“Dom, I can call to have someone knock you out and have you dragged somewhere to get taken care of. You are being looked at one way or another. Unless you have a medical degree that you failed to tell me about, neither of us can say whether or not you are fine.”
“It’s my goddamn body.”
“A body that’s leaking blood all over the place.”
“I’m not going to a fucking hospital.”
Levi sighed, and his grip tightened on the steering wheel, knuckles going white. “Fine, then we’ll go with plan B.”
“You’d better not have anyone knock me out,” I snarled. “I swear to fucking God, Levi. You do that and?—”
“Mhmm,” he said, clearly not listening as he pulled out his phone and an earpiece that he stuffed into his ear. I couldn’t see who he was dialing before he set the phone down and waited. “Will? Tell Nic to meet me at my place immediately. Yes, I’m well aware she’s in town, and he’s well aware that I know how to pay her. Tell him to drop everything. I don’t care if she’s helping someone give birth in a back alley. On that note, I’m going to send you some pictures. I need you to do some digging and see if anyone recognizes them. I want to know what you know when you know it.”
“Are you serious?” I protested. “Who the fuck is Nic?”
Levi, predictably and irritatingly, continued to ignore me. “Yes, it is. And no, I’m fine. The same can’t be said for others. Also, put some feelers out for any potential problems regarding an incident at Bassett Park in the past twenty minutes. I need to make sure nothing finds its way into our laps. Understood? Good, thank you. Yes, I’ll contact you later.”
I glared at him as he hit the button on the earpiece and picked up his phone to begin texting, probably the pictures he’d taken of the men. “Why the fuck do you need to find out who they were? They’re clearly not going to be a problem. And it’s not exactly shocking that people are trying to kill you.”
“Yes, yes, I’m a crime lord, they’re going to try to kill me,” he said without looking up. His entire demeanor was foreign to me: all business, without a hint of warmth. “I’ve known there was a bounty on my head for weeks. But it’s important to know who specifically is willing to make good on that bounty. And God save them if they’re members of one of the ragtag gangs in the city.”
“What are you going to do if it is?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.
“I’m going to clean up a neighborhood,” he said casually, as if he were talking about picking up trash. Then again, maybe taking out a gang was the same as clearing out garbage in his mind.
“Great,” I muttered, trying to sink into my seat with a perfect pout that I would have denied if called on. I was immediately reminded that I had a knife wound in my gut and straightened with a wince and barely repressed hiss. Levi looked over, and I flipped him off, making him roll his eyes. “Who’s Nic?”
“A doctor I used to utilize up in Seattle,” he explained as he turned onto the stretch of highway that wound around the outside of Cresson Point. The place used to be popular with thrill-seekers. Not even accidents and several deaths were enough to put them off, and not even the cops could dissuade them. At some point, it fell out of favor, but according to Mason, some people still used it late at night to race. “She’s good at what she does, and she knows how to keep her mouth shut.”
“Why do you have a doctor on your payroll? Shouldn’t she be working at...I don’t know, a hospital or something?”
“Probably because her medical license was revoked years ago.”
“You know what? I’d rather bleed out, thanks.”
The car came to a screeching halt, and I cried out when the seat belt dug into my chest and the wound in my gut. Levi’s head snapped to me, his calm melting under the fury of his gaze. “You listen to me, Dominic. You just took a knife to the gut, and you did that for me. I’m thankful, alright? Thank you for protecting me and doing what you could to make sure we got out of there alive. But I am not going to repay that by letting you bleed out in my car or house because you’ve decided to be a stubborn ass who would rather die, you hear me? So shut your stubborn ass mouth, sit there, and be thankful that I have someone who can take care of you. The other option is dropping you off at a hospital and praying that someone doesn’t try to do a follow-up hit, because for all I know, your face is known as well. Soshut. Up.”
“Bossy,” I muttered, turning to look out the window and glare at the passing trees when Levi started driving again.
Maybe I was being ridiculous, but considering how the day had taken a sharp downward turn, I thought it was reasonable to be a little grumpy. “You forgot to thank me for probably killing someone for you.”
“You didn’t kill anyone.”
“Really? I saw the shape of the back of that guy’s head. I don’t think he’s going to walk that off.”
“You didn’t do that.”
“Jesus, don’t start?—”
“He wasn’t knocked out after you hit him,” Levi explained as he slowed to turn down the winding road that led to his house. “He was knocked stupid, but not so stupid that he stopped trying to kill me. I fought him off, and even then, he tried to get his weapon out. I kicked him, and the result was what you saw.”
“Fuck, you had to kick him that hard?”
“Considering what happened with the other two, are you surprised that I’m not concerned about whether I was too rough?”
I stared at him as the car bumped along the road. “You’re cold as ice, you know that? You killed those guys and you just?—”
“What?” he asked lightly.
