“How we feelin’?”
“Oh yeah, peachy.”
She chuckled softly. “You’re lucky, darlin’, we got to you in time to stop the bleeding. Another hour, and we’d not be talking.”
I didn’t know what to say back so I stayed silent, just groaning as I tried to sit up. She helped me to sit up as much as she could, checking my vitals.
“The police want to talk to you, and since you’re awake now, I can’t stop them.”
“That’s fine. I know the process.”
She nodded, giving my hand a squeeze. I looked down at my arm, noticing the dark purple bruises littering the skin.
Fuck.
Two police officers walked in after the nurse left and I bristled, waiting for the interrogation. I wasn’t new to this. I was living with a bikie’s son. We got interviewed a lot, and he’d coached me on how to talk to them.
“Miss Martell,” the younger one said. “I’m sorry to interrupt. I know you must be in a lot of pain. We just have a few questions.”
“Ask them.”
“Do you know who did this to you?”
“Nope,” I replied. “They had masks on.”
Even if you hated them, you didn’t rat on the Ironborne or the Shackled Sons. It just wasn’t done.
“Did they say anything to you?”
“Nope. If they did, I don’t remember.”
He nodded. “Do you know why you would be targeted?”
“No idea,” I replied quickly. Probably a little too quickly. “Anything else?”
“Miss…”
The older one stepped forward. I recognised him. He’d spoken to me before about Trey’s drunkenness previously. That had been a bad night. I’d thought Trey could have killed me. Instead, he snapped out of it at the last moment, and made it up to me for weeks after.
Nothing had been the same after that.
We’d separated into different rooms and lived as roommates, but for all intents and purposes, we were still a couple. I still attended things with him, and he did the same for me. I helped him through his different addictions he got pulled into, and in turn, we’d become close. Closer than before, just not sexually, which had driven me crazy.
“If this was…”
“Let me stop you there,” I said as I put my hand up. “This wasn’t Trey. He wasn’t home.”
“It looks like he left town a couple of days ago with a large duffel, on a plane to Western Australia.”
That fucker.
“So you already knew it wasn’t him.”
He nodded. “Yes, but he could still be the cause of it.”
“I have nothing to say, Officer.”
He nodded again, probably because he knew it was a lost cause to come and talk to me, but when he came closer, I stiffened. It hurt my body to do that which told me just how fucked up I was. He pulled something from his pocket, and handed it over to me.
