32. Cian
Chapter 32
Cian
For the next hour, I hold my breath. Nothing seems real.
My friends are battling for their lives behind enemy lines, and I’m not there to fight alongside them. They could all be dead.
They could have walked straight into another trap, but I don’t know because I’m following the plan. I found Harper and got her out of there. After navigating on foot to where we stashed a getaway car, I laid her in the backseat and got behind the wheel. This is the last phase of the plan.
Meet up at the rendezvous point before returning to the estate together.
We decided to use the rendezvous point because this De Luca facility is more than three hours from the city, and we knew Harper would need emergency medical attention and maybe even a place to rest, long before we made it back to the Kings’ medical unit.
It’s my job to give her first aid and anything else she needs. To assess the damage done and report back. But I can’t think about my job.
All I can think about is the stench of blood on the shirt I bought her just a day ago.
She’s so pale.
I could have put her in the front seat with me, but I didn’t want to glance over at her too many times and end up crashing. But laying her in the back seat wasn’t a better plan. When she’s out of my sight, my mind plays tricks on me. It’s like tonight didn’t happen. Like she’s not really back there, unconscious and possibly clinging to life.
I race through darkened two-lane roads in upstate New York.
It takes too long to reach a modest mansion set way back on around ten acres of Kings’ land, enclosed by a fifteen-foot wall and hidden by shrubbery.I’m so amped, I nearly crash through the front gate.
I key through the entrance, the gate pulls apart, and I speed the last half mile into the mansion’s garage.
I carry her out of the car, through doorway after doorway, up a million fucking stairs to the nicest room in this whole giant, uncomfortable, empty place. She’s warm. Her pulse is still strong, thank God , despite her closed eyes and limp frame. I find everything I require in the en suite bathroom.
First aid. Emergency tools. King medical equipment technologies.
Placing her on a cot, I cut Harper’s clothes off to assess her injuries. I take a sample of the blood dripping from her stomach and scrape it on a little microscope slide, sticking it in a computer on a nearby countertop.
The computer will analyze her blood for whatever Enzo drugged her with and spit out any immediate countermeasures I should take, straight from the mouth of the doctors at the medical unit back on the estate. They’ll be expecting the sample to come through.We alerted them on our way to the De Luca warehouse facility.
After snatching a sample, I sponge the rest of the blood off her and send a picture of her injury to the medical team too. The source of all the blood seems to be a cut a few inches long on the lower left side of her rib cage. My first thought was a stab wound, but it’s too clean and precise.
Too surgical.
In fact, the only reason she was bleeding at all is because she popped her stitches.
Enzo cut her open and sewed her up when he was done.
Rage and bile fight all the way up my throat, but I swallow them both back, refusing to imagine what this injury means. What was done to her…
Remember the plan.
I clean the laceration site and apply bandages.
There’s a sizable bump on the back of Harper’s head and blood caked in her hair. I wash her clean as best I can and find clothes to dress her in before carefully moving her to the bed.
The report from her blood sample inches out of a nearby printer. The second it’s done, I rip the sheet from the machine, eyes devouring the contents.
Enzo drugged her with quite the cocktail. I want to kill him so badly, but then I remember he’s already dead. And I helped.
That’ll have to be enough.
What I’m desperate to find in Harper’s report is there. Six little glorious words.
Blood Contamination Assessment: Non Life-Threatening.
Thank you, God.
The report on her cut is a little less clear. The doctor needs to examine her in person to see what was done and to check for any internal injuries, but if it’s just the laceration, it should heal within a few weeks. She’ll need to take it easy and avoid exercise or heavy lifting, but…
Harper should be okay.
Physically, at least.
Uneasiness remains in the corners of my heart.
Whether her mind or spirit’s been broken, I won’t know until she opens her beautiful eyes. Whether Enzo forced himself on her, violated her, I won’t know unless she chooses to tell me.
If she even wants to see or speak to me again after my monumental failures landed her in this situation to begin with.
I promised to protect her every step of the way if she just came back to New York with me, and that promise was broken only a half hour after we set foot on Empire soil. How will she ever trust me again? Forget forgiveness.
It’s exactly like she said.
I ruined her life.
The only reason she’s here is because of dumb luck. If I hadn’t backed right over her, I never would have found her. I would have checked every holding cell on that entire property and never found her. She was some place she shouldn’t have been. Probably trying to escape on her own.
She wasn’t waiting around for me to rescue her. She can’t even rely on me to keep her out of the De Lucas’ clutches. Why would she expect me to save her in her darkest hour?
Perched on the edge of the enormous bed where I set her down, I hold my head in my hands. The seconds tick past, slow and unbearable, each one a nail in my body.
I don’t know what’s going on at the facility. Yes, Enzo’s dead. But what about my friends? Did they fight their way out? Were they overtaken by De Luca reinforcements?
Harper’s here and alive, but I have no idea if she’s okay either.
Nothing about the present is certain.
Nothing about the future is discernible.
I need to sleep. For about three months straight.
But I won’t rest. Not until this is over.
I didn’t start this clusterfuck we’re in, but I at least have it in me to see it through to the end.