I feel faint.
“And… you’re a part of that?”
“No.” His response is fast. “I don’t want the deal to happen. I’m here to find out who is involved so I can sabotage it.”
“H-how?”Is he going to kill everyone?
“We have connections with government, the police, the Feds… We’ll tell them what we know, and they’ll do the rest. The less we’re involved, the better.”
“I thought the whole idea of the mafia was to actagainstlaw enforcement.”
“Unless it benefits us to workwiththem. And in this case it does.”
I press a hand to my hammering heart. I always knew there was something dark about this man, but I’d never have guessed he was a central figure in the criminal underworld. My legs suddenly feel like jelly.
“Who was the man you just… shot?”
“He was the middleman. He was orchestrating the deal. Or at least, he was the face of the orchestration. There will be more where he came from.”
“And the man you were treating in the woods?”
“He was one of my men. I had him drive up here, so I could?—”
He stops abruptly and runs his tongue along his teeth as if he’s weighing up whether or not to finish that sentence.
I make him.
“So you could what?”
He assesses me for a few seconds.
“Beat the shit out of him, then patch him up.”
Well, that’s one of the most absurd lines I’ve ever heard.
I squint at him, confusion curdling with heat in my stomach. “I’m sorry, what?”
He sighs and pushes his hands into the pockets of his sweats, drawing my gaze briefly to the hard slant of his hips. The outline of his lower abdominal muscle swells above the waistband. I swallow and force myself to look back at his face.
“It’s a thing I have. A compulsion.”
“What, to beat people up and then make them well again?”
“Yes. That’s a rough summary.”
Oh God. This gets even better.
“Why?”
Another sigh. Then he extracts one hand and shoves it through his hair, pulling on the strands as if he’s trying to punish himself.
“When I was nine years old, I knocked my mother down the stairs. It was an accident. I was tearing about on the upstairs landing like a typical hyperactive kid, and she lost her footing and fell.”
I press a palm against my chest. “Was she okay?”
“She was awake but heavily concussed. I covered her in a blanket and called my father. He was in Chicago on business at the time so he told me to call a family friend—a nurse. She took too long to arrive. Mom tried to talk but after a while she seemed to give up and so I just sat with her, waiting. I didn’t know it at the time, but she died ten minutes before anyone came. Internal bleeding. I couldn’t fix her. I didn’t know how.”
“Oh my God. I’m sorry.”
