Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
STELLA
Icame to when something jostled my body, sending a sharp jolt through my ribs that was painful enough to shake off the black that had swelled across my vision the second time O’Brien’s henchman slammed my skull into the asphalt.
He’d come out of nowhere, taking me so off guard there hadn’t been a chance in hell for me to defend myself.
As soon as the words ‘little dove’ crossed his lips, his big, meaty fist was coming at my face at lightning speed.
I recalled it hurt like hell. I’d lived my whole life up until now never being punched in the face, and now that I had, I could say with certainty that I did not recommend it.
Especially when that punch was coming from Big Foot’s second cousin once removed.
That motherfucker hit like a Mack truck.
He kicked that way too. I’d know, seeing as he’d just beat the ever-loving hell out of me.
Another jostle shot fire through my body and forced my attention to the present, most specifically, the back seat of the moving car I was currently in. Oh hell, was I being kidnapped?
I tried to sit up, making the mistake of putting my weight on my right wrist to push myself, and cried out in pain. Oh right. Mr. Meaty Paws had also stomped on my wrist with his equally meaty foot. The jackass.
The stabbing pain made me collapse back down onto the nice, supple leather that coincidentally smelled a lot like West.
“Try not to move, sweetheart.”
The voice, low and full of concern, came from the driver’s seat in front of me, and when I looked up the best I could, it wasn’t the asshole who’d just thrashed me like a rag doll behind the wheel.
“West?” I asked, my voice thready with pain.
Everything in my body hurt, especially my ribs, causing each breath to feel like I’d just inhaled fire. “What’s going on?”
He glanced back toward me for just a second before returning his eyes to the road, but it was long enough to see that, despite his gentle tone, he looked like he wanted to throttle someone. “How much do you remember?”
That was easy enough to answer. “I remember I got my ass kicked.” I was trying to make light of the situation, but if the energy in the cab of the truck was anything to go by, he didn’t find a single thing funny.
“You get a good look at the asshole who did this?”
“Oh yeah.”
“You think you could pick him out in a lineup?”
“Probably—wait. What do you mean, lineup?”
“As soon as I get you to the hospital, I’m calling the cops. They’ll probably want you to come down to the station when you’re feeling better to ID this fucker.”
“No cops!” I said in a panic, swallowing down the pain in order to sit up so I could see him better. “No cops, and no hospital. I’m fine.” Or I would be as soon as the world stopped spinning.
He jerked around again, this time looking like he wanted to throttle me.
“Are you out of your fucking mind? You were unconscious in the goddamn parking lot! I’d have called an ambulance if I thought they could get you to the hospital faster.
You need a scan to make sure it’s just a concussion and not something a whole lot fucking worse,” he bit out.
I didn’t have the money for a visit to the ER, let alone how much a freaking MRI was going to cost me.
It wasn’t like I could get grifter’s insurance or something.
I just needed to go home and ice all my boo-boos.
I’d be right as rain in a few days. But when I told West as much, his reply was a string of colorful curses that would have made my father and brother proud.
“I’m taking you to the hospital. End of story. And you’re going to file a goddamn police report when you get there.”
Like fresh hell I was. I tried a new tactic then—bargaining. “Okay, I’ll stop fighting you on the hospital. But no cops. That’s the deal.”
Please take it. Please take it. Please take it, I pleaded silently.
The muscle in his jaw danced as he worked it back and forth for a few seconds. “We’ll discuss why you refuse to talk to the police later, but right now, I want you to tell me everything you remember.”
There wasn’t really anything I couldn’t recall. Well, except for one thing. Answering his question with a question, I asked, “How did I end up in your truck?”
That tension in his jaw grew even tighter. “You called me,” he gritted out. “You don’t remember?”
My memory was a little fuzzy at the moment, but I vaguely recollected coming to in the parking lot just long enough to think first, “ew, gross, I’m lying on the dirty ground and am going to have to burn this shirt,” then thinking I needed help.
I’d managed to locate my phone that had fallen out of my purse when I dropped it and scrolled to West’s number on the freshly cracked screen, because yes, I was the chump who’d saved the hot guy’s number in my phone.
At some point during that call, I’d blacked out again, and here we were.
“Oh yeah. That’s right.”
“Scared the fucking shit out of me,” he grunted. “I walked out that door, and I thought you were fucking dead.” Wow, he was pretty liberal with the F-bombs when he was in a mood.
“I’m totally fine,” I attempted to placate, even though I worried that wasn’t completely true. I was pretty sure I had a few cracked ribs. If my wrist wasn’t broken, it was definitely sprained, and I was absolutely sure I had a concussion. You didn’t black out from a beating and come out unscathed.
I could have sworn he growled from the front seat, so I decided it was best to spend the rest of the ride in complete silence.
West
I paced the small emergency room bay like a caged tiger as Stella was examined. If the nurse had been anyone other than Temperance Walker, Hayes’s wife, I probably would have snapped by now at the number of gasps and winces coming from Stella each time she was poked and prodded.
There’d been no missing the surprise on Tempie’s face the moment I walked in carrying a bruised and beaten woman, and the million questions she wanted to ask, but she was a professional, keeping everything about Stella and getting her as comfortable as possible before the doctor could see her.
“One a scale from one to ten, what’s your pain right now?” Tempie asked while taking Stella’s blood pressure at the same time.
“About a four,” she said through a hard jaw and clenched teeth, her nostrils flaring on an inhale.
She really was the world’s shittiest liar.
I gave her a look that had her curling her lips between her teeth before remembering the bottom one was split and swollen.
Then she rethought her answer and tried again.
“Maybe a seven . . . or like, seven and a half?”
I had a feeling she was still down playing it, but I let it go.
I’d gotten her to agree to come to the hospital, after all.
And given that she had been lying broken and bruised in the back seat of my truck and had still argued about it, I had a feeling she didn’t give in very often. I decided to call this one a win.
The image of her lying unconscious and beaten on the ground was burned into my brain and would be for a good, long while. My stomach still twisted at the thought of it, and I couldn’t make myself sit still for more than a few seconds.
There was a part of me that revolted at the idea of leaving Stella alone, but there was another part, a part that felt wild and feral, that wanted to be out on the streets, hunting down the motherfucker who had hurt her. I wanted to make him suffer, make him hurt the way he’d hurt her.
I couldn’t remember the last time I felt this out of control. The Marines had hammered patience into me, yet one look at Stella, and all that training went right out the window.
Tempie spoke then, pulling me from my revery. “Okay, Ms. Ryan—”
Stella interrupted her quickly enough. “Please. Call me Stella. No need to be so formal when you’ve literally seen me at my worst, right?” She attempted a smile and chuckle that made her wince and let out a soft curse.
Tempie gave her a kind, gentle look. I was sure this wasn’t the first time she’d seen a woman come in, beat to hell. “And you can call me Tempie. It’s really nice to meet you, Stella.” She cast me a sly look before asking, “So how do you and West know each other?”
Jesus. The woman was covered in bumps and bruises, but did that stop Tempie from grilling her for information? Of course not.
“Oh, well, um . . . We don’t really know each other all that well.”
“So you aren’t dating or anything?”
“Christ, Temp. Enough with the third degree, already. This isn’t the time or place, yeah?”
She held up her hands in surrender. “Hey, I was just making small talk. Is it really my fault you’re one of the most eligible bachelors in town?”
“All right, out,” I ordered. “Let her rest for a bit, would you?”
She gave out a little laugh and started for the curtain. “All right. I’ll be back with the doctor once your labs come in. If your pain gets any worse, hit that button on the side of your bed, okay?”
“Thanks.”
The curtain flapped behind Tempie, closing Stella and me into the small, tent-like area together.
“Most eligible bachelor, huh?” Stella asked with a teasing lilt to her voice. I cut my eyes to her, giving her a look that had her lifting her uninjured hand in surrender. “Sorry, sorry. No joking about your bachelorhood. Got it.”
How she could be so casual after what had just happened to her blew my mind.
I wasn’t ready to let it go just yet—or ever, so I turned to her and crossed my arms over my chest, bracing my feet shoulder width apart as I demanded, “I want to know what the hell happened tonight. And don’t bother trying to lie to me. You’re fucking terrible at it.”
“Am not,” she muttered indignantly.
Against my will, my lips hooked up in a smirk. How she could make me want to laugh while sitting there with a black eye and a busted wrist was something I was sure I’d never understand, so I just let it go. “Quit trying to change the subject. Start talking, or I’m calling the cops in.”
That had her changing her tune real fast. She blew out a heavy sigh that must have tweaked her ribs from the way her face pulled tight.
I gave her a moment to collect herself, and, fortunately, she started in right after.
“A few months back, my dad pulled a con on the wrong person in Philadelphia. Now that person is determined to make us pay by tacking interest to what we took—even though we paid it back,” she added quickly.
This wasn’t starting off very well. “Who did he con?”
She bit the uninjured corner of her lip as she swung her legs back and forth off the side of the hospital bed. “Um, well, let’s just say he’s not a very nice person.”
Clearly, I thought grimly as I took stock of her injuries once more. “A name, grift.”
“Uh . . . you ever hear of Grady O’Brien?”
“Fucking shit,” I hissed, reaching up to rake a hand through my hair. That reminded me, I was overdue for a cut, but that was going to have to be backburnered until I got this shit sorted. “Your dad conned the Irish fucking mob?”
“He didn’t know!” she cried defensively. “It was an accident. If he’d known who the guy was, he never would have pulled that job.”
“Well it doesn’t really matter now, does it?” I bit out, some of my anger shifting from the asshole who’d beaten on Stella to the asshole who had gotten Stella into this situation in the first fucking place. “Why’d O’Brien target you instead of your old man?”
The expression that flitted across her face just then left me feeling unsettled.
“They got to him first a couple months ago, and believe me, they worked him over a million times worse than this.” She lifted her good arm as high as she could get it.
“This is more of a reminder to him that time’s running out. ”
Fucking hell. “How much time do you have left?”
She scrunched her face and looked off to the side like she was calculating in her head. “A month, give or take a couple days?”
“And how much did you take this guy for?”
Her lips pulled into a wince. “One point two.”
It was a wonder I didn’t scrape the bottom of my jaw on the tile floor with how fast it dropped. “Million?” I barked.
“We paid back what we could when he first found us,” she spit out frantically. “We hadn’t spent it all, so we gave what we still had back, but with the interest and everything . . . we’re basically screwed.”
“How much do you still owe?”
“Um, well, you see—the thing is—”
“How much, Stella?”
“One point two.”
I squeezed my eyes closed and pinched the bridge of my nose as I searched for patience. “I know how much you conned the guy for. What I want to know is what you still owe him.”
“One point two,” she repeated. “We managed to get the remainder of what we’d stolen, but . . . he charged double for interest.”
“Jesus Christ,” I bit out, feeling a tick form behind my eye.
“Hey, this isn’t your problem,” Stella clipped combatively, a sour look twisting her features.
But even that face, and the bruising and swelling that marred it, didn’t detract from her beauty.
“I didn’t ask for your help, and I certainly don’t need it.
I was doing just fine on my own, thank you very much. ”
I gave her a bewildered look. “Really? You call casing a bar to see how many pockets you can pick doing just fine?”
She opened her mouth to argue, but quickly clamped it shut again when she realized she didn’t have a leg to stand on.
“How much have you collected so far?”
She lowered her head and began picking at her cuticles, sullenly mumbling, “About four hundred grand.”
Shit. There was no way in hell they were going to be able to come up with the rest of that money.
Before I could grill her further, the doctor came in, and I was left to mull over how the hell I was going to fix this.