Aiden handed over his left hand first. Dry blood caked his skin. He flinched when Brendan spread the medicine on top of his cut gently and slowly. “What happened there?”
“Don’t press your skin too hard into metal.”
“Noted.” Brendan’s fingers worked deftly with the bandage he wrapped around Aiden’s left wrist before working on his right. The same pain applied, and the same comfort returned when Brendan wrapped the bandage around it. “Here, drink some water.” Brendan pushed his cup of water over. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“I’ll probably have bruises all over my body, but I don’t think that can be helped,” Aiden said, drinking.
“Well, let me get the cuts on your face and that one nasty slash on your forehead.” Brendan leaned close to touch them with a feather’s lightness before placing band-aids over his face. “Has your family always been involved with the mafia?”
“I don’t know if they’ve always been, but they’ve been present for some time. My mother, too, came from another family. The group was formed a long time ago. Back when the first wave of Chinese immigrants came over to the US.”
Brendan’s eyes widened. “They weren’t mafia members when they arrived here?”
Aiden shook his head. “No, the organization originated here. Life in the US was…hard. The country wanted cheap labor, but they also didn’t want the Chinese people. The government actually prevented Chinese women from immigrating over, so Chinese immigrants banded together. They ferried women over so that the people who immigrated here could still form their own families or reunite with their family they left behind in China, but you can guess how it goes with any societal organization. Power hierarchy formed and corruption became rampant.”
“Well, nothing in life is completely right or wrong. I mean—the government was obviously wrong. The mafia forming, I mean, is complicated.” Brendan closed the first aid kit. His fingers lingered at a bruise against Aiden’s cheek, and his eyes did not hide the sorrow. “My life is so luxurious. I’m starting to understand why she keeps calling me a prince.”
Aiden chuckled, and with each bit of laughter, his body grew lighter. “I think Celia is teasing me rather than making a statement. You are…” he trailed off. Warmth grew tendrils around his limbs and wrapped around him. He lowered his head to hide the heat inching through his battered face. “You’re my prince for saving my brother’s photograph and returning it to me.”
The peace in his heart vanished, and the sound of drums pounded steadily against his ears.What a stupid, corny thing to say.He chose the words carefully, yet the second he said them, he wanted to turn back time. Aiden squeezed his eyes shut.Can Celia grant any wish? Can she do the impossible and turn back time?
Brendan’s fingers brushed underneath Aiden’s chin. His lips pressed against Aiden’s with the gentlest of touches and pulled away. Shocked, Aiden snapped his eyes open.
Brendan looked away with ears glowing red. “You surprised me.” The boy stole a glance, but held his hand close to his face.
It hid nothing. The red burned through Brendan’s hand, and pure joy rolled off his body and into the air.
Aiden had never felt such boundless freedom of happiness. A grin stretched across his face. He leaned forward into Brendan’s arms and kissed the boy on the lips. His hands grasped tightly to his prince’s shoulders. His body sought to partake in every bit of warmth contained in Brendan’s soul, and he pulled back, satisfied at the surprise on Brendan’s face before kissing him again.
The boy’s shocked tenseness dispersed when Aiden leaned against Brendan further. His hand traveled through Aiden’s hair, gathering the strands together and rubbing them. His strong shoulders squared themselves, and one arm locked itself around Aiden’s waist to pull him even closer.
Aiden had no idea how much time had passed when Brendan pulled away from the kiss. Brendan continued to play lightly with his hair. but insisted on separating with a firm declaration, “You need to rest. You have bags under your eyes.”
His fingers interlocked with Aiden’s, and Aiden allowed Brendan to pull him from the stool and to wander into one of the many unoccupied, perfectly decorated bedrooms.
The clean sheets of the bed beckoned him with a tantalizing smell of oranges. He dropped onto the mattress. Drowsiness swept over his eyes, and he barely managed to pull his legs up once his head landed on the pillow.
“Good night,” he heard Brendan whisper to him, and with the last fading vision of Brendan’s beautiful blue eyes, Aiden succumbed to the peace of sleep.
Chapter Fifteen
“What?!” Yin Mei screeched. Holding the cellphone close to her chest, she took a quick glance upstairs. Zhu Zhu’s music blasted through the door, and He Bao’s show snuck out underneath his closed door with laughter. She lowered her voice. “What do you mean he escaped? How could he have escaped?”
“He had help.”
“There is more than one traitor, then. There is no way anyone else could know about his location unless they’re close to our families.”
“We are working on it as we speak. It was a woman who went by the name of Mindy. She’s definitely a professional. She not only took the car, but she killed the assassin we sent after the lawyer’s son.”
“We need to find all of them. Our livelihoods and our legacies are in danger. This will be the first point we will discuss at the next meeting.” Yin Mei slammed her cellphone down on the table.
Everything had been going so well.
“A woman. A woman with blonde hair and gray eyes. Her name was Mindy.” Her mind raced, but could not recall any familiar faces. Hui Ye had many women. There was Andrea, Avery, Olivia, Meghana, Sally, and June. There were, without a doubt, more. He was rich, charming, and handsome. If he set his mind out to find a woman to warm his bed, he would always find one.
However, she could not think of anyone else close to Hui Ye who could’ve helped Hui Lang escape. She had either threatened his closest allies into submission or killed them on the same day she murdered him. The only other allies who remained outside of her grasp were people she could not touch—people who worked for the law.
She fled to the office room and dug through another book to retrieve the photographs. She examined every woman hanging against his arm. “They’re different. They’re all different girls.” Their faces were caked in makeup. Bright colors, dark colors, subtle colors, or some combination of styles painted their eyes, their lips, and their cheeks. They had different eye colors, different jawlines, different hairstyles, different body postures, and from a few recordings, different voices. “Which one’s the professional?” she wondered.
