, he gave me a sure-to-be scar on my leg, which was throbbing with a red-hot pain that I forced myself to grit through.
Jonah pulled Pierre onto our deck. He was bleeding from a variety of cuts and scrapes. His hair was burnt and his shoes must have been blown off, but he had managed to keep his feet.
“Why?” Jonah asked him while I reached for my phone. The boat’s communication systems were down, but thankfully I was getting one bar of service. I called the police, told them we needed a rescue along with a set of handcuffs.
Jonah was struggling to keep Pierre awake. He slapped him, some blood flecks flying through the air. “Why, Pierre?”
“I was perfecting it,” he said, between coughs. “I was making the perfect party drug, and I wanted to be its sole supplier.” More coughs. He could barely hold his head up. “So much money. Could have made so much money. That yacht? I have three more.”
This was for money, of course. When was it not? The pure gold bangles that hung on Pierre’s burnt wrist made more sense now. He had been siphoning money through his drug business, away from Dylan and Lucien.
“You’re fucking delusional.” I was unable to hold back. Maybe the blood loss was affecting my head. “Did you really think you were going to monopolize Dragon? What were you going to do? Franchise?”
His head lolled, his eyes shut, as if thinking alone was sapping his energy. “No… I mean… I hadn’t thought that far.”
“You could have just stayed in a relationship with two other guys who clearly loved you. One even pulled out a BB gun on us to protect you. Did Lucien know about the operation?”
“Neither of them knew. It was just me.”
“And how were you even making this shit?” Jonah asked, his tone playing no games. He had put on a hard front, but the quick and concern-filled glance he gave to my thigh told me his thoughts were on me, too.
“Labs. I started in Trinity’s basement at first. While Dylan and Lucien get drunk off their asses upstairs, I’d be in the basement, mixing things.” Pierre fell into a coughing fit. “I was working to be better than them both. When thing got up off the ground, I’d leave them both. But I wanted Dragon to take hold first.” He wiped blood from his mouth. My bullet wound pulsed underneath the binding Jonah had made me with his shirt. I grit my teeth, trying to make sure my eyes didn’t cross with the pain.
“What was in there? What the fuck were you using that even our labs couldn’t replicate?”
His face twisted into a smile before a wave of pain crashed over him. He winced, coughed, blood covering the hand he held over his mouth. “I can’t give up all my secrets.”
I put a hand on his neck. Squeezed. He coughed, sputtered. Jonah put a hand on my shoulder, but I didn’t let go.
