Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 74428 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74428 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
I turned, moving down the driveway, and I was pretty sure I heard the words, "Did that bad man get you all dirty?"
Never mind the chunk of flesh I was missing, the blood I was still losing at what felt like an alarming rate.
But that didn't matter.
It didn't matter that the blood just kept coming the whole ride back to Navesink Bank, staining the interior of the SUV.
I could deal with the stains later.
It wasn't like it was the first time I had ever needed to get bloodstains out of material before.
Everything was a blur before I turned into the grounds of the compound, making me wonder if it was just road-wariness or a result of the blood loss. I had no idea.
But I flew into the compound, finding Reign and Cash standing near the bar with Renny.
"Told you to watch for the fuck," Cash laughed, shaking his head.
"That was fast," Reign said at almost the same time.
It was Renny, the astute fuck, who realized it wasn't a dog bite that was the problem. "What happened?" he asked, tone serious, serious enough to make Reign and Cash stiffen.
"You got any female competition?" I asked, looking at my president.
"What do you mean?"
"I was in the middle of getting mauled by that dreadlocked hellbeast when some woman came out of nowhere and snatched the fucking packages. Took off with them to a waiting SUV."
Not missing a beat, used to bad news, Reign didn't yell or curse or even tense up.
"What did Henry say?"
"I have six weeks," I told him with a nod.
"Then we'd better get to work," Reign told us.
"No. This is me. My fuck up. My fix," I insisted, shaking my head.
Reign watched me for a long moment, his light green eyes unreadable as they always were. The inspection would make almost any man uncomfortable, have them shifting their feet, looking away.
Impulses I fought, wanting him to know how serious I was taking this, that I wouldn't rest until I got the guns back.
"Yeah, that's fine. You can do the legwork, but we can get Janie and Alex on figuring out who else in the game might want to take me down or has been sniffing around for those guns. You need to get your fuckin' arm sewn up," he added, brows low. "You're missing a chunk of it, you know."
"I haven't really stopped to look into it," I admitted truthfully.
At that, he nodded. Like he approved. Like I had maybe earned back some of the respect I lost by being overtaken by one person.
"If you want to handle this, you're going to need stitches and some antibiotics. Can't exactly trace down leads if you're in a hospital bed septic from that dog's filthy fuckin' mouth. I'd have Pagan do it, but I think this is beyond his expertise even."
"Nothing is beyond my.. oh, fuck. That's ugly," Pagan declared, coming in from the kitchen, eyes moving to my arm.
And if Pagan thought it was ugly - when he had been beaten nearly unrecognizable a lot of his life, then it probably was bad.
"I'll drive him," Pagan declared, knocking into my good shoulder as he moved past. "Did you really get jacked by a woman?" he asked, making me suddenly realize I would never live this down. Not even if I got the guns back, made amends for the screw-up. All my brothers would ever remember about me was that one time a chick stole from me.
Oh, well.
That was a worry for another day.
"Seriously. It looks all kinds of jagged," Pagan continued the fifteen-minute-long running monologue about the severity of the dog bite as he drove me to the hospital, dropping me off to go find parking.
I barely made it into the triage room before I was shuffled right back out, tucked into a room, a nurse coming in immediately to saline-rinse the wound while she waited for the doctor to pop in.
By the time she did, my arm was blissfully numbed, a suture kit was opened on a tray, and I had gotten my first real look at the wound, bits of flesh ripped off, gone forever.
"It's gonna be a wide scar," Pagan said, coming in behind the doctor as she picked up the needle.
"He's not wrong," she agreed. "I have a good hand for stitches, but not even I can make this look pretty."
"This fuck is pretty enough. He can use some ugly," Pagan declared, pushing a soda bottle in my hand. It wasn't until I took a long swig that I realized why he was gone so long. He had not only hit the vending machine, but had gone to the liquor store to spike my soda with whiskey.
Figuring that if there ever was a reason to have a drink in the middle of the damn day, this was it.