Chapter Twenty-Two
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Miko
“I tried to get in touch with your brother first,” Cosimo told me as I walked up to him on the street. “And Venezio.”
“I have them both doing shit for me today,” I admitted, tone apologetic, hoping he wouldn’t ask follow-up questions.
I was okay with… avoiding telling him what was going on. But I was going to struggle lying to his face.
“What do you need?” I asked, wanting to push the conversation forward toward safer topics.
“Remember we gave that crew an extension on their protection money?” he asked.
“The one who had to go out of state for a funeral?”
“Yeah, them.”
“What about them?”
“Just got word that no one died. Instead, they are trying to pay a local street crew for protection.”
“Fucking idiots,” I said with a sigh. Sure, they were probably cheaper. But they would also be less effective, less connected, and more likely to keep raising the price of protection each month, then viciously enforce that raise. “Could this be linked to the frat guy shit?”
“We’re looking into it. But in the meantime, I need some head-knocking.”
“Owners?”
“For now,” Cosimo said, jaw ticking, annoyed that anyone would go behind his back.
“Alright. How big is this crew… sorry,” I said when my phone started to ring in my pocket.
I was just reaching for it to silence it since no phone call was more important than talking to your capo when he was right in front of you. But when I saw Zeno’s name on the screen, something had my stomach twisting.
“Do you mind?” I asked.
Cosimo shrugged as I swiped the screen.
“What’s—“
“Max ran off,” Zeno said, sounding like he was running, his breath coming out fast and shallow.
“What? What are you talking about?” I asked, stomach starting to twist.
“She was making a phone call… then she just… flew out of here. Didn’t say anything.”
She said she was going to call Lil.
Even if Lil had information, Max was too smart to run out of there alone to meet with her.
Something was wrong.
Lil was in trouble.
“Tell me you’re with her,” I said, knowing Cosimo was watching me, but not giving a fuck as I turned and ran.
“She was too fast. I’m on the street, but I don’t know where I’m going.”
I was closer anyway.
But I rattled off the address for him, wanting backup just in case shit was really bad.
“I’m ten minutes out, max,” I told Zeno before hanging up and focusing on pushing my body harder and faster, not caring who I rammed into on the way, or how many car horns blew at me when I rushed across the crosswalks when the signs were red.
It felt like it took a fucking lifetime, my mind racing with images of horrible things happening to Max. Hands on her. New bruises and cuts to heal.
Or…
No.
Nope, I refused to imagine losing her. Not when I was just starting to have her to myself.
My lungs were burning when I finally saw Lil’s building.
I flew at it, ramming my fists into the wood when the knob wouldn’t budge.
“Max!” I yelled loud enough to make a trio of pigeons startle and fly off.
“Max,” I called again, ready to reach for my gun, to shoot off the fucking knob if I had to, consequences be damned.
But then the locks slid.
The door opened.
And there she was.
With Lil’s cannon in her hand.
“Sugar,” I said, the relief nearly enough to bring me to my knees as my hand went around her, hauling her to my chest. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m okay,” she said, voice a little tight until I realized I was crushing her. I loosened my hold, and she moved back. “But Lil…” she added, moving to the side to wave toward the apartment.
The place was wrecked. Furniture overturned, gems scattered all around, drops and streaks of blood on the floors and walls.
In the center of all of it was Lil, seated on her rolling chair, beat to fucking hell.
“Oh, fuck,” I said, taking a step inward when I heard footsteps behind me.
Max heard it at the same time, body stiffening, gun raising.
I reached out, pushing her wrist down, as Zeno came in the door. Still in his ugly sleep pants and oversized tee. But now with taco slippers on his feet.
And, I noticed, the glint of a gun poked out from his too-long sleeve.
“It’s okay. It’s just Zeno,” I told Max as I carefully pulled the gun from her hand.
She was trembling.
I didn’t know if it was fear, anger, or just the adrenaline that had no place to go.
I pulled her to my side as Zeno came in, closing and locking the door.
“Zeno, can you call Salvatore?” I asked as I approached Lil, more worried about the blood I saw on her than I was willing to tell Max. “Heya, Lil. How’re you feeling?” I asked.
“Pissed,” she admitted, chin jutting.
“I bet. Can I?” I asked, gesturing toward her face.
She gave me a small nod, and I carefully prodded around her nose and eye sockets, where the swelling and bruising looked worse.
Zeno moved in, finished with his call, and used the flashlight on his phone to give me more light to inspect the wound on Lil’s head.
“Oh, God,” Max whimpered, turning away.
“It’s alright,” I said automatically as I pulled apart Lil’s blood-soaked hair.
“It doesn’t look alright.”
“Head wounds bleed like a motherfucker,” I told her. “How far out was Sal?” I asked Zeno.
“He said he just needed to grab his kit. Twenty minutes, max.”
In the meantime, Zeno and I carefully wiped away as much blood as possible as Max put ice into bags for Lil to hold to her face and ribs while Max held one onto her worryingly swollen knee.
“It’s Sal,” Salvatore called through the door, making me move away from Lil to answer. “How is she?”
“It’s not great. But I’m trying not to worry anyone. She’s gonna need scans.”
“That’s not a problem,” Salvatore said, waving my worries away as he strode confidently into the room, completely unfazed by the mess.
Salvatore “the Surgeon” Costa was the Family’s one-man medical team.
He wasn’t formally a doctor or anything, but he’d always had a knack for it. And the stomach to be able to look at some of the gnarliest shit without a blink.
“Hey, honey, let’s get a look at you, okay?” Sal asked as he set one of the desks back on its feet so he could put his kit down.
“Come here. Let’s give him some space,” I said, pulling Max with me over to the other side of the room.
Each time Lil whimpered or cried out as Salvatore carefully inspected her injuries, Max jumped.
“She’s in good hands,” I assured her.
“I get that you guys use battlefield medicine, but she needs to get that knee looked at. Like… the inside.”
“I know. Salvatore has his ways. Trust me. But if she wants to go to a normal hospital, she can.”
“I don’t,” Lil called, making my brows raise at her hearing.
“Tell me what happened,” I demanded of Max.
“I was trying to call Lil to check in. And when she answered… she asked for help. So, I ran here.”
“And interrupted a robbery?” I asked.
Lil worked a job that had a lot of inherent risk. From clients. From people who got wind of how much money in precious gems she had just lying around at all times.
“It was him, Miko,” Max said, face going hard.
“It was him, who?”
“Him. With the blue eyes.”
“What? How the fuck did that happen?” I asked, glancing over toward Lil, knowing she was the only one who might have that answer, but knowing she was in no shape to answer questions.
“I shot him,” Max said, making my head whip back toward her.
“What?”
“I shot him. In the thigh. I don’t know if that… helps at all.”
If it was bad enough to need to go to the hospital, maybe. But if he just tried to take care of it himself, probably not.
“Maybe,” I said. But it was right then that Salvatore started to speak again.
“Alright, honey. We need to take you to get a scan of your knee and head. Maybe your ribs. It will be at a facility. But we’ll be going in the back door and avoiding paperwork. After that, depending on what the scans say, you might not have any choice but to go to the hospital,” he warned. “If you don’t need surgery, though, I can take care of you at my office.”
“Alright,” Lil agreed. “But…” she said, looking around her place.
“We’ll take care of this,” I assured her.
With that, Salvatore led her out the door and into a car parked half on the sidewalk out front.
“You need to sit,” I told Max, trying to push her into a chair.
“No. No, I want to help.”
She wrenched away from me, dropping down onto the floor, finding various bins, and painstakingly starting to sort the gems.
“I can help,” Zeno said, even though we both knew he was practically allergic to organization.
“No, I want you on this fuck,” I said, jaw tightening at the idea of what might have happened to Max if she hadn’t gotten her hands on that gun. “Find him. I want this done.”
He headed back out, leaving me to join Max on the floor for what seemed like an almost hopeless task.
“I’m starting to see why Lil thought it was absurd that I might think she had my diamonds,” I decided as we filled container after container of various gemstones.
“Yeah,” Max agreed, placing the last of the emeralds into a bin, then placing it on the table. “I guess this is her retirement plan when she gets sick of the work.”
“Did you happen to get a chance to talk to Lil?” I asked. “About why he was here?”
“No. There wasn’t time. He was here. Then we were fighting. She passed me the gun. Then he was gone, and I was trying to see how she was.”
“We can talk to her once Sal gets her patched up.”
“Does he actually know what he’s doing?”
“The whole Family uses him. He works out of an actual doctor’s office. And he’s been slowly adding fancy-ass medical equipment to it. He even has a surgery room now. She’s in the best hands. Definitely getting more one-on-one care than she’d get at one of the overcrowded hospitals.”
“Okay,” Max agreed, finished with the bigger diamonds, then reached for a piece of paper, using it to sweep the tiniest of them into a pile.
“As soon as he’s done, he will call me. We can go there, talk to her. Bring her home, if that’s what she wants.”
“She can’t come back here. She can’t be alone,” Max said. “She needs someone to help her. To… protect her.”
“We will figure it out,” I assured her. “I’ve got security covered. And if she needs help getting around, I can hire a nurse. Or have one of my sisters come and help. Whatever she needs. She’s not going to be alone.”
“Megs,” she said, looking up at me with wide, panicked eyes.
“Megs should be almost to her inn by now.”
“But what if…”
“Max, baby, focus, okay? If he was here, he can’t catch up to Megs and Nicole. If you want, I can make my brother hang in town, watch them from a distance. But I genuinely think they are safe where they are.”
“Okay. Right. Yeah, you’re right,” she said, and I watched as she started to compartmentalize her emotions, making them more manageable. “Let’s just hope Zeno can figure out who this asshole is, so this stops once and for all.”
“Did he say anything? Anything that might help us narrow him down?”
“No. He mostly said he should have killed me the last time. Then it was just a lot of cursing and fighting.”
We worked for another two hours before we had the place straightened. Not knowing where to put anything, we just left everything on the tables, so when Lil was well enough, she could organize how she wanted.
By the time we had cleaned up the blood, Salvatore had shot me a text, telling me we could come to his office to see Lil.
“Ready to hopefully get some answers?” I asked, offering Max my hand.
She glanced at it for a second but surprised me by reaching to take it, her fingers slipping between mine.