Rex
“Thank you for coming with me, King.”
With how I’d spent the second half of last year, I was no stranger to hospitals.
That didn’t mean I was eager to return to one, especially when Jeremy Kinnock was the patient.
Still, Wynter needed me, so here I was.
“You don’t have to thank me,” was all I said, my voice gruff.
I meant it. No thanks were necessary. But neither was I about to break out in welcoming grins when I clapped eyes on the fucker who thought he could offer up my daughter as collateral for his debts.
With the Chairman’s kid back home, the Kinnocks had returned to their humdrum lives with little fanfare.
Ally was no worse for wear, but after a call with her mom, Wynter had told me that Jeremy’s injuries were bad.
A smile danced on my lips at the thought.
I’d left him with a couple broken bones and bruises, but the Triads were particularly adept at gifting invisible injuries.
The fucker would be pissing out of a tube for the next six months.
Almost whistling under my breath with glee at the thought, I strode into the hospital room with her and came across a wan Ally who was trying to sleep in one of the uncomfortable chairs that were the same the world over.
I could have told her that there was no comfortable way to catch some Zs on those torture devices, but I didn’t waste my breath.
Wynter’s fingers tightened on mine before she tugged hers free. I let her go, feeling…
Fuck.
It was stupid.
But I felt the crack appear between us, the genesis of a chasm as she wandered over to Kinnock’s bedside.
As predicted, he wasn’t overly bruised. What was there lingered from when I’d beaten him, but he was pissing in a bag and he had casts on all four of his limbs.
I hoped the Triads had done some serious damage to his system—the fucker deserved it.
Shoving my hands into my pockets, I watched as Wynter’s bottom lip trembled. She moved around the foot of the bed and placed her lips gently on Kinnock’s cheek.
A soft breath gusted from him, but he didn’t wake up.
I collected his chart and peered at it. When I couldn’t make out half the shit I was reading, I took some photos and sent them to Stone for analysis.
Ally’s eyes popped open at the sound of my camera clicking, but she saw Wynter first. “Wynter, baby,” she rasped.
Her hands were outstretched for her, and Wynter dashed around the bed, dropped to her knees, and slipped her arms around Ally with an immediacy that made me feel the chasm widen some more.
At that moment, I might as well not have been there.
I knew what Rachel would say—these were her parents. They’d been there for her since she was little. I, on the other hand, was still a stranger. It was the first time I felt that way though. As if I were intruding in her life.
It sucked.
Shit, it more than sucked. It fucking hurt.
Annoyed by my stupid emotions, I backed out of the room. My beliefs were rammed home when she didn’t look up at me once as I retreated to the waiting area.
For a couple minutes, I didn’t do much else other than pace.
Then, when I decided I’d sound like a real fucking wimp if I bleated to Rachel about how I felt pushed out, I chose to be proactive.
Maybe I was jumping ahead of myself, but in my gut, I knew what was gonna happen.
I’d been hopeful, and had thought Rach was being negative, but in actuality, she was a realist.
Wynter wouldn’t be coming back with me.
Not within the next week or so anyway.
That meant I had shit to do and not a lot of time to do it.
I had to find them a secure address, and I needed to make sure the Triads were genuine when they claimed they no longer held any interest in the Kinnocks.
I didn’t have to worry about Kinnock and gambling, not with the fucker laid up, so that was something.
The urge to snatch her away, to drag her back with me was strong, but I couldn’t.
Whatever time she gave me and Rach was a blessing, a gift. She could remove herself from our lives so easily. She owed us nothing. So I had to take it carefully.
Fuck, I hated that.
I was the President of the goddamn Satan’s Sinners’ MC. I didn’t do shit carefully. I had the power to handle situations with a jackhammer, not a scalpel.
My cell buzzed before my temper could explode.
Spying Stone’s name on the Caller ID, I picked it up and told her by way of a greeting, “You could have just texted me.”
“Who did that chart belong to?”
“Acquaintance of mine.”
She grunted. “You shouldn’t have taken photos of it.”
“Shouldn’t do a lot of shit. What did it have to say?”
“The guy has cirrhosis of the liver. Combined with that beating, he’s gone on the list for a liver transplant.”
My brows rose. “Cirrhosis of the liver’s from drinking, right?”
“Yeah. That’s the most common trigger.”
From what Wynter had told me, that didn’t come as much of a surprise. It wasn’t a big stretch to think that Kinnock was into booze and drugs if the guy came back from nights out with a temper fierce enough that he beat on Ally.
Not that Wynter had told me that.
The Disciples had when they’d confirmed that the cops had been called in for domestic violence at their place.
I didn’t give a damn about Kinnock’s liver.
In fact, I’d do everything I fucking could, including bribing Lodestar, to get him shoved down to the bottom of the list of organ transplants every fucking time he surged up on it, to make sure that he never left his hospital bed.
If he was stuck in here, it wasn’t like he could get drunk or high or go and gamble at the mahjong clubs.
“You gonna tell me who the patient is to you? I mean, the chart tells me it’s Jeremy Kinnock, but who the hell is he and why are you sending me his chart?”
“No.”
“Wasn’t the school QB a Kinnock?” When I didn’t answer, she grumbled, “Fucker.”
“That’s me.”
“It sure is. When are you coming home, jackass?”
“I’ll be back soon. That’s all that matters. Was there anything else on the chart?”
“Some internal bleeding from the beating. He was intubated until yesterday after a procedure.”
“He’s pissing into a bag.”
“Yeah. He’ll be doing that for a while. There’s damage to the penile tissue too.”
I smirked at nothing. As a guy, I should be wincing in commiseration. Instead, I felt nothing more than satisfaction.
I liked how Xiang worked. Maybe we could get along well together.
“Good to know.”
“It is?” She snorted. “Not for him, the sorry fucker.”
“Nothing ‘sorry’ about him.” In more ways than goddamn one. “I’ll speak to you later, Stone.”
“You’d better. You’ve had us all worried. Take care, Rex. See you soon, I hope.”
She didn’t let me reply, just ended the call.
One side of me was glad about what I’d just learned. The other side knew that Wynter’s bleeding heart was gonna be broken.
And I wasn’t wrong.
Later that afternoon, she came out of Kinnock’s room on legs that seemed to be unsteady.
Elbows on my knees, I’d spent most of the day crouched over my cell, trying to find her a suitable place to live that was close to school, so when she sunk into the seat beside me, I didn’t have the opportunity to hug her.
I didn’t consider myself a hugger.
But fuck, Wynter opened up a side of me that not even Rachel had breached.
I was her dad.
I wanted to fucking hug her.
Seeing the devastation etched into her expression, I heaved a sigh when I knew she’d learned that her dad had fucked up his liver.
It almost made me feel bad for what I was going to do to Kinnock, but not bad enough.
She could forgive him.
I wouldn’t.
“You okay?” I asked gruffly, watching that quivering mouth that made her whole head shake as she tried not to cry.
She sniffled. “Been better.”
“Want to talk about it?”
Her gaze collided with mine, and for some reason, that was when she let go.
Massive tears burst free and it set off a quake in her system that made her whole body shudder with the ferocity of her grief. She didn’t argue when I jostled her into sitting on my lap and didn’t complain when I wrapped my arms around her waist and hauled her close.
Wynter just buried her face in my neck and wept for the man who didn’t deserve her tears.
As for me?
One day, she’d lose me too. One day, she’d cry. One day, I vowed to be worthy of those tears she shed on my behalf.