12. Paolo
Chapter 12
Paolo
My head pounded like I’d drank three bottles of whiskey and topped it off with a bottle of gin. I glanced around the room; next to me was a tray with a syringe. The paper under my back crinkled as I moved. The room screamed ‘hospital,’ but the handcuffs attached to the wall told a different story.
“Club?”
Sawyer nodded. “The doctor on staff, did a quick check but needed more equipment than this room could provide.”
“Where is Sonali?”
I tried to sit up, and parts of Sawyer’s face faded away. Realizing I couldn’t make sudden movements, I sank back down onto the bed.
“She didn’t want to leave your side, but she was also hopping from foot to foot because she had to use the restroom. Don’t worry, she will be back, and the doctor can finish his exam.” Sawyer crossed his arms over his chest. “She said you have cancer?”
“No official diagnosis,” I lied, as I tried to sit up again, but the pain was too much. “I just need some aspirin for the headache.”
I hadn’t eaten much in the last couple of days, which was probably tied to the reason why I fainted. There was a good chance it could be from the diagnosis the doctor had given me. We’d already planned to head back to Fort. Lauderdale tomorrow. I was okay with going back tonight, and could make an appointment with Quinton.
“Aspirin is the last thing I plan to give you,” Sawyer growled. “You hit your head on the corner of the table in the room. Until the doctor does a scan, you’re not getting anything for the headache. Aspirin thins your blood and could cause internal bleeding.”
“No need to waste the doctor’s time. I can have the pilot take us back to Fort Lauderdale tonight, and I can see my own doctor tomorrow if my head still hurts.”
“That is not the plan. I have a team of doctors in Fort Lauderdale. If you do have?—”
“No,” I replied, cutting him off.
“Sonali said you were stubborn. The sooner we get you into the program, the less taxing it will be on Sonali.”
She must have told Sawyer she wanted to use her blood. Part of me was angry at her for breaking my confidence and telling her brother. Though she was more than likely scared when my large ass toppled over.
“I will go see Dr. Quinton Renolds about my head injury.”
Sawyer raised his brow. “And what about your cancer? You expect Sonali to sit back and watch you die?”
No one seemed to understand this was karma for the crap he had done in his life. He didn’t deserve a second chance, especially at Sonali’s expense. I didn’t know the entire process she would have to go through, but I assumed it would take a toll on her body as well.
“She’s leaving at the end of the month. Therefore, she won’t watch me die,” I pointed out.
“You truly plan to let her fly back to Paris and never think of her again? The way you look at her, I really thought you cared about her. Yes, Benson is in jail and the mob isn’t after her, but she will always be in danger. Even more so—” Sawyer clamped his lips closed.
I’d attempted to pry deeper into Sonali’s mom and whether anything else was transported. Sonali had wanted to talk to her mom, but Sawyer claimed it was too much of a risk. Besides, her dad’s family didn’t know about her existence. If someone ever figured out the connection, it would be a scandal her dad didn’t want.
The hurt in Sonali’s eyes when Sawyer told her she couldn’t see her mother—and that her father didn’t want to have contact with her—made me want to knock Sawyer’s teeth out.
Sonali walked back into the room, and when our eyes connected, she rushed over to the side of the bed. “How do you feel?”
I tugged a piece of her long black hair. “I’m fine. My head is starting to feel better. Let’s head back to the room.”
“No.” Sonali turned on her heels and marched over to the wall lined with cuffs. She grabbed a pair of pink fuzzy ones. The twinkle in her eye told me her intentions.
“Don’t even think about it.” When she was close enough to the bed, I reached out to grab the cuffs. The sudden movement caused my head to throb, and Sonali used that exact moment to click the fuzzy cuff around my wrist. “Nice try. I can easily?—”
A large hand gripped my other wrist. Sawyer stood there with a pair of silver cuffs and locked my other hand to the bed.
“Let me go, and you might be able to sit down by next week.”
Sawyer huffed. “Dude, I do swing your way.”
I ignored his comment and stared into his blue eyes. “Take these fucking cuffs off. The sooner you do it, the less your punishment will be.”
I couldn’t believe I was cuffed to a medical bed. If anyone from the team saw me now, I would never hear the end of it. The click of a flash dragged my attention back to Sawyer. He stood with his phone and snapped another picture.
“You better delete those photos.”
Sawyer flashed his screen. “Here is the thing. Kat is going a little too crazy in Assassin Annihilation. Mind you, there’s no reason for her to be in the game anymore since I already told you what was being transported. But her alliance hasn’t stopped building. Then yesterday, when I was on a call with Antonio, she used that moment to attack my city—she killed all my ninjas and stole my resources. It will take me weeks to rebuild.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “You have millions of dollars. Buy some resources and level up your soldiers.”
“Haven’t you tended to your city at all or checked the alliance chat?” Sonali asked.
I’d caught her in the game, and every so often, she would start giggling, which I assumed was because of something someone wrote. “I deleted it.”
“Then I guess you won’t mind me attacking your city for resources.” Sawyer tapped on the screen of his phone.
“Are you really that low?”
Sonali slid her hand against my arm. “The server is now full of people from AA Security, Blackwood Mercenaries, NSS, and all their friends. It just turned into billionaires maxing themselves out. Callie reset the state yesterday and froze the ability to pay to upgrade your character. Everyone is trying to level up, but without money.”
My phone vibrated in my pocket. Sonali reached across my body, slid her hand into my front pocket, and pulled out my phone. Antonio’s name flashed across the screen—it was a FaceTime call.
“Don’t answer that.”
She didn’t listen. Her finger swiped across the phone. “What the hell is going on, Sonali? Where is Paolo? The image Sawyer just posted of him in the world chat better be fake.”
“I’m fine, boss,” I grumbled. “Sonali, hang up the phone.”
“Don’t be so grouchy, Paolo.” Kat’s voice floated through the air. “Can you spin the phone around? Or is Paolo naked?”
Why couldn’t the cancer take this moment to kill me? Antonio and Kat stared at me through the phone. Kat leaned forward, her nose almost touching the screen. “Are those pink fuzzy cuffs? I told Brock he needs to get some of those for the club, but he insists on only stocking the black leather ones.”
“They’re really soft,” Sonali added.
She was correct. The one she had put on me was much more comfortable than the cold metal one Sawyer had snapped around my other wrist.
Sawyer cleared his throat. “Kat, what you did yesterday … that was fucked up. He might have a pink cuff on that hand, but I have him locked down on the other side too. Give me my resources back, and I will let him go. Hell, I will even delete the photo.”
Kat scrunched her nose. “Oh, don’t worry about deleting the photo. We already downloaded it and plan to add it to the company’s Christmas card this year. It’s not very often we get pictures of our employees while they’re kidnapped or held for ransom. The medical backdrop really adds to it.”
It was clear I would never live this day down. “I quit.”
Antonio shook his head. “I don’t accept your resignation or negotiate with terrorists.”
“Terrorists?” Sonali questioned.
“Yes, we are at war with Sawyer and his alliance. Paolo can use the skills I hired him for and figure a way out of this mess. Or after the fight on Saturday, I can think about negotiations with Sawyer.”
I had to be living in an alternate universe. My boss was so consumed with the stupid game he wasn’t going to get me out of this hostage situation. Technically, if Sonali unlocked the pink cuff, I could pull the bobby pin I had stitched into the cuff of my jeans. Not once had I ever needed to use one of the secret picks. But after years of kidnapping people and cuffing them to chairs, I wondered why more people didn’t think proactively.
“Clearly, they aren’t going to help. Hang up the phone.” I didn’t need them to know I passed out and a doctor was about to enter the room.
A tall man dressed in a white button-down and black dress pants strode into the room, pushing a large machine. “Good, you are awake.”
“Who is there now?” Kat demanded.
Fuck! If my damn hands weren’t locked to the bed, I would have yanked the phone from Sonali’s hands. “Nobody. Hang up the damn phone.”
She narrowed her eyes at me for a moment before they flicked back to the phone. “Paolo passed out in our bedroom and hit his head on a table. He was knocked out for a while. This is Doctor Saxon. He is going to see if Paolo needs any medical attention.”
“Did someone shoot him with a tranquilizer?” Kat asked. She didn’t let anyone answer before continuing. “See? I told you, Antonio, we need to tranq our employees, so they become immune to things like this. I’ll send you the article again with the case study I found.”
This was not the first time I’d heard this argument. It had come up after a mission we ran off the coast of Spain. Matt, one of the other men on my team, took a dart to the side, and we had to lug his ass back to base before we could complete the mission a man down. When we returned to the United States to debrief, Kat had given a presentation on what we could do to make sure this didn’t happen again. Asher and Antonio both voted no against her plan.
Kat’s plan actually sounded exciting. Members of AA Security would each be given a tranq gun with five darts per week. On the last day, we would be ranked by how many darts we had used and how many targets were hit. She even created a point scale for which targets would get you more points. I didn’t quit agree with the point scale. Kat had her point value at fifty and Anontio at a hundred CJ was only at five. The deadliest person in the office was Kat her points should have been the highest.
The doc glanced at the phone and then at me. “I thought you passed out, and from the medical history Sonali gave me, I think I know why.”
“Medical history?” Antonio ground out. Great, boss man was pissed.
“HIPAA,” I complained.
“If you want to work for a company that abides by HIPAA, you need to find another place to work. And if the next words out of your mouth are, ‘I resign,’ like I said the other day, I do not accept. Sonali don’t even think about cutting the feed, and I give you permission as his boss—if he starts to complain, grab a ball gag and shove it in his mouth,” Kat said.
I knew they cared about me, but it was easier to keep my plan in place about what was wrong if they didn’t know. The moment they found out, I was sure Antonio would allow tranquilizer guns in the office. .They would put me to sleep and drag me in for treatment. They already had their own doctors on standby that would do anything they wanted.
“Can I start?” the doc asked.
I said no at the same time as the rest of the room said yes.
It seemed the doctor didn’t care about my opinion as he wheeled the device over to the side of the bed. “This is an SF-983 scan machine. It’s a prototype from one of Sawyer’s companies. If you don’t mind, I would like to submit your test data for feedback on the machine.”
“I don’t even want to be scanned,” I pointed out.
Sawyer’s lips ticked up. “I will confirm that he said he agrees.”
“I could sue all of you.”
“Except I can hold up any litigation you bring against me in court for at least a year. Do you think, if you keep denying help, you will even see that happen?” Sawyer said.
A gasp came from the phone. I closed my eyes and wished everything could go back to a few hours ago. When I opened them, everyone was still in the room, staring. Sonali had turned the phone so I could see both of my boss’ heated stares. Kat was now sitting on Antonio’s lap, her smile gone. Nothing felt worse than upsetting Kat.
“Fine, run the scan. I can sue your ass when everything comes back normal.”
The doc flipped the switch on the machine, and a soft thudding sound came from the device. He grabbed the wand. “I’m going to start with your head to see if you have any internal bleeding. The scan will show right here on the screen, and I will be able to zoom in where I need to.”
A bright light flickered from the wand as he brought it over my face. He scanned both sides of my skull and asked Sawyer to lift my head, so he could check the back as well. When he finished scanning my head, he tapped the screen a few times and spun an image of what looked like my skull back and forth.
“I don’t see any internal bleeding. But there was a slight crack on the back of your skull. It was healed, so it must have happened before.”
The skull crack was from a bar fight when I’d gotten hit on the back of the head with a baseball bat.
“Does he have a brain?” Antonio asked. “If he is sick and lied to me about it being nothing, the only explanation I can come up with is there’s nothing there.”
“I can confirm he does have a brain, but this scan does not measure someone’s IQ.” The doctor picked up the wand again. “Now, Sonali mentioned you were diagnosed with the possibility of lung cancer. Did your doctor state the level or what treatment you were on?”
Before I could answer, Antonio’s voice boomed through the phone. “Lung cancer? If you don’t die from the cancer, it might happen once I get my hands on you. Effective immediately, I am implementing a new rule in this office. All medical records must be shared with me.”
There was no point in telling him on how many levels he couldn’t do that. I ignored Antonio’s outburst and spoke to the doctor. “He took a blood sample. From there, he wanted to run more tests to see what and where the cancer actually was, but he figured since I smoke a pack a day and was coughing up blood, it was lung cancer. After this mission, I planned to go back in for a few tests.”
I lied, but with Antonio and Kat in the room, it had to sound a little plausible.
“Lie,” Sawyer coughed out.
“Let’s start the scan of your lungs.” The machine thudded as he ran the wand over my chest, and the image of them appeared on the screen. “You have smoked for a long time. Look right here.” His finger trailed along the screen. “You have enlarged air spaces within the lungs, indicating emphysema, along with thickened airway walls. But this spot right here is what concerns me more. This is a very large mass and, along with what you told me about the coughing up blood, could very likely be cancerous. What you need next is a biopsy.”
Sonali’s sniffle pulled my attention from the screen. Her cheeks were wet with tears. I wanted to reach out and tell her everything would be fine, but I would only be lying to her and to myself. The short week we spent together was the best I’d had in my life. At least I would know what happiness felt like before I died.
“Unlock the cuffs, Sawyer,” I said.
He didn’t argue. He grabbed the key from his pocket and unlocked the cuff, then reached over and clicked the safety button on the pink one. When I was free, I reached out, grabbed Sonali, and pulled her close. “Don’t be sad for me.”
“You’re going to die,” she stated the obvious.
“We’re all going to die one day.”
Antonio’s voice came through the speaker of the phone. “The fuck.” I snatched it from her hand and ended the call. Immediately, my phone buzzed, and when I didn’t answer, Sawyer’s rang. I shook my head slightly, and he let it go to voicemail.
“I want to check one more thing, and then I can send these scans to your doctor.” Sonali tried to step away, but I gripped her wrist and kept her close. The wand scanned more of my chest area.
The doctor went back to the screen and zoomed in and out. His eyebrows furrowed as he kept clicking. At times, he would change the contrast. “Paolo, you need to seek treatment fast. Right here if you look closely, your ribcage bone is ragged, and I see holes. This is a sign of bone cancer, which means you could be looking at metastatic cancer.”
“Fuck,” Sawyer growled. “You either get on my jet immediately and I’ll take you to my medical facility in Fort Lauderdale, or I will find a sleeping aid and knock you out to get you there.”
“I’m not letting you use Sonali to cure me,” I snapped and glared at him.
“My clinic runs many different drug trials. Before Mom left, she ran the facility, and we have many experimental treatments.”
Sonali smiled for the first time since we’d been in the room. “You have something for cancer?”
Sawyer tilted his head to the side. “We have different treatments, but none have been tested on stage four cancer.”
Hearing the words ‘stage four’ made it sink in how sick I really was. The coughing up blood and the fatigue should have been my clue, but hearing it spoken out loud made me realize it was all going to end soon.