He nodded. “Locker.”
I blinked. “Rocker and Locker. Nice.”
Rocker grinned. “We thought so.”
“What does your sister have?” Axe asked, getting us back on track.
I cleared my throat. “Anyone know what hemophilia is?”
The guys peeked around at one another, but no one raised their hands.
“Hemophilia is when your blood won’t clot,” I said plainly.
Wolf’s eyes narrowed. “Like that Richard Burton guy?”
Rocker slowly looked over at the man. “Richard Burton?”
Wolf darted his gaze back toward him. “Elizabeth Taylor? Richard Burton? Do either of them ring a bell?”
Dante rolled his lips over his teeth to keep himself from laughing, but the redness of his cheeks alone told me everything that I needed to know. The shade was spectacular on him, and I found myself wanting to find other ways to make his cheeks flush like that.
But I kept myself focused. “Yes, like Richard Burton. Good job, Wolf.”
He beamed with pride. “So, her blood doesn’t clot. So what?”
“So,” I said as I pushed a very specific piece of paper from the files toward him, “the only way hemophilia is treated is via transfusions.”
“We’re still not following,” Mav said, leaning back in his chair and spreading his legs.
I did my best not to drop my gaze right to his cock. “Not only would that make her attached to a medical facility of some sort—”
“If she isn’t buying the equipment herself, which we could track down,” Axe murmured.
I thumbed over my shoulder. “Bingo. But also, my mother needs regular transfusions.”
“Why?” Locker asked.
“Good question,” Dante said as he furrowed his brows together.
I smiled at their curiosity toward my life. “That’s not important, what’s important is that one of the biggest problems with regular transfusions is an iron overload. I’ve watched my mother battle it a couple of times now over the last few years, and all of those treatments and combative efforts wrapped into one is a seriously expensive venture. Especially if you’re paying someone under the table to do them outside of a medical facility.”
“She’d have to do it that way,” Rocker said as he perked up and rested his forearms against the wooden table. “The second she walked into a hospital, she’d be arrested.”
I pointed at him. “Exactly. But if you add in how expensive doing it outside of a hospital or a facility is, and you add even the possibility of an iron overload? With enough damage, that requires organ transplantation to fix.”
Mav shot to his feet when he put it together. “Oh, fuck no. Not happening.”
Dante shook his head as his face fell to stone. “Not on my goddamn watch.”
I turned to Axe and looked up into his face. “She took you guys for the money, probably for her next round of treatments. But she wanted me for a possible organ transplant. I’m the closest match she’s ever going to have a chance of finding.”
“And our protocols interrupted her gathering process.”
I shrugged. “It’s the only thing that makes any relative amount of sense.”
Dante’s chuckle pierced the conversation. “You’re smarter than you look, Brielle.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Thanks?”
