Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
ANDIE
At some point during the night, Keane managed to sneak into my room while Jax and I were asleep. I came to realize this when I woke up to one dick poking my ass while another prodded my stomach. Not complaining one damn bit.
When I blinked my sleep-crusted eyes open, I was met with a soulful hazel assessment.
Keane’s fist was propped against his temple, elbow bent. He hadn’t shaved in a few days, and I couldn’t resist running my fingers all over his short dark beard.
“Bad dreams?” His morning voice was a deep husk, devoid of the usual assholery and snark I’m used to.
Even with Keane and Jax sleeping beside me, the nightmares refused to abate.
My response was to snuggle into my pillow as our gazes remained connected.
Keane rubbed his thumb across my lower lip. When my tongue slipped out to taste it, the pupils housed in his sleepy hazel eyes instantly blew wide with desire.
“I’ll be right back,” the doctor, who goes only by Mike, says, knocking me out of my daydream about this morning.
I only remember a few lucid seconds of him attending to me last night. Mike doesn’t look like your typical doctor with his disheveled brown hair and shaggy beard, wearing a blue button-down and jeans. He more closely resembles a lumberjack recluse, who lives in a log cabin on the side of a mountain.
During our small talk as he poked and prodded me, I found out he was a special forces medic who served two tours before an IED took half his leg and ended his military career. Helping people had always been his passion, so instead of letting depression over his circumstances sink him under, he went to medical school. I’m dying to ask him how he wound up being the personal physician for a mafia boss but decide to keep that curiosity to myself.
Declan and Liam ambushed me this morning as soon as I walked into the kitchen to get coffee. Keane and Jax had already left to go back to the Rossi estate, with a promise they would see me later tonight. However, I refused to go anywhere until I checked on Rafe. He was still asleep, and I didn’t have the heart to wake him. So, I stood in the doorway and looked my fill. The sheet had slipped down, exposing an inked, tanned chest with a happy trail of black hair disappearing into his sweatpants. His face was softer in slumber. Jet black lashes fanned over his cheekbones, his hair a soft mess on the pillow, one muscled arm thrown back over his head. Rafe was gorgeous before, but as a man, he’s mouth-watering. And nothing like his psycho older brother.
“Am I done? We can leave?”
It’s been fourteen hours since I escaped from Alejandro, but in that short time, I’ve been pampered, coddled, babied, and driven out of my ever-loving mind by overbearing, obstinate men who mean well. And now, I’m about to leave a private practice clinic that I was dragged to before I had my requisite two cups of coffee, so Mike could examine me from head to toe and take X-rays of my hand to show what was already glaringly apparent. I have a broken finger, a mild concussion, and several new contusions.
“Looks that way,” Declan says, his hands shoved deep inside the pockets of his black trousers.
Liam startles me when he softly kisses my lips. “I’ll get the car and pick you up outside,” he says.
My eyes dart to Liam as he pulls the door open to walk out, then they return to Declan. I think I blush a thousand shades of red as Declan gives me a knowing look about what he just witnessed. It’s only a matter of time before he knows that I’m with all four guys. But that’s a conversation to have at a much, much later time, not at the doctor’s office. It’s also a conversation I really don’t want to be present for when it happens. Yeah, we can skip the whole “I’m fucking four men, one of whom is your enforcer” conversation altogether.
Needing to change the subject, I happily announce, while raising my splinted and wrapped finger high in the air to make my case, “I told you I was okay.”
Okay isn’t exactly one-hundred-percent true. I’m still healing from all the other bruises and injuries I’ve incurred over the past few weeks, along with the newer ones from the car accident and Alejandro’s fist. I look like a walking Rorschach image.
Declan just arches a blond eyebrow at me, not dissuaded in the least. “I think we should talk about that.”
“Let’s not.”
His lips twitch under his short beard. “I know I’m new at the fathering thing, and Liam is one of three people I trust completely, but?—”
“Please don’t finish that sentence,” I hastily interject.
Holy hell, I didn’t think my cheeks could get any pinker. I’m almost twenty-one fucking years old, not ten. The days are long gone where I need the awkward birds and bees lecture. But it’s cute that Declan feels the need to try. We both missed out on so much together.
Thankfully, Mike comes back in, and I hop off the examination table, eager to get going.
He hands me a stapled printout with aftercare instructions. “Thank you,” I tell him, rolling the papers into a cylinder.
Mike gives Declan a white bottle containing painkillers that I’m supposed to take but most definitely won’t, and leaves after quickly going over the aftercare instructions with me.
Before I can take a step toward the door, Declan is at my side. He cradles the elbow of my right arm and guides me out of the white-walled room that smells like rubbing alcohol and disinfectant. I don’t protest the help, even though I don’t need it. His overcompensation is coming from a good place. I can only imagine what he went through while Alejandro had me. To finally find your daughter, who had been kept secret from you, only to almost lose her again.
“How about an early lunch?” I guide us to the exit for the stairs, not wanting to be stuck in an elevator again. I get enough of that confined hell at Falcon Tower. My unease about small elevators is getting better, especially when the guys are riding with me, but if I can avoid getting into one in the first place, I will.
“I can ask Pearson to prepare something.”
Upon meeting Pearson for the first time last night, he was not at all what I was expecting. The man is massive, as in total brickhouse huge. The side of his face is scarred from what looks like a nasty knife wound that didn’t heal properly, and he has more ink on him than Jax, which shouldn’t be possible.
“It would be nice to get some fresh air. We can grab some food from a street vendor and find a bench at Greenway Park,” I suggest.
There’s a nearby city park with a small koi pond just a few blocks from here. After Alejandro had me locked in a cage, then strung me up like a pig carcass in that small room, I need the space of the open outdoors right now.
We push through the clinic doors and step out onto the sidewalk. Most people are at work now, so the street and sidewalks are pretty much empty, with the exception of a few pedestrians, a jogger, and a metro bus that passes by.
Shielding my eyes from the intensity of the late morning sun, I peer down the street and see the black Range Rover coming out of the parking garage exit and heading our way.
“Liam’s here.” I turn and look up at Declan. He hasn’t given me a yes or a no about lunch in the park. “Pretty please?”
I know he’s about to give in when he smiles down at me. But that smile never completely forms.
Because in the blink of an eye, several things happen at once.
The squeal of tires. Declan shoving me behind him. The staccato of gunfire. The rev of an engine. The smell of burning rubber. My screams.
And the wet, warm feeling of blood as Declan collapses on top of me. My brain short circuits for a second before I understand what just happened.
Declan’s heavy body crushes me with dead weight.
“Declan?”
He doesn’t respond.
“Declan?”
Tears stream from my eyes like rivers. Please, no. Don’t do this to me. I just found him. We just found each other. It’s like the night Rafe was shot.
OhGodOhGod .
It takes effort to roll us over. So much red, everywhere. I cradle the back of Declan’s head, pushing my face to his ear.
“Open your eyes. Please open your eyes.” I can’t go through this again. I can’t lose another person I love. “Kellan! Help! Don’t let them take him!” I scream.
Shouts erupt all around me, but all I can do is stare at the man lying beneath me, motionless, on the sidewalk.
My father.
“Jesus fuck, Andie!” Liam shouts, jumping out of the SUV he drove onto the sidewalk.
I look up at him with bleak, beggar’s eyes. “Liam, do something.”
Suddenly, Mike is on his knees beside Declan, pushing me away to get to him. Without thought, I lunge at the doctor, but Liam grabs me and pins me in his arms.
“ Bella , stop,” he grunts as I go feral—kicking and screaming and clawing at his arms to let me go.
Chaos explodes all around me. The lingering smell of sulfurous cordite fills my nose as my ears fill with the sirens of police cars and an approaching ambulance. But my gaze never leaves the man who, within a handful of days, gave me more love than anyone else in my entire miserable life. I finally got to experience what it was like to have a real father.
“Dad,” I whimper, going limp against Liam.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
It’s a sound I’m used to. But instead of water, the drip is from my heart which is steadily leaking out of my chest the longer I sit in this goddamn uncomfortable chair in the waiting room at St. Mercy Hospital.
I need to itch the tickle on my cheek, but I don’t remove my hand from Liam’s strong grasp. He hasn’t left my side. Or maybe he has, and I didn’t notice. I’ve been zoning in and out like I did at the cabin after I killed Max. The ghost-white wall across from me serves as the movie screen for the horrific replay of today.
The police were here with their annoying questions that I refused to answer, but thankfully they didn’t ask too many once Declan’s lawyers got involved. And the mayor and the district attorney and the captain of the PD. Seems like Mike, the doctor, isn’t the only person in this city who’s on Declan’s payroll.
“Out,” a Russian accent barks, and several men scramble out of the waiting room. The voice is Pearson’s. “How is she?”
A rough hand cups my cheek, applying gentle pressure to turn my face. “ Bella , look at me. Come back to me,” Liam says, brushing away the tears I didn’t know were still falling with swipes of his calloused thumbs. I’m shaking so badly, the chair rattles. Not from fear, but from rage.
Alejandro did this. The bullets were meant for me, but Declan shoved me out of the way and stepped in front of me. He saved me by sacrificing himself.
Lips kiss the corner of my mouth. “Alexandria.”
“Don’t call me that.” How many times do I have to tell them not to call me by that fucking name?
The buzzing in my ears lessens, and my eyes focus on the room and the two men next to me.
“There she is,” Liam says softly.
“Any news?” I ask Pearson.
“Still in surgery. Go home.” Pearson, I’m finding out, is a man of few words.
I glare at the scary Russian. “No.”
“It wasn’t a yes or no question.”
“I’ve got her.” Liam lifts me in his arms and cradles me to him like a coveted possession. Like he’s daring anyone to try and take me away from him.
“I don’t want to leave him,” I protest. My voice is so raw and hoarse, it sounds like I’m choking out shards of glass.
Liam’s arms tighten around me, but I’m too numb and too spent to put up much of a fight. I think I’m going into shock. Everything is shutting down. I wish I could just crawl into the tub and feel my insides liquefy down the drain.
Pearson stands in front of us. This up close, he’s even scarier. Not because of his scars or his bald head covered in tattoos, but because of the intensity in his eyes. Black, fathomless eyes that could suck your soul right out of your body.
“Go home and get some rest.”
“I don’t want to leave him!” I shout in his face.
Declan was shot just like Rafe. Just like Kellan.
I live in limbo every day with Kellan’s ghost. What if I don’t get a chance to say goodbye to Declan like I never got to say goodbye to Kellan? Those thoughts circle around me like a vulture waiting to pick the bones of my devastated heart.
“Declan is going to pull through,” Pearson promises me. I want to believe him. So badly. “Repeat it, word for word. Say it back to me,” Pearson insists, waiting for me to comply.
I shake my head no. I’ve been lied to my entire life by everyone. I’m not going to add myself to that long list.
“Liam is going to take you back home. If anything changes, you’ll be the first call I make.”
I flinch when his hand comes to my face, hovering briefly before he runs a finger down my cheek. “Declan would not want your tears . Never show your weakness, Andie Levine .”
The way he emphasizes my name, Andie Levine. I am the daughter of Declan Levine. The king of an empire. Ruthless. Strong. Cunning. But also a man who could love. He loved me. Never show weakness . But God help me, I am weak.
Pearson sees my struggle to control my emotions as the tears keep falling. “ You will survive this, little flame, ” he says in Russian.