Dr. Fujimoto doesn’t look up as he says, “Put on those gloves and hand me the sterile dressing in the left pocket of the bag.”
While I’m taking over putting pressure on the wounds, Callum hurries over to help lift another groaning man onto the marble countertop.
My captor strides into the room, his snowy white dress shirt is a Rorschach test of splashes of blood and something grey and likely unmentionable.
“What is she doing in here?” he says angrily, glaring at me as he helps another wounded guard to the floor, whipping off his jacket and putting it under the man’s head.
“I need her help,” Doc says, tight-lipped and focused on the bullet he’s trying to pull from the man’s shoulder.
Well, he’s a brave one.
The poor soul on the floor is going into spasms and Dr. Fujimoto slaps a medical staple gun in my hand. “Close up the wound.”
“Sorry,” I murmur to the groaning man, pressing the tool down against his torn skin. My captor is whispering to the man on the floor, holding his agonized gaze.
“Ma…” I dinna realize how young the guard was, his face coated with blood and his terrified gaze on his boss.
“Yes, your ma,” my captor says warmly. “In Kent. At your place by the river, yes? Can you hear it? The water crashing over the rocks and the sun on your face, do you feel it, lad?”
I finish the last staple and spray it with a sterile solution, but my gaze is on the two men on the floor. Dr. Fujimoto’s hands slow, and he shakes his head slightly before rising and moving over to the next man.
My captor stays where he is, hands on the poor man’s gore-covered chest. “You’re safe, Kirk. You’re all right now. You’re home.”
My hands freeze. I’ve heard him say that before…
He smiles down at the man who is slipping away. “You’re home.”
As Kirk’s eyes close for the last time, mine fill with tears. He said that tome.He said those words to me, last night. And before, too. I remember that now. He carried me down to the library so I would feel safe, he sat with me.
A fleeting expression of grief passes over his sculpted features before he looks up at Callum.
***
Alastair…
“How the fuck did they know we’d be there!”
Hurling my glass at the wall, I watch it shatter, sending a spray of amber against the expensive paint.
“There’s no way, boss.” He’s running his hands through his hair. “We had men in place. I swept the location myself before you came in.”
“We lost six men tonight,” I grind my teeth. A meeting with a new Canadian investor ended before it could begin when we were attacked outside my club. “We have a traitor. Someone high up enough to know our movements. Run a sweep, look for financial problems, gambling, drugs, sick family members.” Massaging the back of my neck, I think of Kirk’s dimming eyes as we pretended he was back home.
Fuck.
“These attacks are stepping up,” Callum says unnecessarily. “Do you think it’s Zhang? He was insane enough to shoot at your car when we left the meat processing plant that night.”
“The Zhang Triad doesn’t have enough money and power to be targeting us. For most crime families, it would be suicidal to go after our holdings.”
“I’ll start going through who knew we were going there tonight,” Callum says, rising tiredly from his seat.
“Move whatever you need to in my schedule tomorrow. We’ll go meet with the families,” I say. There’s nothing worse than the look the mothers or wives give me. Knowing why I’m there ontheir doorstep. We’ll take care of them financially for life, it’s always been the way.
I know it’s never enough.
If these arseholes are foolish enough to attack me at my club, where will they go next? Here, in my home? My thoughts instantly go to Sorcha, her pale, determined face as she helped Dr. Fujimoto tonight, as careful with my wounded soldiers as if they were her family’s men.
Have my enemies targeted her, somehow? The only men who knew I’d bought her were there at the auction that night. Is Zhang insane enough to try to take her?
