Chapter 16 Falco
FALCO
“Don’t hurt her,” I snap at Bullet, one of Pidge’s friends as he settles on the bed beside Aerin’s now unconscious form.
“I’m not going to,” Bullet says gruffly, his voice thick and cracked from far too many years nuzzling cigars. “But we need a sample.”
As much as it pains me, I know he’s right. So much has happened in the past two hours that whatever’s in Aerin’s system needs to be captured before her body processes it out and we lose that vital information.
Bullet, a medic back when he was in the army and now an underground doctor, unfurls his fabric pouch and removes one or two needles, then he searches for Aerin’s arm under the blanket and carefully begins to draw blood.
I flinch forward the moment his needle makes contact with her skin, stopped only by Pidge’s hand on my chest.
“He knows what he’s doing,” Pidge says. “They both do.”
Both refers to the fourth man in the room, Rex.
When Pidge told me he was calling in friends, I hadn’t been sure what to expect, but it makes sense that his two friends are also ex-military.
Rex I’ve met once before, unknowingly, as my time as an enforcer. The moment he turned up in the parking lot, we recognized each other and Rex joked that the mafia is the only place ex-soldiers like us can call home.
As my thoughts tumble through what I walked in on in that shitty apartment, Rex appears in the doorway.
His voice is soft, and his long blond hair, currently scraped back into a ponytail, is so slick he almost looks bald. “Perimeter’s secure. How’s the girl?”
“Out cold,” Bullet replies as he gently slides the needle out of her arm. “I got what I need.”
“Then get out.” It’s difficult not to snap at them, but having more strange men around Aerin is pissing me off in ways I can’t even fully understand. Luckily, Bullet has no issues packing up his kit and exiting the room with Pidge and Rex in tow.
I suck in a deep breath and drag a hand down my face.
What the fuck is going on?
Aerin would never leave on her own, she would never willingly go with men she didn’t know.
Men who now lie dead with several bullets embedded in their bodies and skulls where they belong.
I approach Aerin’s bed slowly and check her pulse. It’s sluggish against my fingertips. As I draw my fingers away, my phone vibrates in my back pocket for the thousandth time since I left that bar.
I ignore it.
My time is better spent gently untangling Aerin from that sheet and averting my eyes as I remove her bra and wrap her up in the duvet.
It’s more difficult to remove my jacket from her shoulders so I let that rest then sit with her, waiting for her to wake up.
I’ve spent enough years in this world to know how dark it gets, but this cloud that surrounds Aerin is darker than most.
I’ve never lost someone before, and she’s been snatched from me twice. Am I losing my touch?
Regardless, this is my fault. When she wakes up, I only pray she allows me to apologize.
After an hour at her side, the urge to urinate drags me from her room and down the very short hall to the bathroom. Relieving myself takes half a minute, and as I walk back to the bedroom, the light in the living room catches my eye.
Pidge is propped up at a table near the window, buried in his laptop.
Bullet sits on the couch in front of the coffee table that’s weighed down by all the weapons we took from that apartment, while Rex stands nearby, poring through the phones we lifted from the attackers.
“Thanks,” I say, cutting through the silence. “For helping.”
Bullet and Rex lift their heads, nodding. “Sure.”
“How is she?” Pidge rubs at one eye as if chasing off tiredness.
“Still asleep.” I walk deeper into the living room. “They drugged her. I mean, they must have for her to deflate so quickly.”
“If they did, I’ll find out,” Bullet says. “Though it will take a day or two.” He examines one of the rifles and lets out a low whistle. “This is a beauty.”
“A professional?” I move to get a better look.
“Yep. No way they got this off the street. It’s been modified here, see?
” He adjusts the angle of the rifle to show me the barrel.
“And here too. You pull the trigger and this gun fires a bullet that catches here, then immediately fires a second. Both come out of this so fast that whoever is on the other end is dead before they know it.”
“Explains why I can’t find anything about them,” Pidge groans. “Their IDs were fake, and I ran their faces through every database I could think of. No hits.”
“Any tattoos?” I glance at Pidge.
“No but I’ve reached out to someone who can dig a little deeper into who these bastards were.”
“Thanks Pidge.”
“You got it.”
“Shit,” Rex mutters suddenly and he winces at the phone in his hand.
“Falco, you want to see this.” He passes me the phone with a look of disgust and my stomach sinks the second I glimpse the screen.
They filmed her. From the back of the car, they took her in right up until the moment I burst down the door and shot the first man in the throat.
I watch every second of the video, and as I do fury ignites hotter in my heart.
This wasn’t just a hit, and it wasn’t opportunistic either.
This was planned.
“She said no,” I murmur through a jaw so tight my head throbs. “She said no and they—” I cut myself off as the phone creaks slightly and the screen warps from how tightly I’m clutching it. “I killed them too slowly.”
“The one who sent them,” Rex says with a sigh. “Kill that bastard slow.”
“What is that noise?” Bullet asks suddenly, lifting his head. He glances around the room, then locks eyes with me. “Is that your ass?”
“Huh? Oh.” Being so focused on the recorded footage, I didn’t even hear my own phone buzzing frantically in my pocket. I pocket the attacker’s phone and pull my phone out, grimacing. “It’s fucking Giacomo.”
“The brother?” Pidge asks.
“Yeah. Wants to know where I am. Where Aerin is.” Gritting my teeth, I slide my phone onto silent.
I sent a single message to Guido letting him know that Aerin had been found, but that’s as far as I’m going until I know every detail of what happened tonight—and how.
Which is why Aerin’s been brought to one of Pidge’s safehouses rather than an approved Paramatti one.
I’m not taking any chances this time.
“You’re not telling him?” Bullet glances up and our eyes meet.
“No.”
“Should we know why?”
I shake my head. “I don’t have enough of a reason. Just…a feeling. Uncertainty.”
“Good enough for me,” Rex replies. “In fact I—” He cuts himself off suddenly as a soft creak in the doorway draws everyone’s attention, mine included.
Aerin stands in the doorway clutching my jacket around her shoulders, her bare feet nudging against one another. My heart stalls in my chest for a full second as our eyes meet, and it’s like she’s not quite seeing me.
“F-Falco?”
I’m by her side in an instant. “I’m here.”
“I…” She shakes her head as I slide my arm around her shoulders, blocking her from the view of the others. “M-My tongue is…”
“Thirsty?” I ask softly.
She nods.
“Come on, let’s take you back to bed and I’ll get you some water.”
Tears cling to her eyelashes, but none spill down her cheeks, as if she was crying in her sleep.
We walk slowly back to the bedroom, and once inside I rummage in the drawers for something warmer than my jacket.
I find a long nightshirt that, after shaking free the wrinkles of being folded for so long, looks like it would fit her.
“Aerin?”
Her head lolls slightly to the side and she gazes up at me as if I’m as far away as the moon. “Mhm?”
“Lift your arms for me.”
She obeys and my jacket slips from her shoulders. As she whines in upset, I drape the nightshirt over her head and gently pull her hair through.
As the fabric spills down her body, I carefully ease her arms through the sleeves and smooth the material as it falls past her knees.
Averting my gaze as much as I can from her naked body, anger continues to simmer beneath my skin like a fever even as I smile at her.
“Better?”
She nods. But given how compliant she’s been to all my requests, I can’t tell if she’s really telling me or just agreeing.
As I’m guiding her back to bed, there’s a soft knock on the doorframe.
Bullet places a bottle of water on top of the dresser and vanishes. Grabbing it, I tuck Aerin back into bed, and she clutches at my hand with an iron-like grip.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I assure her, gripping the bottle with my thighs and unscrewing it with my free hand. “Here, drink this for me.”
Guiding the bottle to her lips, Aerin stares at me with fogged eyes until the rim brushes her lower lip, then suddenly she’s gulping down the water like she hasn’t had a drink in weeks.
I monitor her drinking carefully.
Once a quarter of the bottle is drained, I set it aside.
Water droplets cling to her lower lip and when she doesn’t swipe them away, I gently do.
A bruise shadows her face from where she was struck and her skin, still cool to the touch, is faintly warmer than it was before.
She blinks and two tears trail down her cheeks. “Sorry,” she murmurs, shaking her head.
“Don’t. You have nothing to be sorry for.”
Her grip doesn’t slacken on my hand, it remains like a claw, so when she settles back down on the bed I stay with her.
It takes no time at all for sleep, or the lingering effects of the drugs, to pull her back under, but even as she sleeps she continues to hold onto my hand like a lifeline.
I’ve failed her.
Guido made it my mission to protect her, and instead I’ve been falling for her, growing distracted, and now this has happened.
She deserves better than me.
And yet, who else would take care of her like this? Given everything that’s happened, I don’t trust anyone else within that estate to protect her.
The hours trickle by. Aerin’s breathing gradually grows easier and softer as she relaxes. Just as dawn trickles pink light through the single curtain covering the bedroom window, her tight grip on my hand relaxes. She rolls over on the bed and continues to sleep with a soft sigh.
As much as I’d like to stay, hunger curls in my gut and the hours of sitting beside her on the bed have stiffened my back.
Groaning softly, I rise and head back through the apartment. Bullet’s asleep on the couch, Pidge is still by the window on his laptop, and Rex is absent.
“He’s patrolling,” Pidge says before I can even ask.
“Does this place have any food?”
Pidge shrugs. Rolling my eyes, I wander into the kitchen and raid the cupboards. Powdered eggs, frozen potato waffles, a tin of beans, and a can of SPAM are enough for breakfast.
The toilet flushes in the distance and the apartment creaks. By the time I’ve thinly sliced the spam, found an old spray bottle of oil in the cupboard, and warmed the oven for the potato waffles, Rex is back.
“Still clear,” he says as he walks in, speaking loud enough for his voice to reach Pidge in the loud. “Thank god, I’m starving.” As his eyes roam the food I’m preparing to the best of my ability, feet stomp loudly behind him and Aerin appears.
“Are you kidding me?” she snaps, crossing her arms over her chest. “What kind of shitty place did you bring me to this time? I had to pump the toilet twice for it to flush. Ridiculous…” She trails off and stares at Rex with wide eyes, tightening her arms across her chest. “Who are you?”
Rex stares at her, then at me. “Uh…”
“Aerin,” I say carefully, surprised to hear her talking, never mind anything else. “How are you feeling?”
“How am I feeling? Pissed off is how I’m feeling. I mean, what the hell is this?” She plucks at the nightshirt. “I wouldn’t be seen dead in something like this, so why am I wearing it? Did I throw up on my clothes or something because that blouse was expensive and Mom will kill me.”
Confusion mingles through me. She’s the polar opposite to how she was last night. In fact, this is more like the Aerin she was before she left the bar. Rex and I exchange a glance.
“You don’t remember what happened last night?”
She frowns then smirks. “No. I must have had a lot to drink, right? I knew something like this would happen. Giacomo always brags about how Paramattis can hold their drink, and I knew he was lying. Has he passed out somewhere else?”
Aerin doesn’t remember a thing.