25. Anna
ANNA
Oh, God . There was so much blood.
It had all felt like it happened in slow motion. As I’d felt the slight recoil of the gun in my hand, Archer’s body had hit me on my left side—hard.
After Archer had rolled off of me, I looked up to see the vape guy on the ground with Hector standing over him and holding the same gun he used to kill Giovanni .
Realizing the vape guy was no longer a threat, I’d turned to look at Archer , and that was when I’d seen the blood—a lot of blood—coming out of Archer’s left side.
“You’ve been shot!” I’d yelled.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” I mumbled quickly, sitting upright and putting my hands over the wound on his left thigh, trying to stem the blood flow.
Hector came to my side, ripping off his T -shirt, and gently pulled my hands off Archer so he could press the shirt to Archer’s thigh. “ Push this down and hold,” he said to me and then stood and walked a few steps away.
“Hello,” Hector said from behind me. “ Yeah , this is Officer Hector Madeira . Tell them we need an EMT here now. Archer took a GSW to the leg. Go through the door behind the front desk, down the hallway to the last room on the left, through a closet in the room, and then down a set of stairs.”
I realized he must have picked up the phone Archer had had earlier when talking to Vince and relayed that Archer had a gunshot wound.
I focused on Archer , who was moaning as I pressed the shirt into his side.
“Sorry. I know it hurts, but hold still,” I told him. “ Help is on the way.”
He started to close his eyes, either from the pain or because he was losing too much blood. Either way, it wasn’t good.
“Archer, stay awake. Do not close your eyes.”
“Just need to rest them real quick,” he muttered softly.
“No, no, no. Stay awake, Archer .” I kept one hand on the wound and moved my other to his face to slap his cheek lightly to wake him up.
“You promised me you’d be safe, dammit. You can’t leave me now,” I begged him.
“I just got you back. I’m not leaving you now,” he muttered to me quietly, and his words tore my chest open. “ I love you, Ace . Always have, always will.”
My breath hitched at what he said, but before I could say anything, his eyes closed and he went limp in my arms.
“No, no, no,” I yelled. “ Hector !”
I moved my hand back to his wound, pushing hard to try to keep any more blood from flowing out.
“Goddamn you, Archer . I love you, too, you stubborn man. Don’t you dare leave me now.”
Something wet hit the back of my hands but it wasn’t blood. I realized it was the tears streaming down my face.
Hector returned to my side, along with two other men dressed like EMTs .
“Anna, you need to move so they can take care of him,” Hector said to me gently, taking his hands and trying to remove mine.
“No, he’s lost too much blood,” I told him frantically. “ I have to keep it from coming out.”
“The EMTs can do that, Anna .” Hector tried harder, pulling my arms away.
I was no match for his strength. He lifted my arms, and I tried to move back, but then he reached around and grabbed me by the waist and pulled me back kicking and screaming. Eventually , I gave up fighting and just melted into him, sobbing.
I couldn’t lose him now. It was an awful moment to have that realization, but I knew I loved Archer . He was my one and only, and everything he had ever done—including divorcing me—had been out of love.
Would fate truly be cruel enough to take him from me twice?
* * *
Two hours. It had been two hours since they whisked Archer away in the ambulance.
Vince had come in shortly after the cops and feds had invaded the vape shop’s basement.
Kerrigan and another officer asked me a few basic questions at the scene, but after begging for twenty straight minutes, they finally agreed to finish questioning me at the hospital.
I wanted to be there when Archer came out of surgery.
Vince, not being a cop and mostly in the way at the scene, offered to drive me to the hospital. Sara and her boss were planning to meet me there as well for questioning.
On the drive over, Vince had called his dad as well as Jack to fill them in on what happened. Vince’s dad, Frank , had told him he and his wife were jumping on the first plane available, despite Vince telling them it wasn’t necessary.
When we’d arrived at the hospital, we’d been directed to the second-floor waiting area. Sara had come in a little while later to go over the questions the police would ask and coached me on how to answer so that I could maintain my cover while still giving them what they needed.
A short time after, two police officers arrived to take my statement, and Sara left to meet with her supervisors. The officers directed me to a small private waiting area. Vince assured me he would come get me if the doctor came out.
The questions were simple and went exactly as Sara had predicted, but I was itching to get out of there and back to the waiting area with Vince , and the cops could tell.
Even as simple as the questions were, they took almost an hour, and there was still no word from the doctors on how Archer’s surgery was going.
By the time I returned to the waiting area, it was to see Axel and Hector sitting near Vince talking in low tones. They all looked up when I walked into the room.
“Nothin’ from the doctor yet,” Vince said as I walked over to the chair across from him.
I sighed and slumped my body forward as I sat down.
The longer we stayed out here, the more I worried that something had gone wrong with the surgery. I willed myself to keep a positive attitude and mindset and looked back up at the men.
“Anna, what do you want to drink? I will find you something,” Axel offered, and I took him up on it because I could certainly use some caffeine right now.
After I gave Axel my drink preference and he left the room, I turned to Hector . “ Thank you,” I told him and then watched his face change to confusion, as though he couldn’t understand why I was thanking him.
“You just saved both our lives,” I told him. “ Not just from Giovanni , but from the Pagano Family , though I’m thoroughly confused as to which one was the threat.”
“From one undercover to another?” I said to Hector quietly, my nice way of begging him to tell me what he knew.
Hector looked to Vince , who mouthed back to him. She’s an NOC .
Hector looked around the room and realized we were the only three in this little waiting area. The next closest person was easily fifty feet away. That must have been enough distance for him, because he decided to share.
“From what I gathered while I was inside and the new information that I got today, it seems the older Pagano brother, Matteo , is who put out the hit on you and Archer as a way to kill two birds with one stone,” he said.
“ From Matteo’s standpoint, it gets rid of Archer as revenge for smearing the family name.
But it also puts a target on Joey’s back because it would look like he was the one who took out the hit since Archer put him in prison. ”
Holy crap. His own brother would backstab him?
“With Matteo and Joey’s father very ill and near death, it appears Matteo wanted full control of the family business and didn’t want his fuck-up brother messing it up now that he was out of prison and back in the fold,” Hector continued.
“ If Joey killed you and Archer , it would send him back to prison, clearing the path for Matteo . Giovanni was in charge of the operation and asked Rocco and me to take the hit out on Archer , but he requested to remove you on his own,” he said, pointing to me.
I had already told Vince , Sara , and the two cops who interviewed me about the “fan mail” I had been receiving at work from someone named Giovanni , and they promised they would look into it to see if they were, in fact, the same person.
“I reported the info about the hits to my handler, but Giovanni started acting weird around me, and I had to go to underground for a bit just in case anyone was on to me.”
That explained the fact that Kerrigan and Coleman told us he had gone quiet.
“I didn’t know about Giovanni’s separate plans for you until two days ago,” Hector added. “ That’s also when I started to put together the pieces about Matteo , because shit with Joey just wasn’t adding up.”
“How did you know?” Vince asked him.
“I didn’t for sure until today,” Hector said.
“ When Rocco and I were transporting Archer to the vape shop, Archer mentioned you all had arrested Joey for gambling. That worked perfectly, because if Giovanni was going to report that he found you and Archer dead at the vape shop that he just happened to visit, Joey would already be in custody for the gambling, so the police would have access to him before Joey could piece anything together about being framed.”
“But what about you and Rocco ?” Vince asked.
“At the very end, when we met Giovanni at the vape shop, he made a comment about finishing Matteo’s last request,” Hector said.
“ I realized then that he meant to kill Rocco and me and make it look like Joey asked us to do the hit for him. Because with us dead, there would be no way to corroborate Joey’s version of events. ”
“Holy crap,” I whispered. I started to ask what would happen next but was interrupted as a doctor walked into the room.
“Family of Archer Papadopoulos ?” he asked.
Vince and I immediately stood up.
“Surgery went well,” the doctor explained.
“ He’s still in the ICU until he wakes up but should be moved to a recovery room soon.
He had significant blood loss, but thankfully, the bullet didn’t hit any major arteries.
We retrieved the bullet and patched him up nicely.
We’ll likely keep him here for the next forty-eight hours at least, though, to be sure he doesn’t develop an infection. ”
“When can we see him?” I asked.
“Once he’s awake and moved into his room, a nurse will come get you,” the doctor replied. “ My guess is that will be in about an hour or so.”
Vince and I thanked the doctor and made our way back to our seats just as Axel walked back into the room. We filled him in on everything the doctor had just told us, and he offered to go call Wade and Jack and fill them in.
“Umm, Sissy ,” my sister’s voice suddenly sounded from behind me.
Iris and her protective detail, Officer Nolan , were standing at the entrance to the waiting area, and she was staring at Hector with confusion and curiosity.
“Why are you hanging out with Creepy McCreeperson version of Pedro Pascal from the hotel?”
Vince snorted beside me, and Nolan’s cheek twitched.
“You mean Hector ?” I asked her, using my thumb to point at him next to me.
“You know him?” she asked me.
“It’s a long story,” I told her. “ Have a seat.”
“So, he’s one of the good guys?”
“Yes, he’s definitely one of the good guys,” I told her.
She nodded and started to move toward me but kept her eyes on Hector for some reason.
“Sorry I called you Creepy McCreeperson ,” she said to him as she got close and then pointed to me and stuck out her other hand toward him. “ I’m Iris O’Hara , this one’s sister. I didn’t know you were a good guy when I saw you in the hotel.”
“Hector Madeira ,” he said, leaning forward from his chair, and shook her hand. “ You weren’t supposed to know I was a good guy at the time, so don’t worry about it.”
The two of them exchanged some kind of weird look before Hector stood up and announced he was leaving.
“I gotta head out. The boss wants to put a protective detail on me until all this Pagano shit blows over,” Hector told us. “ I’ll check in on Archer tomorrow, but let him know I was by.”
After he left, I filled my sister in on everything that had happened, and then we waited anxiously until we were allowed to go see Archer .