Chapter Nine
The Man Who Came Back
Harper
Waiting is worse than blood.
Blood gives me something to do. Pressure here. Tourniquet there. Airway. Pulse. Pupils. Orders snapped clean and fast because panic hates structure, and I am very good at structure.
Waiting gives me nothing. Waiting leaves me sitting in a hospital hallway with Dante in surgery, two Sons of Sin guards posted near the elevators, and Steel somewhere in the dark doing what men like him do best.
Violence. Precise violence, I told him. Like I have any right to prescribe the shape of his brutality.
I rub both hands over my face and inhale the sterile bite of antiseptic.
County is awake around me in the miserable way hospitals always are at this hour.
Monitors beep. Nurses move with tired efficiency.
Someone cries behind a curtain. Someone laughs too loudly near the vending machines because fear makes people strange.
I check my phone. No messages from Steel. Again. But Milo texts every fifteen minutes because he is emotionally attached and has no respect for my blood pressure.
Milo: Still alive?
Me: Physically.
Milo: Emotionally?
Me: Don’t be invasive.
Milo: So ... no.
I almost smile, but my eyes drift to the automatic doors at the end of the hall. Still nothing.
One of the guards, a broad man with a red beard and a scar through one eyebrow, glances at me. His name is Knox or Nash or something equally biker-shaped. He has been pretending not to watch me for forty minutes.
“You can sit,” I tell him.
He stiffens. “I’m good.”
“You look ridiculous standing there like a nightclub bouncer for trauma surgery.”
His mouth twitches. “Orders.”
“Of course.”
The other guard, who looks younger, says nothing. He keeps his eyes on the elevator, one hand close to his jacket. These are Steel’s men. Not mine. Except they’re here because of me.
Dante is still under the knife because of me too. Or maybe I’m alive because he bled his conscience out on the clubhouse floor. The lines are getting messy, and I hate messy lines.
A woman drops into the chair beside mine without asking, and I jerk so hard my shoulder hits the plastic armrest.
She looks at me with dark, sharp eyes and a mouth made for bad decisions. “Relax,” she says. “If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t do it in front of the depressing vending machine.”
I blink at her.
Leather jacket. Black jeans. Boots. Knife at her hip like jewelry for the violently prepared. Her hair falls loose around her face, and she carries herself like she has walked through hell, critiqued the décor, and stolen the matches on the way out.
“You’re Raven,” I say.
Her brow lifts. “Steel mentioned me?”
“No. Mama M did.”
“Ah.” Her mouth curves. “Then I’m sure the version was flattering and completely free of threats.”
“She said you were Savage’s woman.”
Raven laughs once. “Did she now?”
I instantly regret speaking. “I may have shortened the sentence,” I say.
“Good. Because I’m nobody’s anything unless I decide the sentence myself.”
I stare at her. Okay. I might like her... Against my will, obviously. I’m in a very hostile emotional climate.
Raven leans back in her chair, gaze sweeping the hallway once. Not casual or nervous, but assessing. Like Steel, but sharper in a different way. Less wall. More blade.
“Savage sent you?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“To babysit me?”
“To keep you from eating the guards alive.” She glances at the red-bearded one. “They’re fragile when pretty women yell.”
He suddenly becomes fascinated by the elevator numbers.
“I am not pretty yelling,” I mutter.
“No. You’re terrified yelling. The pretty part is unfortunate for everyone trying to think clearly.”
My cheeks heat. “Are all women in this club this irritating?”
“No. Some are worse.”
“That’s comforting.” I roll my eyes before looking away.
“Comforting you is not my job.”
We sit in silence for a moment. The kind that isn’t soft, but doesn’t ask me to fill it either.
“You’re waiting for him,” Raven says.
“I’m waiting for news.”
“Same thing.”
I glare at her and she smiles like she enjoys it.
“I don’t know what this is,” I say before I can stop myself.
“With Steel?”
“With any of it.” I gesture vaguely at the hallway, the guards, the surgery doors, my bloodstained shirt.
“Two days ago, my life was shifts, bad coffee, Milo stealing my pens, and arguing with drunk men who think chest pain is cured by denial. Now I’m under guard because a rival MC psychopath knows my name, and the man I keep looking for is probably making someone bleed in a warehouse. ”
Raven listens, actually listens. Not with pity. Not with shock. With recognition.
“That sounds about right,” she says.
I laugh, but it comes out wrong. “That’s your advice?”
“No. That’s confirmation. Advice comes after coffee.”
“I’ve had four.”
“Then you’re medically doomed.” Despite myself, a breath of amusement slips out, and Raven’s expression softens by half an inch. “You don’t have to pretend you’re okay with the blood.”
“I’m not.”
“Good.”
“I’m also not okay with wanting him to come back with blood on him, as long as none of it’s his.”
Her gaze sharpens.
There it is, the ugly thing, the confession I couldn’t say to Milo, the thought I keep trying to bury under morality and medical training.
Raven doesn’t flinch from it. “That doesn’t make you a bad person,” she says quietly.
“It feels like it should.” My voice is soft and strained.
“It should.” She leans forward, elbows on her knees. “If it stops feeling bad, worry.”
I swallow. “That’s not comforting either.”
“I told you. Not my job.”
A nurse walks past, pushing a medication cart. Nothing unusual. Blue scrubs. Mask tucked under chin. Badge clipped at the waist.
Except Raven goes still and so do the guards. I don’t understand why at first. Then I see it. The nurse’s shoes, heavy black boots under scrubs, not hospital shoes.
My stomach turns cold as the fake nurse glances toward the surgical wing doors.
Dante.
Raven stands slowly.
“Harper,” she says, voice casual enough to be terrifying. “Come with me.”
The fake nurse’s hand dips toward the cart, and the red-bearded guard moves while the younger one reaches for his jacket. Everything happens at once.
The fake nurse shoves the cart hard, sending it crashing into the younger guard. Metal slams, medications scatter, and a syringe flashes in his hand.
Not at me. At the surgical wing keypad.
Dante.
“Oh, fuck no,” I snap.
I lunge before my common sense can file a complaint but Raven gets there first.
She slams the man’s wrist against the wall, and the syringe drops. He twists, fast and vicious, and catches her in the shoulder with an elbow. Raven grunts, then drives her knee up into his groin with enough force to make every man in the hallway emotionally reconsider his life choices.
The attacker folds, and the red-bearded guard hits him from the side, pinning him to the floor.
I grab the syringe with a gloved hand from a nearby supply tray because apparently my trauma response now includes evidence management.
Raven presses a hand to her shoulder and looks down at the man. “Really? Scrubs and murder boots? Amateur hour.”
My heart beats so hard I can feel it in my teeth. Security rushes in. Nurses shout. Someone calls a code I’m not sure exists for biker assassination in the surgical hallway.
Raven looks at me. “Are you okay?”
I stare at her. “You just took down a fake nurse.”
“Technically, the floor helped.”
“He was going after Dante.”
“Yes.”
“Reaper sent him.”
“Probably.”
The red-bearded guard checks the man’s pockets and pulls out a phone. It starts ringing instantly because apparently Reaper has committed to theatre as a lifestyle.
Raven takes the phone, looks at me, and answers on speaker. No one tells her not to.
A wet laugh crawls through the line. “Wrong girl,” Raven says.
Silence. Followed by Reaper’s voice, amused and cold. “Raven Blackwood. I heard you were still breathing.”
“Disappointing for you, I’m sure.”
“Put the medic on.”
Raven’s eyes cut to mine, and every survival instinct I have says no, but my mouth says, “I’m here.”
Raven’s expression turns approving in the worst possible way.
Reaper breathes into the line. “Steel isn’t going to make it back in one piece.”
My chest goes hollow. Raven steps closer, but she doesn’t touch me.
“Then he’ll be very annoyed,” I say.
The laugh softens. “You’re brave when you’re surrounded.”
“No. I’m sleep-deprived and aggressively done with men who think threatening women is a personality trait.”
Raven’s mouth twitches.
Reaper’s voice thins. “Tell Steel I left him something pretty at the warehouse.”
The call cuts, and for one second, I can’t move. Then the surgical doors open, and I whirl, expecting blood, death, Reaper, the collapse of everything. Instead, a surgeon steps out, mask hanging loose around his neck, exhaustion carved into his face.
“Are you family?”
“No,” I say. “I’m the medic who brought him in.”
His eyes flick over me, Raven, the pinned attacker, the guards, the overturned medication cart, and the general emotional crime scene of the hallway. He decides not to ask questions.
“He’s alive. We repaired damage to the liver and controlled the internal bleeding. He’s critical, but stable for now.”
Relief hits hard enough to make my knees weak. I nod. “Thank you.” And he disappears again.
Dante is alive. I should feel better. Instead, I feel the absence of Steel like a hand around my throat.
The elevator dings and every gun in the hallway shifts toward it. The doors slide open, and Steel walks out. Alive. Blood streaks his shirt. His knuckles. His neck. Not all of it his. Maybe none of it. Maybe some. His cut hangs open, dark eyes locked on me before the doors finish sliding apart.
The world goes silent, and my body moves before my brain gives permission.
I cross the hallway and stop two feet from him because launching myself at a blood-covered outlaw in the middle of County Hospital feels like a life choice I’m not ready to explain.
“Are you hurt?” I demand.
His gaze drags over me. “No.”
“Are you lying to me?”
“Not this time.”