“That stuff is still so strange to me, I don’t get it.” He lifted up and kissed me on my forehead. “I’ll go get the nurse. Maybe you can take meds a little sooner.” As he started to turn, I moved my arm the fastest I’d moved it since coming to consciousness to grab his wrist and hold him in place. He turned back and looked at me, frowning instantly. “What is it?”
“I… I don’t want to bother the nurse,” I said. “Just stay. They’ll come back eventually. I’ll be okay until then.” Gio’s eyes narrowed and I could see him studying me for signs of deceit. As much as I could, I forced a smile and moved my hand on his wrist to his palm, squeezing and pulling him back with what little strength I had. “You’ve been gone all morning, just… just stay.”
“Okay,” Gio said softly, sinking down into the chair directly to the right of my bed. In the entire time I’d been in the hospital, no one but him had sat there. He was the only one who had entered that room who cared enough to sit that close. Including my own brothers. “I’ll stay.” He tossed a look back across the room to Merrick, and then looked back at me. “You’re sure it’s just the pain? Nothing else hurting you?”
I could tell by the way he phrased the question that he was suspicious of his father and how my less-than-an-hour’s time had been with him, but after all the trouble I’d already caused, I refused to cause more. “No. Nothing else hurt me.” I squeezed his hand and pushed a smile through. “Getting shot hurts.”
“Yeah,” he said snickering. He looked back towards his father and his smile left his face. “You know, dad, if you wanna go, you can. Everything’s taken care of for now, so I’ll stay with Avion. I know you have other things to take care of.”
Merrick looked from Gio to me and then back again. A smile came across his face that was friendly in the mouth, but evil in the eyes. “No. Avion and I were just getting to know each other better, weren’t we?”
I nodded. “Mmhm.”
“I want to be here to support you anyway, son.” He puffed up his chest a little more, looking like a proud dad for Gio and a threatening force for me. “I’ve thought about it more and… I think I’ll stick around.”
34
GIO
My dad finally getting up and leaving the room was a relief for Avion and I both. I wasn’t an idiot -- things clearly weren’t going well between them, I just wish I knew what he’d said specifically. She’d been out of sorts ever since I came back to the hospital and was clearly terrified to let me leave her alone with him in the room.
Maybe Milli was right and leaving my dad with Avion was a bad idea.
He clearly hadn’t hurt her physically, which meant he must have said something to cause her so much emotional distress. Merrick was overprotective, that was an understatement, but I honestly believed if I asked him to just sit in a room quietly with Avion that he could do it without too much of an issue. I didn’t ask him to tend to her, make conversation, or do anything but just sit there. Was that really so hard?
Looking down at Avion’s calm expression as she slept, the idea of quickly waking her up and ask her what he’d said flew from my mind. She was in so much pain and getting so little rest that waking her up would almost be irresponsible. Besides, it wasn’t like she would tell me even if I did wake her up, and if she wouldn’t then it would be for nothing that I disturbed her. That, mixed with the fact that she still hadn’t asked me what she wanted to before I left the hospital the first time, very nearly made me fold, but we had all the time in the world to talk.
Right now, she needed to rest.
“Ugh, I hate hospitals.”
A smile came across my face at the sound of a new voice. I slowly lifted my hand from where it was resting on top of Avion’s and walked across to the doorway, just in time to meet my adoptive mother, Tamryn. She was wearing a pair of tight skinny jeans, bright blue pumps, a matching bright blue tank top, and a leather jacket. Her bronze skin tone was complimented perfectly by the bright colors and her short hair cut allowed for her face to be totally revealed apart from the bangs in her eyes.
“Mama,” I said, holding out my arms to take her into a hug.
She wrapped her arms around me and gave me a tight squeeze. “Well if it isn’t my wayward son. I’ve nearly forgotten what you look like with how little you visit me these days.”
I pulled back. “I know. I’m sorry.”
Tamryn was one of two women--well one of three now--that could bring out a softer side of me; the third being Kelly. She was Merrick’s wife long before I met him, but she wasn’t just some woman who married in. In fact, it was Tamryn, not Merrick, that was inthe lifefirst. Her father was Cole Fitz, one of the most dangerous men to ever put two feet on a street in Manhattan. He was known in NYC as Hacksaw, for obvious reasons. Of all the gangs in New York, none of them were even considered rivals to the Fitz empire, mainly because none of them were even marginally a threat. The group had evolved well past guns and drugs, and were high up in extortion, money laundering, and political power grabs. It was believed that no one wouldeverstop Cole Fitz, earning him the coveted title “Immortal” in his heyday, but then someone changed all of that.
His daughter.
A fed up Tamryn Fitz slit her father’s throat in the middle of the night, and took his seat for herself--apparently the man’s ideas about women ruling were a little outdated. The crazy thing was, she didn’t entirely want his legacy, but she didn’t like his sexist ideology and ended him for it. About two years after that, she married Merrick Raines, and together the two built up the family that I would eventually be adopted into.
The infamous Raines family.
My mom was no slouch when it came to the dirty work or defending herself, which was why I was hoping she could create a little bit of peace where Merrick was hellbent on creating dissonance.
“Did you pass Dad?” I asked.
“Yes. I sent him home,” she said.
I snickered. “I’ve been asking him to go home for the past sixteen hours.”
She just shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a lion tamer.” She stepped around me then, walking up to the end of Avion’s bed and looking down over her. “So… this is the devil he won’t shut up about?”
“Avion,” I said. “She’s not--”
