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“It’s Sanai Sinclair.” His words tore my eyes away from the task at hand and I clenched my teeth together, making my jaw flex.
“What the fuck is she doing here?”
“I told you,” Rob said with a smirk. “Gunshot wound. She’s a paying member of The Temple, Breeze.” Rob’s eyes flitted over to the patient then back to me. “Is he stable? I can watch him for you.”
“He’s barely stable and if I don’t finish, he might not make it. I need to take care of this now.” Rob just blinked blankly at my harsh tone. He’d known me long enough to know that I wasn’t being a dick toward him.
Sanai Sinclair was a name that bunched under my skin and pissed me off. If she was at The Temple, then she had a reason and it wasn’t because of the gunshot wound. I opened my mouth to tell Rob exactly that when the double doors to the OR swung open and Sanai walked in clutching her bloody arm closely to her chest.
“What the fuck are you doing in here?” I boomed, my voice coming out muffled through the surgical mask I wore. “You’re not scrubbed and you’re getting blood all over my fucking floor.” I took long steps toward her, my eyebrows falling lower on my head the closer I got to her.
“Bakari, you need to listen,” she panted, wincing at the gunshot on her upper arm. “Do not save Junior’s life.” She gritted her teeth and tipped her head back to look into my eyes. Rob stood beside me, his brown eyes swinging from me to Sanai.
How the fuck she managed to look sexy with warm crimson blood dripping down her brown skin and off her elbow was beyond me. But it didn’t take much for Sanai to look good, so I shouldn’t have been shocked. She had on a white dress that swept the floor and sleeves that hit her wrists. The bullet hole spilling blood onto my once sterile floor had singed the lacy material on her left arm and smears of red marred the white silk of her dress. It still looked good on her. Blood and all. I tried to ignore the unrelenting way the fabric clung to her tight curves and I avoided the deep plunge at her cleavage like the plague.
“Excuse me?” I blinked back to the present moment, aiming all my ice at her. Fine as she was, I couldn’t stand her motherfucking ass and she knew it. “I ain’t realize you had the authority to come up in my fucking hospital telling me what to do. Get the fuck out of here, Sanai. I’ll be with you and your bullet hole in a minute.” I waved her off and stepped back toward Baptiste.
“I’m serious.” Her voice went up an octave, desperation bleeding through. I went back to removing shards from Junior’s neck, ignoring Sanai. I knew from experience, that if you gave her too much attention, she would find a way to manipulate you. I didn’t have time to play her games. “I’m the one who shot him. If you don’t let him die on this fucking table, he’s going to come for The Temple’s neutrality.”
It was dead quiet in the OR. Machines beeped and hissed in the background but even those felt muted against her words.
The Temple had immunity in Bellmore. That meant no gangs could walk into our shit and force us to work for them. No kingpins had us under their thumb, telling us who we could and couldn’t work on. No petty street soldiers would rob us or anyone who worked for us. No fights broke out under our roof. We were there to save lives. That was it. We didn’t play gang games.
We were neutral.
Trying to remove our immunity meant Junior wanted us to work for him exclusively. That meant he got to control our money and who we treated. He would control who lived or died. Not us.
“You’re full of shit, Sanai. Now get the fuck out of my OR!” That time, my voice was a thunderclap. She still didn’t budge. Stubborn ass. The corners of her mouth twitched with defiance.
“Look, I know you hate me, Bakari,” she said, pulling in a breath from between her teeth. “But I’m telling you the truth. You think I’d risk coming in here and exposing my mark to you? Especially a mark I didn’t extinguish?” Fire blazed in her cocoa-brown eyes. I turned my stare away from her, fixing it on the task at hand.
“You would if you wanted your mark dead no matter what. You’d come in here with a self-inflicted gunshot wound and tell me a bullshit story so I could finish your dirty work.” I paused to try my hand at removing a bigger fragment, cursing under my breath when anger caused my hands to tense. Anger made my movements stiff and jerky. Nobody else would notice but I did and that was all that mattered.
I was causing Baptiste to bleed more. I tossed down the slotted cannula and turned to Sanai. “You’re either going to get the fuck out or I’m going to have Dice escort you out. Now, do as you’re told.”
“As I’m told? Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to? Bakari, you know who the hell I am.” Her arrogance condemned me, but I ignored it in an effort to steady my hands.
“You’re a manipulative brat who thinks just because she’s a Sinclair, she can do whatever the fuck she wants to do. But guess what?” My shoulders stiffened along with the muscles in my fingers. “I’m a Godwin. I run shit under The Temple’s roof and you have no authority here. So sit your ass in the other room until I can get to you. I’m going to save his life and ignore your lies.”
Our glares tangled in an epic stare-down. One she wasn’t going to win no matter how intensely her eyes burned. I was a God in The Temple and I was about to perform a miracle because Baptiste was twenty minutes away from dying, but I wasn’t going to let that happen. Not on the word of Sanai.
“Come on,” Rob sighed, grabbing hold of Sanai’s good arm. “Let’s go.”
“Get the fuck off of me, Rob.” I turned back to my patient but I could still hear her fucking mouth yapping at my back. “You want to watch everything your family worked for fall all because you don’t want to believe me? Then fine. See if I give a fuck and please don’t come crying to us when you realize I was right and you have to fight to save The Temple. Bitch ass nigga.”
My nostrils flared in response to her but I refused to give her the pleasure of uttering a single word. Tension was too high in the OR and I needed focus. I had to bring myself back down and quickly.
I did what always worked when I was too tightly wound and I had to perform. I recited the short lines from a poem that always settled my mind.
Only God can judge my flaws.
No human being should give me pause.
Lightening and thunder may make me quake
But I’ll only kneel on judgment day.
I repeated it over and over until my muscles loosened and my brain cleared. It only took a couple of minutes before I was back at it, pulling the last of the dangerous fragments from Baptiste.
