Cash (Kiss of Death MC #15)

Chapter One

Cash

I pushed through the sliding glass doors of Nashville General with my shoulders squared, wearing my Kiss of Death cut proudly.

I’d spent five years inside Terre Haute, and my parole dictated I do community service.

Thanks to the lawyer who worked with the club’s women’s shelter, Haven, I got stuck here.

A few hours three times a week seemed a light sentence considering all I’d dealt with the last five years, so I took it.

Even if I didn’t particularly like it. My boots squeaked against the polished floor as I made my way to the service elevator, ignoring the disapproving glances following my leather cut.

The security guard at the front desk raised his eyebrows but nodded at me. We’d reached an understanding after my first week. He knew I was here on court-mandated community service, and I knew he was watching me. Neither of us liked the arrangement, but we respected the boundaries.

“Evening, Cash,” he said, checking my ID badge against his clipboard.

“Good day?” I kept my voice neutral, careful not to reveal how much I hated being here. The badge clipped to my cut read “Volunteer,” a joke if there ever was one. Nothing voluntary about my presence.

He shrugged. “Same as always.” It was our standard exchange.

The elevator doors slid open, and I stepped inside, pressing the button for the fourth floor. Pediatrics. Of all the places they could have stuck me, they put me on the kids’ wing. I suspected the suggestion had been Lana Thompson’s doing.

Lana had negotiated this particular hell for me, thinking she was doing me a favor.

Better than highway trash pickup, she’d said.

I wasn’t convinced. But Lana had a way of making things happen.

The lady lawyer had connections everywhere, from courthouse to clubhouse.

She typically stuck to legal counsel for Haven’s residents but occasionally helped a brother out.

The elevator chimed, and the doors opened to a burst of primary colors. Cartoon characters paraded across the walls, their frozen smiles at odds with the serious business of healing sick kids.

“There he is,” The charge nurse, Paula, looked up from her station. The woman typically had a permanent scowl on her face. Except when she looked at me. “Our favorite volunteer.”

“At your service.” I tipped an imaginary hat, playing the role she expected. Harmless flirtation was part of my shield, keeping people at a comfortable distance while making them think they knew me. I’d perfected the technique when I used to perform in every bar in Nashville. Served me well now.

Paula pushed a clipboard across the counter. “Same routine today. Floors need mopping in the east wing, then stock the supply closets.”

I signed the form without looking at it. “Any special requests?” I kept my voice light, playing along with the fiction I was just another volunteer, not an ex-con working off his debt to society.

“Just try not to scare the parents this time.” Her tone was joking, but I caught the seriousness underneath.

My presence tended to make people nervous, which was why I worked in the evenings.

The tattoos crawling up my neck, the general aura of threat I carried without trying all screamed danger to the middle-class folks whose kids ended up here for whatever reason.

I figured those parents had more to worry about than some creeper with a mop, so I had no problem doing my service whenever they thought appropriate.

“I’ll do my best impression of a choirboy.” I flashed a grin, making her roll her eyes, though I caught the ghost of a smile she tried to hide.

The supply closet was my first stop. I gathered the mop, bucket, and cleaning supplies. The bucket wheels squeaked as I pushed it down the corridor toward the east wing, the sound louder than it should have been in the otherwise quiet hallway.

The hall lighting had been dimmed and safety runner lights lined the hallway’s floors. The staff tried to keep lighting minimal for patient comfort.

I worked my way from the far end of the corridor and moved backward toward the nurses’ station.

A young nurse walked past, her shoes making soft padding sounds on the wet floor.

She smiled shyly and I nodded back, watching as she continued down the hall, looking back over her shoulder once before disappearing inside the medication room.

I was halfway down the hall when a doctor walked through my freshly mopped section, leaving footprints in his wake.

He didn’t acknowledge me, didn’t apologize.

I gripped the mop handle tighter, my knuckles whitening around the wood.

In prison, disrespect had consequences. Out here, I had to swallow it.

“It’s not just you,” a voice said behind me. A female aide with tired eyes pushed a cart of linens past. “He ignores everyone and everything.”

I forced my fingers to relax as I smiled at the woman. “Good to know.”

She continued down the hall, and I returned to my work. This was temporary. Just part of getting back to real life. I’d survived worse.

I finished the floor and wheeled my bucket toward the supply closet. Three months down, three to go. Then I could put this behind me, along with prison and the man I’d been there. At least I had things planned that way. Whether or not life threw me another curve ball remained to be seen.

When I heard heartbreaking sobs echoing down the hallway, I saw the curve ball coming. I was just too Goddamned stupid to get out of the fucking way. Oh no. I walked straight toward it.

The soft crying cut through the silence of the pediatric wing like a blade.

Sharp, gasping little cries raised the hair on the back of my neck.

I had finished mopping the east corridor and was returning the cleaning supplies and I knew I needed to ignore it.

Not my kid, not my problem. The nurses were paid to handle this stuff and did it way the fuck better than I ever could.

But my feet stopped moving of their own accord, and I found myself standing in front of room 416.

The door was partially open, a thin rectangle of light spilling into the dimmed hallway. Getting involved with patients was definitely not in my community service description. If anything, the hospital administration had made it clear they preferred I stayed as invisible as possible.

The crying continued, punctuated by hiccupping breaths. Where the hell were the nurses? I glanced toward the station, but it was temporarily empty, the staff likely busy with other patients. The crying intensified, twisting something inside my chest.

“Ah, fuck it,” I muttered under my breath. Just a quick check to make sure the kid hadn’t fallen or anything, then I would find a nurse.

I pushed the door open wider, peering inside.

I knew security cameras pointed at the door inside a patient’s room where the visitor’s chairs lined the wall.

As long as I stayed near the wall, security could see my every move.

With pediatric rooms, they often had cameras positioned to be able to see the child’s bed if both the curtain and the door were open.

Which would work in my favor if I scared the child worse.

The small figure in the bed almost disappeared among the white sheets and blankets.

A little girl, maybe five or six years old, curled into herself.

Her right arm was encased in a bright pink cast that looked enormous against her tiny frame.

Her left thumb was firmly planted in her mouth, tears streaming down her face as she stared at the blank television screen on the wall.

When she noticed me in the doorway, her crying paused momentarily.

Wide eyes, wet with tears, she assessed me from beneath a fringe of light brown hair.

She didn’t seem frightened by my appearance, just curious through her misery.

Before I’d gone to prison, I’d had tattoos, and I’d gained several more in the years since.

While I didn’t look as hard and frightening to a kid as some of my brothers, I didn’t have the same good looks I had when I was the hot up and coming star.

“Where’s my mommy?” Her voice was small and raw from crying, the question hitting me with unexpected force.

I looked around the room, noting its emptiness.

No jacket draped over the visitor chair, no purse tucked in the corner, no half-drunk coffee on the side table.

Just medical equipment, beeping softly, and the sterile hospital furnishings.

The absence felt wrong, like a puzzle with a crucial piece missing.

“I, uh, I don’t know, kid.” I stepped fully into the room, feeling oversized and out of place. My boots seemed too loud on the linoleum floor. “You want me to find a nurse?”

Fresh tears welled up in her eyes. “No. The nurse said Mommy had to go talk to people. But she’s been gone so long.

My mommy wouldn’t leave me alone at night.

She always sings me to sleep. No matter what.

” Her lower lip trembled, and she clutched a threadbare stuffed rabbit closer with her good arm.

I stood awkwardly at the foot of her bed, unsure what to do.

I’d seen the same anxiety in the faces of most of the kids who came through Haven with mothers who’d been beaten down by life in one form or another.

But something about this little girl’s distress pulled at me, making it impossible to simply walk away.

“What’s your name?” I asked, moving a step closer.

“Lily,” she whispered around her thumb.

“I’m Cash.”

She sniffled, studying me with surprisingly direct eyes for a child her age. “Why do you have pictures on your neck?”

Despite everything, I felt my lips twitch. “They’re called tattoos. Got a bunch of them.” I tapped my covered arms. “All over.”

“Did it hurt?”

I gave her a small smile. “A bit.”