“It’s just I shot him,” Luke says, grinning like the idiot he must surely be.
I’m sure there’s more to this story. I am equally sure I don’t want to hear it. For them to make me think we might lose Leo afterwhat happened to Teddy is unforgivable. For Luke to shoot him is unforgivable.
I struggle to keep my temper.
Luke
Aiden looks annoyed. I didn’t expect him to be in a good mood, but I didn’t think he was going to be this irritable. Wherever he was, it must have really pissed him off.
“I’ve made a decision,” he says. “Neither one of you are responsible enough for marriage. I’m marrying Ella. The two of you can go to whichever circle of hell you find the most comfortable.”
Aiden spins on his heel and stalks out of the room. I half expect to hear the chopper being recalled, but I suppose those come and go all the time given this is a hospital. He’s not going to leave the both of us and go find Ella again, is he?
“Fuck,” I mutter to myself.
I feel like I’m ten years old again, and Aiden, the only authority in the family, is mad at me.
“Did you hear that?” I turn to Leo, who is unconcerned. He doesn’t care if Aiden is mad. He’s closer to him in age, and I think that helps. Also, he’s a psychopath, and that will help too.
“He’s upset,” Leo says. “He doesn’t know how to tell me he’s glad I’m alive, so he tells us both to go to hell. Classic psychology.”
“I knew he’d be pissed. I didn’t think he’d be hurt. Aiden doesn’t have feelings, does he?”
Leo shrugs and takes another bite of hospital Jell-O. “He will listen when he calms down.”
Ethel snorts and sneezes on him, which is her way of saying she also wants some. He picks up a little plastic spoon from the side table and gives her a bit. It’s probably not good for her, but he’s enjoying having earned the favor of the little psycho.
Aiden
I go for a walk around the hospital grounds to calm down. I may have overreacted, or if not overreacted, at least not reacted in the right way. I know Luke wouldn’t hurt Leo for no reason. I also know that we are continuing to be weak because we keep exposing ourselves to the evils of the world every time we do anything even slightly amusing. A global woman hunt should have been something we could enjoy as a family without this happening.
“It’s not as bad as it seems,” Luke says, catching up with me in a rose garden. He looks guilty and stressed.
“Please tell me why you shot him.”
“I had to shoot him. He was being held hostage by a few stragglers of BP’s gang,” Luke says. “And like I was taught, you have to shoot the hostage.”
“So you shot him in the stomach?”
“Well, I, uh. My aim was slightly… well, in the moment, I thought it would be for the best. Lots of arteries other places. I figured he didn’t need his guts as much because there’s so much of them. Like a football field’s worth or something? Just made sure to miss the spine?”
I don’t even want to begin to unpack that logic.
“You could have shot the people holding him hostage.”
“I did that too, but I needed them to think I didn’t give a fuck about him, and once he was down and bleeding they were too busy being all ‘oh my god’ to notice the bullets that came their way. This wasn’t a prank to fuck with you, dude.”
“If you call me dude again,Imight shoot you,” I say.
The amount of trouble my brothers can get themselves into when I am not watching has always been monumental.
“I’m sorry we scared you like that. I should have given you more details, but I think the phones might be bugged, or I don’t know. What I can tell you is that BP’s organization isn’t as gone as we would have liked. There’re more people. There might even be someone above him.”
This is the thing with killing bad guys. There’s always a hydra. You take out one guy, two more worse men appear in his place. Sometimes it’s better to keep the bad guy in place just to stop that happening.
“Ella is on the loose,” I say. “If they found you…”
“Yeah. They might find her. But on the plus side, she’s not with us, so they might think she escaped.”
