Chapter 13
Carmine
My leg feels like hell as I walk into the hospital through a back entrance.
It’s a hospital on the city outskirts. Well-funded thanks to all of the crime families showing up with incidents we need kept quiet, so it only takes a minute or two before I’m taken into a back room to get a blood transfusion.
I’m wheeled back, actually, against my will. I feel weak and ridiculous being wheeled back, but in reality, I can barely walk, so what else were they supposed to do?
I don’t let Soren come with me, much to his dismay. I smirk to myself as I think about him sitting outside in the hallway, grumbling to himself.
It’s the least he deserves for fucking me over. I can’t believe he lied to me.
Actually, I can. Maybe that’s the problem. I knew the entire time that I shouldn’t really trust him or his family, but I kept doing it anyway. I should’ve said no to their offer for more guards. I should’ve said no to his offer of watching my back.
Now that I know it’s the Fiorellis I need to be watching my back from, I’m honestly not sure what to do.
That’s a lie. I know what I should do. I should get rid of all of them, including Soren. Make sure they don’t have access to my family whatsoever.
Doing that will make it clear that I know what they’re up to, though, and my family isn’t ready for a full-blown fight. Not with them. They’re different than the Carvels; the Fiorellis can stand on their own. It’s why I’d even been willing to be on an equal level with them in the first place.
Too bad they’re too greedy for that.
“Sir, are you alright?” the nurse asks me after putting in the IV line. I’ve just been sitting in the bed in silence, not reacting whatsoever.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I insist. “Are you done yet?”
He eyes me. “Yes, this will take a couple hours. I’ll get you something to drink and eat. You need to get your strength back. Would you like a doctor to take a look at your leg?”
“It’s already been taken care of,” I reply in a cold and emotionless tone. I don’t even look at the nurse, just forward at the little TV in the room that’s playing the news at a low volume.
“Alright, Sir,” he says nervously. He knows who I am, clearly, even if we haven’t exchanged names.
“Don’t worry about me,” I mumble. “Your job is safe. Just do it.”
He exhales slowly. “Thank you.” Then he starts to walk out of the room.
“Wait,” I say and look at him.
He pauses. No, more like flinches to a stop. “Yes, Sir?”
“What is happening with the two other men that came here about an hour ago?” I ask. “The guards.”
He’ll know who I mean, and if he doesn’t, someone will.
He blinks at me. “Oh. The other gunshot victim?” he asks, and looks to the side anxiously. “Well, unfortunately, Sir, he didn’t make it.”
I swallow the bile in my throat. That one had been one of ours. Tango. I didn’t know his real name, or at least his birth name, he’d always gone by Tango for the three years he had been with us.
Now, because of Soren, he was dead.
“Thank you.” That’s all I say before the nurse leaves for real this time.
No, maybe it’s not all on Soren.
I had gone to that poker game with the intention of seeking revenge. Revenge on a man who was already dead. Revenge against his family.
Jackson had tried to rape me. He had attempted to do something even his family couldn’t believe he’d tried to do. Ironic, considering one of them had then decided to finish Jackson’s job.
Still, was it really their fault that he got it in his head that I was fucking with his wife and decided to come after me?
No, maybe it wasn’t. Was it Soren’s?
He seemed just as surprised as me about it all. But he’d shown up at the last minute to kill Jackson.
How can I be certain it wasn’t something he planned? If this—what happened tonight—was?
I close my eyes and tilt my head back against the white cotton sheet on the hospital bed. I can’t be sure. All I can do is remember the look of rage on Soren’s face. The brutal way he had killed Jackson, quick but violent.
The way he’d taken care of me after.
He took care of me tonight too, but he was guilty.
My hands ball into fists for a moment.
It’s all so confusing.
Nevertheless, a man is dead. A good man. One of my men. A man with a family. Not many of our guards have families; it’s a perk of hiring men with shady and dark pasts to protect you. They usually come alone with the only baggage being what’s on their shoulders.
Tango, though, he’d met a lovely little woman two years before, and they had a five-month-old daughter. His wife and daughter lived miles from here, just to be safe, but what kept them safe, didn’t keep him safe. Not even slightly.
His wife, Isabella, wouldn’t blame Soren, nor would she blame the Calvers. No, she would blame me.
It was my job to protect her husband. My job not to put him in danger.
By choosing to walk into that alleyway, whether I knew it was a set up or not, even if it hadn’t been… I had put my family, blood and otherwise, in danger.
For the first time in weeks, I feel truly and painfully sober.
Perhaps it’s time that I start to take some responsibility.
The next thing I know, I’m waking up in the hospital bed with a few pints of someone else’s blood coursing through my veins and a throbbing ache in my leg. Whatever painkillers they’d given me when I first arrived are clearly wearing off already.
Good. I want to be as clear headed as possible for what I’m about to do next.
Or at least, what I should do. All I can do at the moment is wait for a nurse to return. As much as I want to rip the IV out myself and just walk off, I actually want to be at my best before I leave. Not missing any of my blood.
When a nurse finally walks in, it’s a different one. There must’ve been a shift change.
“You’re free to go whenever you like. Your discharge papers…” she trails off at the end of her sentence for a moment. “They’ll be filed under Claude Valdam. So, there’s nothing you need to work about.” Her smile wavered.
Everyone here is nervous around me. Around us. For good reason. For all they know, one wrong move and they’ll be losing their heads.
I don’t think shooting a nurse is on my list of to-do’s today either way, as much as my father might’ve been hot headed, Tommaso is the one who got the bulk of that trait.
I’d rather ask questions first. Especially after what I walked into earlier.
Such a fucking idiot…but, it isn’t just me. Soren. He knew about it, and he let me walk into it, only to jump in after I’d been surrounded.
“Thank you,” I say simply, but my eyes aren’t on her as she takes the IV out, they’re on the doorway.
Soren is standing there with his hands in his jean pockets.
“I figured you need a ride home,” he says once the nurse walks past him and out of the room.
“My family can get me home,” I tell him.
“Really?” he asks. “Cause they’re not here.” He looks around the room then behind his shoulder.
“I didn’t have them alert the family,” I admit. “I wanted to do that after.”
He steps into the room and reaches into his back pocket. “You’ll need this then.” Soren holds my phone out to me. The screen is covered in hairline cracks but it still works.
I take it from him and then eye him as I’m swiping to my text messages. There’s a few asking where I am. Talking about a family meeting. I scowl.
It’s definitely needed. That much I know, and I have quite a few things I need to say, but I’m not ready yet. Not ready to face my family.
I’m barely ready to face the man right in front of me, and it’s his transgressions that need to be made up for, not mine.
Made up for… It seems I’ve already made up my mind. I can’t get rid of Soren—no matter what I should or should not do.
Soren has saved my life several times, but that’s not the only reason.
I turn my phone off completely and get up from the bed. I hadn’t been forced to change into a hospital gown, thank God, but I have an awful band around my wrist that itches. I rip it off and toss it to the side.
“We need to talk,” I tell Soren, and he looks back at me with a dark expression. I saw my own cold eyes reflected in his.
Soren nods. “Just tell me where, and I’ll take us there.”
The next moment I’m in the passenger seat of Soren’s car and he’s driving down the dark road to not a Fiorelli safe house but one of ours.
A Dresvanni safehouse. One of the more well-kept ones on the coast a few miles south of the hospital.
I know that there will be hot water, fresh clothing, and something to drink when I get there.
Briefly, I forget about how sober I had felt before I fell asleep earlier. I forget what I’d told myself about taking responsibility. Anxiety creeps up my spine. What am I going to say to Soren exactly?
I don’t have enough time to think about it before we’re there at the small house on a hillside surrounded by pines and pinecones.
Every little bit of anxiety inside me seems to quell the second we’re alone inside the house.
I tell myself it’s not because Soren is here with me, but because this house means something to me, and that’s true.
It still looks very much the same as it did when I was a child.
Not much of the décor has been swapped out.
A soft small blanket still remains draped over the edge of the couch.
A bit tattered and torn, but still useful.
Crocheted in pastels of brown and green, with little accents of pale rose pink.
I’m standing in the hallway staring at it, nearly forgetting Soren’s presence entirely.
“So, let’s talk.” His voice comes from behind me and I take a slow breath.
“Right,” I turn around to face him. “How could you betray me like that?” I ask him. “I trusted you, your family… maybe against my better judgement. But you said you wanted to protect me, Soren.”
Soren’s eyes are dark and cloudy like a stormy sky. “I do, Carmine,” he insists. “That’s why I’m here right now, but it’s more complicated than just protecting you and your family, you know that.”