“Hey!” Shouting from the warehouse door. Ares and Ivan must have heard the gunshot. We both look to see them running toward us, guns in hand.
Sergei points one finger at me and says, “Next time, asshole.”
He runs off into the darkness, but not before Ares and Ivan open fire on him. The bullets miss him as he disappears around the corner.
Both of them rush past me to catch him, but a few minutes later, they come back, holstering their guns. “Who the fuck was that?” Ares asks.
“Trouble.”
The guns were takencare of without incident after that, but I’m deep in thought about what happened.
I hastily wrapped my arm up using an oil rag in the truck, which stopped the bleeding, but I’m going to have to tend to it properly when I get home to keep it from getting infected. What a fucking nightmare this whole night has been.
Ares pulls in front of the house and says, “You think we ought to head underground? You know tonight won’t be the last we hearfrom the FBI. If they’ve gone this far, they’ll probably try to raid the other businesses.”
I shake my head. “Ivan has the books and we were able to get away with the guns and the money. They won’t find anything else at the club.” The other part of this has been nagging me. The part that screams that we’ve been infiltrated. I can see Ares wanting to say something. He looks at me with anticipation on his face.
“Go home,” I tell him. “I’ll call you in the morning.”
I get out of the truck and head inside. As soon as I walk in, I see Ember sitting on the couch, her phone in her hand. She stands up, her eyes wide with worry. She sets the phone down absently, all her focus on me.
“I heard about what happened at the club. Are you… ?” Her eyes drift down to the makeshift bandage around my forearm. “Oh, my God. What happened?”
“Long story. Where’s Sasha?”
“In bed,” she says. “It’s after two in the morning. She went to sleep hours ago. I…” Her eyes dart over the makeshift bandage, black and red with dirt, motor oil, and blood. She takes hold of my arm to get a better look at it.
“I’m fine,” I say. She frowns at the rag.
“No, you’re not. We need to clean this up. Come on.”
She leads me into the kitchen and sits me down at the table. I watch her as she finds a clean dishrag and a bowl, then starts running the water in the sink. There’s something about this that reminds me of when Mila was alive. The way she’d care for me after I was injured, quietly, without question. Lovingly. Embersort of reminds me of that peace that she would bring after a bad night.
She sits down across from me with the rag and bowl of warm water, then undoes the rag on my arm. “What is this? Motor oil? Where did you get this thing, anyway?”
“I was caught off guard. It was all I had to work with.”
She sighs as she regards the dirty wound. “At least you came back in one piece. Thank God for that.”
I smile in spite of the sting of the damp cloth on my wound. In silence she cleans my wound, her white gold hair falling into her face as she works.
“I’m not going to ask for details right now,” she says, “but eventually, when you’re ready to talk about it, I’d like to know what happened just the same.”
“Might be better if you didn’t know. This is the part of my life that’s hard to hear, Ember.”
She pauses and looks up at me, then back down to the wound. “If this is going to go any further with us, I have to know. We need to be all in with each other for this to work, right? That’s what you said. I have to understand that you’re a monster. Well… if that’s the case, then I should know what the monster did to get this wound.”
She’s right. Completely. All in or not in at all. There’s no halfway in this world.
“You need disinfectant for this. And some decent bandages. I think I’ve got some at home,” she says. “In the meantime, I’ll need a clean piece of cloth and some tape to cover this up. Itshouldn’t be exposed. I can come back tomorrow morning and finish the job.”
“I’ve got bandages and alcohol,” I tell her, then, “Stay with me tonight.”
She stops altogether and looks up at me. “Roman?—”
“I’m not asking.”
Her eyes read my face slowly, then she nods. “Okay.”
