I was frozen in place for several more seconds until the slight crack of a branch made me look to my left. It was then that I noticed the woods. I had no idea how dense they were, or even where they led. I only knew that while Zarren and his men were preoccupied, I could disappear into them.
The thought about taking one of the vehicles also crossed my mind, but I knew Zarren’s was nearly out of gas, so I wouldn’t get far in it. Dashing into the other one, the keys were nowhere tobe found. I didn’t have time to check the dead bodies lying in the street for them, so I looked back over at the woods.
I’d always been very outdoorsy as a child. I loved camping, hiking, and all the things most girly girls did not. I’d always been very athletic until my autoimmune issues caused me to develop flare-ups of joint pain, which cut short my playing days. Surely, I could last long enough to get help.
I took a few steps toward the wooded area, but stopped at the sound of Zarren’s pained grunt. Liam was beside himself as he alternated between the two men. I shouldn’t have stopped, but as I saw the two men lying there, and Zarren in a rapidly expanding puddle of blood, I couldn’t make my feet move.
“Zarren and Conor are down,” I heard Liam say to whoever he now had on the other end of his cell phone. “C will be okay, but I’m worried about the bossman. He’s been shot, and he’s lost a lot of blood.”
The man might’ve been a kidnapper, and the bane of my recent existence, but he’d saved my life. There was no telling what those men, or even my own father, would’ve done with me, but I knew the end result would’ve been the same. I’d still be betrothed to fucking Mikhail Bocharov, but to my father’s benefit versus the man who’d just saved my life.
“The girl is right.... Hey,” Liam called out to me. “Get your ass in the car.”
“Zarren’s sacrifice won’t be in vain. Get the girl, and continue on to New York City.”
“What about Z?” he asked.
It was then that I remembered Zarren. Choosing not to seek freedom, I rushed over to the wounded man and knelt down beside him. The wound was bleeding heavily, and I was thankful that I didn’t get squeamish around blood. I looked at him as he stared up at me with weary eyes.
“Leave him. I’ll call an ambulance to have him brought to the hosp?—”
“He can’t wait,” I said aloud, and Liam looked at me while the man on the other end paused.
Fuck!I could feel my consciousness fade with every second I lay there after those bastards fucking shot me. Used to stab wounds during my time at the various fighting rings, I’d never been shot before, and it wasn’t something I planned to experience again. That was, if I survived it.
I could hear the loud groaning from Conor and the worried tone of voice that belonged to Liam. Since the day I was rescued by King and Cillian after my great grandfather’s death, Conor and Liam had been beside me. They’d grown up alongside me and had become like brothers to me. I’d always wanted one of my own. The closest I came to a sibling was my cousin, Ciara. She was two years younger than me, but was the bratty younger sister I’d never known I’d wanted.
“Who is that?” I heard King say from what had to be the phone. “Is that the girl?”
“It is,” Liam assured me. “She says we have to get Bossman to the hospital.”
“No hospital,” I heard my uncle tell Liam. “And fuck, you’re quite some distance from the nearest fucking safe house, too. The girl is a fucking nurse. Can she stop the bleeding?”
I was wavering in and out of consciousness, so I was unable to hear her response or what King wanted me to do. I knew what mattered the most was the girl, and if I had to die to ensure my family kept possession of her, it was something I was expected to do. My men would be forced to leave me here to die and bring her to them. All that mattered was the empire. The Brannington fucking Empire.
It’d been an albatross around my neck my entire fucking life, and even now, when on death’s door, it was still a noose growing tighter around me. Or was that something else? As I felt direct pressure being applied to my upper arm and shoulder area, I groaned and tried rolling away from it. Seconds later, I felt something hard and cold being pressed to my lips. Right after, the stinging burn of the alcohol dribbled over my lips and down my chin.
I licked at it like a thirsty man before more was poured between my now parted lips. I choked and spat out half of the alcohol as too much was poured all at once. Who I assumed to be Liam pulled back, and the next time, relief came in smaller drops.
When I’d drunk enough to mask the burning pain in my shoulder and the small hands steadily applying pressure to the wound, I closed my eyes. I reopened them sometime later to find two of my Uncle’s medics there with us. My head fell to the right, where Conor was now sitting up and grimacing as his own wound was stitched up.
It then lolled to the left, where I saw Aurora sitting on her ass against the car with her knees to her chest, and my jacket wrapped around the front of her. Her face was streaked withtears and had black from the smeared mascara mixing with the red of someone’s blood.
“Zarren,” I heard Liam say, and I groaned out in pain as I tried to locate him. He appeared above me as he looked down at me. “We’ve stopped the bleeding, but we need to clean the wound. King doesn’t want us taking you to the hospital. Are you going to be okay for us to do that?”
I gave a nod. Pain was usually an aphrodisiac for me, but I could honestly say that the kind afflicting me at this moment did anything but make me hard. One of the medics kneeled down beside me. I watched the needle in his hand and could remember back in my youth when I used to cry at the sight of one. That had been until Ronan tied me down to a bed and had his men take turns sticking the sharp tips all over me. Most had nothing in them, but the psychological factor was enough to do a five-year-old boy in.
Now, I merely looked at them with disgust. The medic moved over me, then began to inject whatever was in it all around my actual wound. It stung like a motherfucker, feeling like I was getting attacked by a swarm of bees. I groaned out in pain, but let him finish before the entire area went numb.
“It was just lidocaine,” the man said to me.
“It fucking hurt,” I muttered back.
“This next part is going to hurt worse. Do you need some more alcohol first?”
I nodded, then saw Aurora watching me from afar. Raising my uninjured hand, I motioned for her to come close. She was confused at first, until I moved my hand more profusely, grimacing when the rapid movement caused pain on my other side.
“Are you okay, Zarren?”
