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That contact and the sight of my bite mark on her neck are an intoxicating mix. I’m as close to making a deadly mistake as a man can get, and those blazing eyes of hers are a challenge. I have to break her. I think she wants me to.
The crack of a gunshot changes the plan.
I get up on my knees, and Elena sits up with a gasp. “What—?” I cover her mouth with my hand, watching in horror as Prince collapses next to the car. Even at a distance, there’s no missing the deep red stain spreading over the front of his shirt.
I shove Elena onto her back, still covering her mouth. A man dressed in black approaches the car and looks inside. Searching for something. For what? I don’t know, nor do I have the chance to find out before pressing my body flat against Elena’s and holding a finger to my lips. From where we are, I can no longer see what’s happening by the hangar. I need to be able to hear, but all that fills my ears is the sound of her strangled whimpers and the blood rushing in my veins.
After what feels like an eternity, there’s the revving of an engine, and moments later, the sound fades to nothing. When I take a chance and raise my head, I see what’s left of a cloud of dust trailing behind the car fleeing the scene.
That’s when I take her by the hand and haul her upright, running to reach Prince before it’s too late.
If it isn’t already.
11
ALICIA
I’ve never been so tired in my whole life. I didn’t know it was possible to be this tired and still be standing. Now that the worst is over, it’s like my body and my brain have completely given up. Like I fought so hard to stay on my feet for so long that I have no choice but to shut down.
But Prince is stabilized. At least, I think he is. The bleeding seems to have slowed to nothing more than a slight oozing, and that’s a hell of a lot better than the way it was at first.
As long as I live, I’ll never forget the one-two punch of finding Prince lying flat on his back with his shirt soaked in blood—and realizing Enzo expected me to do something about it.
“We have to get him out of here,” he barked, opening the back door of the car before dragging him inside. “And you have to help.”
Me? I wished I had never told him I was studying anatomy and physiology. “I don’t know what to do!” I screamed in horror and confusion. There was so much blood. It was one thing to know how much blood was in a person’s body, but seeing it up close?
On top of that was hearing Prince’s agonized groans as Enzo positioned him in the back seat. Every move was clearly torture. It wasn’t like I cared one way or another whether the man died, but witnessing his agony was still shocking.
No more shocking than the gun Enzo pulled on me, pressing it to my temple. “Get in there and help him, or I blow your fucking head off!” He shoved me into the car and slammed the door before jumping behind the wheel and peeling away from the scene.
I had no idea what to do. And what was I supposed to do in a car, with no tools to help me? The best I could do as Enzo sped back to the townhouse was take off Prince’s jacket, ball it up and press it tight against the bullet wound near his chest. “You’ll be okay,” I told him over and over, the words pouring out of me without conscious thought. Wasn’t that what everybody said at times like this?
Once we got him to the townhouse, Enzo laid him out in one of the bedrooms after we carried him up the stairs together, with me taking his feet. Then I could tear away his shirt and get a good look at the damage.
“Fix it!” Enzo was crazy, his face red, his eyes wild as I scrambled around for towels, alcohol, anything I could think to use. I finally shouted at him to find these things for me—maybe not a great idea, shouting at a man like him in the state he was in, but it gave him something to do besides pacing the room like a wild animal.
As much as I absolutely didn’t want to, I finally pulled the bullet from the wound using a pair of chopsticks I soaked in alcohol while Enzo held Prince still, a towel shoved in his mouth to bite down on and muffle his screams. Eventually, he passed out, which wasn’t a bad thing since it meant I could concentrate a little better. “Don’t worry, he’s still alive,” I told a frantic Enzo. “Just unconscious.”
“You’ve got to fix this,” he barked. “He’s gonna bleed to death.”
No shit.I didn’t say that, of course, but considering I was the one who was supposed to be helping him, I had a pretty good idea of what could end up happening.
But that’s over now, the wound sewn shut. I’m sure he’ll have to be looked at by an actual doctor, but for now, he’s stable. There’s no bruising or swelling anywhere in his abdomen to tell me there’s internal bleeding, so maybe he got lucky. It doesn’t seem fair in a way, a man like him getting away with his life when I’m sure if the bullet had gone an inch off-course, it would have killed him. How many people has he murdered? I don’t think I want to know.
But his survival means my survival, so I can’t discount it.
“Is he going to live?” Enzo is still pacing, kicking aside one of Prince’s shoes when it’s in the way. The sound of it hitting the wall makes me flinch, and somehow that only seems to make him angrier. “Well?” he barks.
I brush back my sweaty hair with a bloodstained, shaking hand. “I think so. I’m sorry, I don’t have any way of looking inside him.”
“Don’t get a smart-ass attitude with me. Does it seem like I’m in the mood for that?”
“I’ve done everything I can.” I touch my fingers to Prince’s throat to check his pulse. “It’s strong and steady. I’m sure he’ll be fine—if there’s no infection. He really should get actual medical treatment.”
“Let me worry about that.”
“Fair enough.” I look down at myself, realizing my condition for the first time. Hours have passed, but it might as well be a lifetime. I feel like a different person than I was before we left for that meeting that never happened. What went wrong? Would I have been shot if I hadn’t run away? I’m too tired to actually ponder this—the question sort of floats around aimlessly in my head with so many others, like butterflies touching down for the briefest moment before fluttering away again.
