Chapter Thirty-Six
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J ordan gritted his teeth, sweat pouring off his face as the orthopedic surgeon examined the bullet wound in his shoulder. His right shoulder and arm were on fire, the pain so intense it stole his breath. “Well?” he ground out.
The surgeon straightened and shook his head. “The humeral head and glenoid fossa are completely destroyed. Even if I’m able to reconstruct the joint—”
“If?” he snapped, ready to choke him. He was suffering. Unable to stand the pain, and nobody seemed to give a shit. He’d passed out soon after climbing down the hatch of the sub. Didn’t remember anything else until they’d carried him to a vehicle and put him in the back. The driver had hit every fucking bump between the coast and here.
The surgeon’s steely gaze met his, expression set. He was willing to take the money and perform the surgery in this private operating room Jordan had reserved, but he wouldn’t be intimidated. At another time and place, Jordan might have respected him for it. “The median and ulnar nerves are severed, and the radial has sustained damage too. Even if I’m able to reconstruct the joint, the chances of you regaining any function after recovery are slight. You would need a neurosurgeon—”
“Get one,” he panted, his vision going gray around the edges. It was getting harder to breathe. He was so weak, had lost so much blood.
“I recommend amputation.”
“ No .” Ice swept through him. Never. “I don’t care what it costs. Just get him here.” He couldn’t bear the thought of not being able to use his arm again. Fucking Angel. At least he and Barros had drowned. No way they could have survived being in the water that far from shore.
The surgeon’s mouth thinned. “I’ll make a few calls while they prep you, but I’m not guaranteeing anything. My priority is to stop the bleeding and to try and preserve what function I can.”
He nodded, desperate for the pain to stop. But the idea of being paralyzed, of never being able to use his arm again, was terrifying. “Do it. Just do it,” he gasped.
One of the nurses placed an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. Whatever gas they were pumping out of it had a weird chemical smell. “Just breathe in deeply.”
He closed his eyes, clenched his teeth when someone stabbed the IV into his vein. Then everything went dark.
He woke in a bright white room. For a moment he feared he’d died, but then he was able to move his head. A nurse was at his side in an instant, checking some equipment they had him hooked up to. His right arm still burned, but not as bad as it had before. He looked down at it, bandages covering him from chest to elbow.
“How’s your pain level?” the woman asked. “If you need more pain relief, you can press the blue button on the line next to you. But only once every hour or so. No more than that, you’ve lost too much blood to risk taking more.”
“The doctor,” he ordered, not giving a shit about what she was saying. “I wanna talk to the doctor.”
An annoyed frown appeared above the bridge of her nose covered by the surgical mask, but she nodded. “I’ll go get him.”
The surgeon entered the room, still dressed in scrubs. “How are you feeling?”
“Well?” Jordan demanded. “What happened?”
He hesitated, and Jordan’s heart plummeted. “What?” he snapped.
“I did what I could to repair the bones and joint surfaces and stop the bleeding. A neurosurgeon was able to repair the radial nerve.”
He remembered him naming three before. “And the other two?”
“He did his best. But it’s unlikely that the medial and ulnar nerves will heal. And it’s also unlikely that you’ll ever regain full range of motion in that shoulder. You were lucky we could save the arm at all.”
A cold sweat broke out across his skin. “What does that mean?” he rasped out.
“It means you’ve lost function in your arm and hand.”
“It’s...permanent?”
“Yes, in all likelihood. I’m sorry.”
Sorry? Sweat beaded his face, his heart racing out of control. “I’ll have more surgeries. I’ll find someone else who can actually fucking fix me.”
Those steel blue eyes chilled to chips of ice. “You’re welcome to try. But it’s not likely to change your prognosis.” He straightened, his expression dismissive. “My staff will take care of the billing before you leave. Best of luck to you.”
Jordan was left lying there, helpless, while a chaotic tornado of emotion tore through him. Denial. Rage. Bitterness. Hatred.
Jon was dead. Barros and Angel, probably. But he wasn’t certain. He needed to be certain. Needed to fix this mess.
He glanced down at his bandaged arm, felt a wave of terror and grief break over him. Paralyzed. Never able to play the piano again. Never hold a phone or a glass of whiskey. Or wipe his own fucking ass with it.
And now that he was a liability, the cartel would come for him.
His only chance was to leave everything behind. Escape the country and start over somewhere else. Live out the rest of his days a hunted man, always looking over his shoulder, caught between the cartel and the US government.
He opened his mouth, let out an enraged scream that echoed off the terrifyingly sterile white walls surrounding him like a tomb.
When it faded, exhaustion hit. He listened to the beeping of the instruments. The sound of the pump working quietly near his head.
Jordan startled when the door opened. His heart seized, a wave of terror washing over him when a man stepped inside.
The man walked up to his bedside. Stood there for a long moment staring down at him with cold, black eyes. “You don’t look so good, Jordan.”
Jordan swallowed convulsively, the monitor next to him beeping faster along with his galloping heart. He wished he was hallucinating, that this was just because of the drugs. But the ice spreading through his veins told him otherwise.
How the fuck had the head of the cartel found him here?
That awful black stare continued to bore into his. “We’ve got an unfortunate situation here, Jordan. You and I both know there’s only one way this can go.” He glanced down at Jordan’s bandaged arm. Shook his head and made a tsking sound that was completely devoid of empathy. “Damned shame. But lucky for you, your other one still works.”
Before Jordan’s terror-stricken brain could process that, his boss reached up and placed something on Jordan’s lap. “It’s your choice, of course.” His dispassionate expression made Jordan’s guts congeal. “You’ve got fifteen minutes to do the right thing, or we handle it for you.” He walked out, the door closing behind him with a metallic click that seemed to echo through the cold room.
Jordan stared at the thing on his lap, a sense of dread taking hold as he picked it up in his fingers, feeling like he was in a waking nightmare.
A plastic baggie full of pills. A hysterical laugh snagged in his throat, escaping as a strangled sound.
Fentanyl.
He had fifteen minutes to take this lethal dose of the product he’d built his piece of the empire with, or he would be turned over to an enforcer and disposed of in a much less humane way. Starting with the removal of body parts.
Cold sweat bathed his skin. His heart hammered a bruising rhythm against the inside of his ribcage. There was no choice to make. They’d even left the bag open for easy access.
He choked back a sob, tears blurring his vision as he raised the bag to his mouth with a shaking hand. The pills spilled into his mouth. They were bitter on his tongue.
A rush of defiance swept through him. Fuck them. Fuck all of them.
He crunched the pills between his molars for good measure. Forced them down his throat with a convulsive swallow and laid back against the pillow, closing his eyes. Fighting back the fear through sheer force of will.
In his mind, he was seated at his Fazioli. His fingers rested on the cool, polished surfaces of the keys. So familiar. So comforting. They moved effortlessly, the beautiful notes filling his head.
He felt the haze settle over him. Growing thicker. Heavier.
In his mind he kept playing. Drifting on the music just as he began to drift on the tide of the chemicals flowing into his veins.
A heavy blackness closed in around him, obscuring the vision even as he kept playing.
But the music grew softer. Quieter still.
Then stopped for eternity.