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Seven
Asena
To punctuate my thoughts, I watch as bloody gauze gets dumped into a medical waste bag along with other items I don’t know the names of.
I leave him to it and walk to the other side of the room where there is a small window at the top of the ceiling. Night is falling back to give the sun a chance at a new day. But I don’t feel any of the hope a morning usually brings. If I am honest with myself, I haven’t in far too long.
A strong hand wraps over the curve of my shoulder and I jump.
“Sorry, Ms. Titan.”
I turn to find Rook at my back. “Where is your daughter?” A meaty shoulder finds the wall and he leans into it looking down at me with those all too intuitive eyes.
“Safe.”
Blue eyes linger and I feel like a specimen beneath a microscope. I fidget with a scrap of torn silk.
“Does he know?”
My heart stops cold and my gaze leaps to his face. “Does who know what?”
When silence falls between us it doesn’t last long, but in the few seconds he stands there looking at me, I wish I could trade places with Dragon. Anything to get away from this unwanted line of questioning.
“Coy is not a good color for you. Let me be straight. Does Dragon know he’s a father?” Nothing in Rook’s unmoving expression changes. No pinch of worry between his brows. No stirring of anger. And definitely not an ounce of judgment.
I start to back away. “You don’t know what you are talking about.”
His hand captures mine, stopping me cold. “Maybe I should ask him,” he says in a wry tone.
My expression turns grave, cold. My finger comes within an inch of his olive-green cotton. “Keep your nose out of my business. I’ve had enough of men ruining my life.”
He exhales roughly. “You shouldn’t leave a man not knowing he has blood out there.”
I look over my shoulder to find Hark’s chest rising and falling in even breaths.
“You don’t know what you are talking about, Doctor. Just let it go, okay.”
“I have eyes and a damn long memory. I know his story. And I know yours. Or enough of it,” he corrects me when I go to stop him. “There is only one other person I know that has that shade of jet-black eyes. And only one baby.”
Rook knows more than he’s sharing. He’s just giving me a chance to come clean. But the more he talks the more my feet want to point me to the nearest exit and run.
“Think about it. But don’t wait too long.” Rook leaves me with those heavy words. Silence falls over the basement when I am finally left alone with Hark. Rook’s silentor elselodges a lump in my throat. I’ve been the only force between my baby girl and the evil of the Titan family since her birth and then her intentional disappearance.
I mentally latch onto the steady beat of the heart monitor and Hark’s easy breathing soothes my jagged nerves. Rook’s thinly cloaked threat means nothing. I won’t be here by the time the sun hits high noon. Whatever he chooses to tell Hark won’t be my problem. Until then all I have to do is keep my mouth shut and make sure the good doctor does the same.
It has to be near freezing down here so I go in search of something to cover Hark with. Only finding a few folded sheets, I come back and unfold the pristine white cotton to spread over his bare chest.
I consider him for long moments. His hair is long. Almost as long as mine. The silky black mass is mussed around his head, the knot he had it in earlier long gone.
I run my fingers through it and untangle a few knots. Just as soft as I remember.
Rook killed the overheads before leaving. Low light from small fixtures on the wall makes the puckered white edges of the wound I caused years ago to stand out in stark contrast to all the tan skin.
He took that bullet for me. I run the pad of my finger over the puckered edges. He wasn’t wrong. How did he survive such a lethal injury? Sheer will and stubbornness, I bet. It’s a little bigger than the size of a nickel and looks like it took several sets of stitches before it healed.
Warm fingers brush against the back of my hand before coming to encircle my wrist. “It doesn’t hurt. You can touch it.”
Weary black eyes find mine. Pain glitters in those bottomless depths and I am not so sure it is all due to the gunshot wound. I see other shades of our shared past there, too.
