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Fuck. I grab my phone to call the doctor. It’s bad. She’s bad. The doctor is at his office and will start the MRI machine now so it’ll be ready by the time I get her there.
I hit the button for the remote start on my Chiron in my garage. Picking up Phoenix Raymond, something cracks deep inside me. Before I understand what’s happening, that something explodes into a thousand pieces. The sensation is scarier than a gun going off in my face. I grip Phoenix tighter to me until her moan stops me.
Her against me, in my arms is a precious weight—soothing the panic at whatever the hell that was. I get the door of the car open except I don’t want to put her down. Only fucking hell, I have to. I get her inside, the damn seat barely goes back. Shit, as I get the seat belt around her she doesn’t move.
Getting into the car, unease goes up in me when I see she doesn’t even budge at the door closing. “Phoenix.” Fucking hell. “Phoenix, say something, damn it,” I mutter as I round a corner.
“You’re a shitty driver,” she mumbles.
Air floods my lungs, she’s going to be fine. Until I remember her telling me Manuel Rodriguez is the contract hitter Ritchie bought to kill her. That’s a huge fucking problem. Manuel Rodriguez considers it a personal insult if he doesn’t complete a contract. The man once hunted down a mark over three months and seven countries.
The office door backs up to an alley where people don’t see anything, day or night—just the kind of neighbors we like. Once Phoenix is in my arms again, I tell myself it’s her sigh of relief that floors me—not mine.
Putting her down on the exam table, I can’t tell if the clanging is the damn machine or my heart inside my chest. I’m only relieved she’s still alive so that we won’t be blamed for it. That’s all. It has nothing to do with how she felt in my arms. She wants to destroy my family—me. Why did she come to me? Why didn’t she call her boss or go to the hospital?
The sight of blood on my white shirt roots me in place. Blood on my clothes has never bothered me before. It’s been years since I killed someone—death is what we have soldiers for. I’ve tortured many men until I walked away with blood on my clothes and they wish I had killed them. Yet the sight of her blood on me sends ice down my spine and twists something in my chest.
The doctor calls to me. “Aleksander, I need your blood.”
Entering the room, the sight of her wearing an oxygen mask and two IVs hooked up to her would have sent me to my knees if they were able to move. The doctor has cleaned the blood off her face. Pale, she’s so damn pale.
As an O-negative blood type, I’ve given blood transfusions to not just my brothers, but to our men. There are usually at least one to two units of mine and Milos’s blood as O negative refrigerated for transfusions for our men.
The doctor says my name, again, and it yanks me from my stupor. In only minutes I’m hooked up for a direct blood transfusion, from my vein to hers. He’s only done this for gunshot wounds where he was afraid he would lose the patient. He believed cold blood or even warmed was an unnecessary shock to the system. “What is happening with her?”
“Hypovolemic shock which is incredibly deadly. I’m not sure how she isn’t dead already. It wasn’t a large stab wound and it didn’t hit anything important, but it’s been bleeding for what has to be five hours or more to lose this much blood.”
Rage seethes through me. Richie and his soldiers are dead. Except Richie also has Manuel Rodriguez out to kill her. Damn it. Richie and his men will be a problem. Solving it will be uncomfortable but doable.
Manuel as an issue is on an entirely different level. As the son of the head of the Rodriguez cartel and a psychopath who has no feeling, he’s the brutal and efficient enforcer every head of crime wishes they could have in their arsenal. The Rodriguez cartel runs out of Columbia and accounts for almost forty percent of all cocaine bought and sold in the US—hell, probably most of Europe too. Their only real competition is the Reyes cartel out of Mexico.
We purchase our drugs from the Rodriguez cartel and have since we began working with the Outfit. The Levin family is the main buyer of cocaine in Chicago, buying by the metric ton. We then turn around and sell. We don’t deal in anything less than ten kilos. After so many years we have a good relationship with the cartel. We don’t pay them in straight cash, rather in a mix of trade of cash and arms. Milos will be pissed if we have to kill Manuel.
“What are her other injuries?” I ask as I run a hand over her hair.
“Her right shoulder was dislocated. The left arm is broken and she has a concussion. Since the risk of infection and organ failure is high, I want to keep her here for observation, for at least twenty-four hours before she is moved. Amaya, my nurse, will spend the night with her.”
“I’ll spend the night with her.” My grip tightens on her fragile hand. “I’m not leaving her.”
“Of course, wear yourself down for her. That will help her heal. I do think she will heal. I’ve given her as much antibiotic as is safe for her to have. From here on out all we can do is keep a watch on her.” The doctor’s name is Martin Petrov. He came to Chicago with his parents as a teenager from Ukraine. His wife and son died in a car accident so he tried to kill himself with liquor and cocaine. When that didn’t work he ended up working for us almost a decade ago.
Over the years he has grown familiar enough to think he can tell me and my brothers what to do.
I trace her forehead slowly, wondering if she’s warmer than she was when I first came into the room. “Check her temperature,” I order him.
Amaya, who I hadn’t even realized was in the room, points a thermometer at her forehead. The readout is ninety-seven degrees.
“Is it okay?”
“Yes, well within normal.” His phone rings, it’s one of our men who is dealing with a stab wound.
“Go on,” I urge him.
Time passes, I don’t feel it. My phone goes off—it’s Milos’s ring tone. I forgot the meeting with Manuel, the man who wants to kill Phoenix. I ignore the call.
Running a hand through my hair, I tell myself there’s an easy way out of this. Call Valdez and let him take care of it—of Phoenix. With his refusal to allow her to be killed by us, he would protect her from anyone. Valdez could protect her, but that would mean taking her away and getting her lost. My hands clench tight at the idea of letting her go. No, she came to me. Phoenix belongs to me now. It’s up to me to keep her safe.
But how the hell am I going to do that without going to war with the Rodriguez cartel?
