18. Chapter Eighteen
“She needs to be in a different room,” I bellowed at the terrified nurse who clutched a phone to her chest. “Do you know who I am?”
I was three seconds away from grabbing the nurse by the collar and shaking her. I was ready to throw my might around as Pakhan, and let them all know that the king of the fucking underground was here, ready to take them all to hell if they did not get my wife into a better room, where I could secure her.
Uniformed police milled about because the asshole, Brock, had the misfortune of still being alive, but on death’s door. They wanted to arrest him and do a full investigation, and were lingering to harass my wife to find out what happened.
I wanted them gone. I wanted to toss them out on their ass, and tell them that they had no business being in the same building as my wife, much less in the same fucking room.
I wanted to make a call to the highest echelons that I knew - the fucking CIA desk, or even fucking higher if I had to - to get these creeps away.
“You can’t, isoveli,” my sister had told me when I crushed the phone in my hand. “You’ll blow your cover. And ours. Don’t you understand how close we are?”
I didn’t fucking care. Blow up the goddamn plan. End the entire fucking scheme to end the mafia wars in New York City and blow up the goddamn triangle trade. I did not fucking care.
“My wife is in there,” I growled at my sister, pushing her away.
She shook her head, walking around the corner, a phone to her fucking ear.
I terrorized the entire floor until the nurses were so terrified, they ran the moment they caught my eye.
I don’t know how long I stood outside her door, my palms against the surface, staring at the little window at her helpless, unconscious form. Her thin hand was covered in plastic tubes, her body covered in yellow iodine and dried blood as the machines around her beeped - her only real sign of life. God, I could barely see her breathing.
My throat clenched. I must have stayed there for hours, my eyes never moving from her form.
I don’t know when the Governor of Maschusetts arrived. It was as if he just materialized beside me.
“Alright, old man,” Corbin said, coming over with his hands up in surrender. “Why don’t you head into the room, and I’ll get it handled here?”
I didn’t question his presence. Why would I? He was here, and he was an ally.
“She can’t stay down here,” I grabbed Corbin by the bicep and brought him into me. I looked around suspiciously at every nurse and bystander that I didn’t recognize. “You know what’s at stake. You know what could happen. I want the police gone. I want them all gone.”
“Quit panicking, compadre,” Corbin’s low voice pulled me from seeing red. “I’ll get it handled.”
He stepped away from me, that fake, award-winning smile on his lips as he grabbed the nearest nurse, and shook her hand.
“Hey, I’m Corbin McClellan, and I’d like to find out who’s in charge here. I’ve got some security concerns…”
“Hey, she can’t be moved until we get a chance to…” A cop tried to intervene in their conversation, but Corbin lifted a hand to shut him up as he continued.
“She needs to go upstairs, and I’m willing to pay to get her up there, okay? Do me a favor, get to Dr. Joanie Duluth, head of Cardio, and have her call me. Think you can do that for me, sweetheart?”
The nurse blushed, completely falling for his charm and scurrying away to do his bidding.
It was disgusting how he was able to do that. The power of his hazel eyes was something he took advantage of whenever he could. Yuliya stared daggers at the back of his head, but I didn’t have time to think about that right now.
“Mr. McClellan,” the uniformed cop with his big ass tool belt stepped forward, his navy blue outfit tight around a midsection from a little too much indulgence stepped forward. “You can’t just waltz in here, and make demands. You might be a big deal in Boston, but this is New York and we…”
Corbin pulled out the other personality he always kept in his back pocket. The one he kept for the errant war lord or violent criminal who thought they could throw their weight around and intimidate him into compliance.
He smiled, but it had none of the brightness that he had flashed on the unwitting nurse.
“Officer… Brendan, is it?” he said, poking at the cop’s name badge with an air of familiarity and condescension, as though he was talking to someone at a fast food counter, and not a member of New York’s self-proclaimed finest. “I might be the Governor of Massachusetts, but my influence is far wider than you could possibly comprehend. Now, if you want to make an enemy of me, that’s fine. I’ll enjoy the easy victory of squishing you under my boot. But I’m giving you fair warning that if you pick a fight with me, it won’t be fair, and it will be humiliating.” Then he straightened, and smiled, as quickly as the sun might peak from behind a silver cloud. “For you, of course. Not me. I’m gonna be golden.”
His smirk was a threat, though no one who hadn’t heard his words would have believed it. A smile of assured destruction. A psychopath’s smile.
If I wasn’t so distraught about Eve, I might have laughed and offered to get him a drink. But I didn’t.
It was good to have Corbin on my side. I needed allies right now. Allies who would protect me from myself.
My sister was right. I’d never tell her that, because she’d be a brat about it. We had worked too hard, for too long, to get to where we were. We were too close to accomplishing our mission. To blowing up the criminal underground in Boston and New York. To destroying the legacy our bastard of a father had given us.
It would be tragic to lose that now because I couldn’t keep my cool, because of the broken beauty on the other side of this door.
Corbin dismissed the cop with a wave of his hand, and the blustering man was left there standing, humiliated as Corbin picked up the phone.
“Hello Joanie! Glad you called. Hey, listen…” Corbin was full of charm as he walked away, talking to the head of the Cardiology Department into giving my wife a private room, on a secure floor. A VIP treatment that was generally left for dignitaries and political figures.
But if she didn’t make it, then nothing would matter. Everything I had ever done would be ash slipping through my filthy hands.
“The doctors and nurses are doing all they can.” Yuliya placed her hand on my shoulder, her long fingers curling into my blazer. “She’s going to make it. I wouldn’t say that, if I didn’t know it to be true.”
I blinked, placing my forehead against the glass.
“She doesn’t belong here,” I said through clenched teeth.
“We’re getting her a different room, we have it handled…”
“No!” I snapped, pushing off the door and staring at my sister, seeing nothing but misery around me. “I mean, she doesn’t belong here. With me. She wasn’t built for our world. She wasn’t built for the shadows. She… she can’t stay with us.”
Yuliya straightened, her arched brows coming together as she scowled. “What are you talking about?”
“I mean…” My stomach fell to my guts, as I voiced the fucking words that would tear me apart. “I need you to go back to the house, go to her nightstand. There’s a book called Queen of the Night. There’s an inscription inside from some asshole called Ryan.” If she loved him, he wasn’t an asshole. But accuracy didn’t matter to me. I had lost to a man who wasn’t even here, because I was a son of a bastard, and she was related to fucking bastards. “I need you to find out who and where he is.”
“Why?” she asked, crossing her arms. “I’m not going to kill a man just because you’re jealous. That’s not what we do.”
“We’re not going to kill him,” I grumbled, even though that would have been my instinct, if I didn’t have all the information in my hands. “We’re going to deliver her to him, and give her a chance at a real life.”
I placed my hand on the glass, swearing that I could almost feel her pulling me in. My imagination ran wild, thinking that she was calling to me, begging me to bring her home. To bring her happiness. To help her find the joy that she had been robbed of when she was no more than just a girl.
Aoibheann was still young. She still had a chance at a full life with the person she truly wanted. So she could become who she was always meant to be.
Yuliya looked confused, then angry. Then, resigned.
My sister liked her. They had grown to love her, as I had. But my sister, daughter and I were used to the pain of misery. We were numb to it. In all her years of sorrow, Aoibheann wasn’t. She had held on to her light, and it deserved to be unencumbered.
My sister turned from me, ready to do my bidding, when I called out. “Yuliya!”
She turned to me and tilted her head. “Change your mind already? I didn’t think you’d come to your senses this quickly, but…”
“Make sure the jet is ready to go to Ireland the moment she’s able to travel,” I interrupted her because I would not allow anyone to change my mind on this. I needed to be a good man, for once. I needed to be the good guy. “Set up an account under her name. Her maiden name. Make sure it draws from mine.”
“You’re insane, Jericho,” she said, slowly, her eyes cutting through the door. “Have you talked to her about this?”
“I don’t need to,” I turned away from her and whatever lecture she was about to give. “It’s the right thing to do.”
If she stayed by my side, she would die broken, and unhappy, jumping at shadows and running from bad guys. There would always be scars, bullets, and fire if she stayed with me - with us. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone who wasn’t forced into it by birth. If I could get her out, then I would.