I start to move from my place on the bed, but Alek puts a hand on my chest and stops me.
“Don’t move,” he demands. “You need stitches in a few places.” I can hear the sound of him rooting around in a metal tin, the clangs soft and hollow.
I groan softly and lift one of my hands to rub it over my face. I can feel the bruises there, tender and aching, and the sting of my busted open skin. My tongue darts along my bottom lip.
“How did you find me?” I ask him, my voice horse.
He clicks his tongue. “How did I find you?” he mumbles. “That’s really what you have to ask me?”
I feel his hands on my stomach as he pulls my shirt up and I hiss as he sticks the suturing needle into my flesh. I don’t remember being sliced up in that area, but I don’t remember a lot after one of them bashed my head against the asphalt in the middle of the alleyway.
“What else should I ask?” I suck in a breath through my teeth.
Alek stitches me up slow and meticulously, and I can tell he’s done this before. It’s not the shoddy work of someone who only vaguely knows what they’re doing.
“Maybe how I managed to get you here,” he tells me. “How you’re even alive.”
“I can guess that,” I mumble. “If they were still alive, I wouldn’t be here. So, you killed them.”
“Yes, I did,” Alek growls out as he finishes up the last stitch and pulls it tight. The pain flutters up my abdomen but I ignore it. It’s not even remotely the worst thing I’ve ever felt.
“If I hadn’t gotten there when I did, you’d be dead, Tommy,” he tells me.
“I know,” I reply.
“No, you don’t know,” Alek huffs as he grabs more thread and grabs my opposite arm by the wrist, pulling it straight. “When I got there, they had you by the arms dragging your body to do God fucking knows what. I thought…”
“What?”
“I thought you were already dead.”
It’s silent as he begins suturing up the wound on my arm, and I close my eyes as I feel the needle doing in and out of my flesh without an ounce of medication to numb it.
“Well, I wasn’t,” I say.
“No, but you could’ve been,” he growls at me, and I open my eyes just in time to look deep into his. “Going after them was a stupid idea.”
“It wasn’t exactly an idea, I just…” I trail off, my head going a bit dizzy.
“You just did it. You decided you didn’t want to wait on the plan. You were going to take it into your own hands no matter who got hurt or what happened.” Alek pulls the final stitch tight and tosses the used instruments and thread into the nearby trash.
“Those fuckers need to pay,” I say, my voice rough.
“At the cost of your life?” he asks me. “What exactly did you expect to happen? You would convince them not to make a deal with the Bianchis by kicking their ass?” He stares down at me with rage flaring in his eyes.
There’s something else there though. Fear.
“Maybe it would’ve worked,” I insist. “Maybe if it was more than just me fighting. If it was all of us against them. I can’t do this all on my own, Alek.” My throat tightens. I try to sit up, but my body aches, and Alek’s hand moves to my shoulder.
“Don’t try to get up. They got you good,” he whispers. There’s a certain softness in his voice that I’m not used to. That I’ve never heard before. “You’re the one who went off on your own.”
“Because no one else would come with me.” My face scrunches up in frustration. “No one else understands that they’re not going to just talk to us and make nice. They want to fucking kill us. If they side with the Bianchi, they’re going to do just that.”
“They’ve already sided with them,” Alek explains. “You know that. They’ve already made a deal for their weapons and safety.”
“Carmine thinks it can be changed,” I tell him. “He thinks we can talk to the Carvels and get them to change their minds.”
“They won’t listen to us anymore than the Bianchis will,” Alek says with a sigh.
