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I blinked my eyes a few times, but the darkness didn’t go away, and when I tried to lift my arm, pain lanced down my side, causing me to moan aloud.
“Oh my God, she’s awake. Nico, she’s awake!”
“Rory?” I asked, my throat scratchy. That voice had sounded a lot like my sister-in-law just now.
What was she doing at Lucas’s house?
“Yes. Oh my God,” she said again, her voice clearer.
The room flared with light, and I groaned, shutting my eyes immediately. “Too bright!”
“Easy Rory,” my brother mumbled, his voice heavy with sleep. There was some rustling around, and the room went blissfully dark, allowing me to open my eyes again. “There, is that better, Leda?”
“Yes,” I rasped, licking my lips. My mouth was dry as a desert wind, my body feeling like it was out of sorts, and my mind—I didn’t even begin to know what was going on with my mind.
“Here, have some water.”
I opened my eyes to find Rory standing to my right, her expression anxious. She was holding a cup with a straw, and I drank from it greedily, making a noise when she pulled it back abruptly. “Take it easy,” she said, setting it back on the nightstand. “You don’t want to get sick.”
“How do you feel?” Nico asked, forcing me to turn my head to the left. “Because you look like shit, Leda.”
“Nico!” Rory admonished, patting my hand. “You really don’t. He’s just being grumpy because he hasn’t had his sleep.”
“I’m telling her the truth,” he shot back. “She would want to know the truth.”
Their arguing was hurting my head, but that wasn’t the only thing that was hurting. I felt pain from head to toe, not a sharp pain, but more like a dull ache.
Either way it wasn’t pleasant. “Where am I?”
“You are at the hospital,” Rory said a moment later. “Weil Cornell to be exact.”
I was in New York. It was where I had planned to be, after all, but how the heck did I get there?
“You were in a pretty serious car accident,” Nico said softly.
“Vincent,” I gasped, looking at my brother. Grief was etched on his handsome features, and he swallowed hard, shaking his head.
“He’s gone, Leda. They found his body.”
Tears smarted in my eyes. Nico’s second-in-command had always been so nice to me. He’d been Nico’s best man at his wedding.
“He knew the risks,” Nico continued, clearing his throat. “Tell me what happened.”
“She shouldn’t be talking right now,” Rory argued, smoothing the blanket over my body. “She needs to rest.”
“It’s okay,” I told my sister-in-law, giving her a slight smile that was harder to form than I thought it would be. “We were driving, and someone started shooting. Vincent tried to get away.” The memories came flooding back like a tidal wave, the terror I had felt at watching him slump over and then the car rolling over.
“I couldn’t get out.”
Then it hit me. “Lucas,” I said, reaching out to clutch Nico’s arm. “Where is he?” He had been hit by the bullet. I saw him go down.
Oh God.
Nico patted my hand awkwardly. “I don’t know, Leda. He wasn’t there.”
My heart stilled in my chest. “He was,” I told him urgently. “He’s hurt. He needs help. We have to find where he is!”
Nico’s jaw clenched. “We’ve been looking for him. I thought he might have been in the car with you at first, but he wasn’t. Leda, they found a lot of casings at the scene.”
