I touched my chest and examined my fingers. My blood was wet and sticky. Slowly, I fell to my knees. I heard shouting around me but it seemed to come from far away. A foreign grunt came from my lips as my body slumped against the ground. Nixon came running, then Trace, and finally her, my tough as shit, Mil.
My wife.
And now… a widow.
“I’m s-sorry.” My breaths were coming in sharp, as if there was too much pressure on my lungs to breathe. Every gasp hurt like the fires of hell. I was getting choked by the pressure in my chest, pushing and tearing, just waiting to pull me into the fiery pit.
“Don’t talk. You’re going to be fine, Chase, you have to be fine!” Mil pressed her hand hard over mine. Tears splashed onto my chest — her tears. “Damn it, Chase! Fight!’
“It’s not cold…” I sighed happily as the pain started to dissipate leaving me in a state of shock. “It’s so warm.” And it was. Death was warm, not cold as I’d always thought.
Mil slapped me hard across the cheek. “And it’s gonna get hotter than hell if you don’t listen to me. You have to fight, Chase Winter. I refuse to live without you.”
“Okay.” I smiled. I would have probably rolled my eyes too but moving anything more seemed too much of an effort. She would be fine. She was a fighter, after all. “Love you…” And then I succumbed to the blackness of my warm death. At least I knew, in those last few seconds, that for once in my life, I would have done nothing different.
Because every damn road had led me to her.
“Chase!” Something pounded on my chest. Shit, that hurt. I blinked a few times, thinking I’d really lost my mind when my wife stood over me without a shirt on, clad only in her bra and jeans, holding something to my side. Damn, my side hurt — and my chest. It felt like someone was sitting on it.
“Move,” another voice said.
“But he’ll bleed out!” Nixon snapped.
Damn right! I wanted to shout. Listen to Nixon! It’s not a flesh wound! I felt my body weakening from blood loss.
“I’m a doctor,” Joe snapped.
I would have laughed had I had the energy.
The room fell silent, or at least it felt like it.
Joe, or whoever he was, grabbed something and wrapped it around my leg; it was so tight I winced, or I think I winced. And then he started talking in Sicilian about alcohol and something else about lifting my body and not letting me stand because then I would bleed out. Wow, thanks genius, I appreciated that.
“Shit!” I wailed.
Oh, wow! So I wasn’t dead. I was able to yell. “Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.” Let’s not over-do it. “Damn it!” My body hurt like hell. I’d been shot before, but never like this. What the hell type of poison did that man dip his bullets into? It felt like my body was getting ripped apart.
“We can’t take him to a hospital.” Nixon looked freaked.
Should I be freaked too?
I blinked a few times and mouthed, “It’s okay.” Or at least I think I did.
Joe snorted. “Some of us don’t live and breathe the mafia and have to make a living somehow, you asses.”
I wanted to give him a high five but figured it would probably be the death of me — literally.
Somehow, I was floating in the air. Oh shit, just don’t go into the light. I almost puked as I was carried into a car. I nearly shit my pants when the lights turned on because I thought I was getting called home. It didn’t help that the heater was blasting so it felt like the fires of hell were licking my heels, just waiting for me with bated breath.
“Hold on,” Mil whispered near my ear. “Please, Chase, please God, just hold on, can you do that?”
“Yes,” I whispered hoarsely. “Love you, Mil.”
“Love you too.” And then she leaned down and whispered in my ear. “My savior.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Tex
He was dead.
My father was dead.
And my best friend was getting a hands-on demonstration of why the game of Operation was scary as hell.
“How are you holding up?” Nixon asked, handing me a cup of coffee. Chase had been in surgery for four hours already. Somehow my bastard of a father had missed his first shot at Mil, but had succeeded in hitting Chase three times. Once in the lower back, dangerously close to his kidneys, one through the side, and another through the left shoulder. Had it been any closer to his heart, and he would have died instantly.
“I’m fantastic.” I took the coffee. “Just another day in paradise.”
“Please don’t start singing.” He sat down next to me. “I’d probably end up punching you in the face.”
“Sorry…” I muttered. “…lover.”
“Do you ever quit?”
“No.” I sighed. “I’m cursed for a reason.”
“You aren’t cursed.” Nixon swore. “You just talk so much I want to put duct tape over your mouth.”
“Sure came in handy during my captivity.”
“Did you… um…” Nixon lowered his voice as Mil looked over at us with tear-stained eyes. “…find out any more information?”
“Not from Vito.” I couldn’t call him father now. Not even in my head. He’d almost killed my best friend. Besides, it was unfair to give him the respect of that name when his own son was the person who had pulled the trigger.
I’d knocked him over and turned his own gun on him. He’d damned me to hell, and I’d told him he’d be there in a few seconds. I pulled the trigger twice.
I wanted to empty the gun into the bastard, but I’d heard Mil’s scream and I’d known they needed me. The life had left my father, and I’d like to imagine that the world — our world — had finally gotten to him. He’d finally cracked and lost control; he’d started becoming careless and had thought himself a deity, when in all reality, maybe he’d just wanted to get caught, maybe he’d wanted someone to end his miserable existence. After all, you can only live and kill for so long, until you want to be in the cold wet ground.
“Joe was some help.” I sniffed. After Joe had explained to the doctors about our hunting accident, he’d sat in the corner and spilled his guts.
They had been desperate. The feds were sniffing around, offering them deals if they’d give information on the other families.
And then the feds had discovered the prostitution ring.
“It was bad.” I sighed. “Most girls who went through The Cave didn’t make it out alive. The ones who did were sold to the highest bidder and usually dead within the first year. They were all underage — it was why they earned so much money. Underage girls earned more than older women.”
“Sick bastards,” Nixon muttered under his breath.
“It gets worse.” I flinched and explained. “My father helped them get the girls. He wasn’t just finding them off the streets. He was taking them from some of the more prominent families in Italy and then offering them for ransom. If the family could afford the payoff, the girl would be raped and returned. If not, then the girl was sold. The De Langes used it as a way to earn back the money they’d lost.”
“Why would Vito help?”
“He took the girls from families who refused to pay for the protection of the Campisi family. It was to teach them a lesson. Then he’d look like the hero when he returned the girl. Then he’d ask them to keep making their payments. After all, he’d say, it’s a dangerous world.”