Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
“That’s not a problem,” Salvatore said, waving my worries away as he strode confidently into the room, completely unfazed by the mess.
Salvatore “the Surgeon” Costa was the Family’s one-man medical team.
He wasn’t formally a doctor or anything, but he’d always had a knack for it. And the stomach to be able to look at some of the gnarliest shit without a blink.
“Hey, honey, let’s get a look at you, okay?” Sal asked as he set one of the desks back on its feet so he could put his kit down.
“Come here. Let’s give him some space,” I said, pulling Max with me over to the other side of the room.
Each time Lil whimpered or cried out as Salvatore carefully inspected her injuries, Max jumped.
“She’s in good hands,” I assured her.
“I get that you guys use battlefield medicine, but she needs to get that knee looked at. Like… the inside.”
“I know. Salvatore has his ways. Trust me. But if she wants to go to a normal hospital, she can.”
“I don’t,” Lil called, making my brows raise at her hearing.
“Tell me what happened,” I demanded of Max.
“I was trying to call Lil to check in. And when she answered… she asked for help. So, I ran here.”
“And interrupted a robbery?” I asked.
Lil worked a job that had a lot of inherent risk. From clients. From people who got wind of how much money in precious gems she had just lying around at all times.
“It was him, Miko,” Max said, face going hard.
“It was him, who?”
“Him. With the blue eyes.”
“What? How the fuck did that happen?” I asked, glancing over toward Lil, knowing she was the only one who might have that answer, but knowing she was in no shape to answer questions.
“I shot him,” Max said, making my head whip back toward her.
“What?”
“I shot him. In the thigh. I don’t know if that… helps at all.”
If it was bad enough to need to go to the hospital, maybe. But if he just tried to take care of it himself, probably not.
“Maybe,” I said. But it was right then that Salvatore started to speak again.
“Alright, honey. We need to take you to get a scan of your knee and head. Maybe your ribs. It will be at a facility. But we’ll be going in the back door and avoiding paperwork. After that, depending on what the scans say, you might not have any choice but to go to the hospital,” he warned. “If you don’t need surgery, though, I can take care of you at my office.”
“Alright,” Lil agreed. “But…” she said, looking around her place.
“We’ll take care of this,” I assured her.
With that, Salvatore led her out the door and into a car parked half on the sidewalk out front.
“You need to sit,” I told Max, trying to push her into a chair.
“No. No, I want to help.”
She wrenched away from me, dropping down onto the floor, finding various bins, and painstakingly starting to sort the gems.
“I can help,” Zeno said, even though we both knew he was practically allergic to organization.
“No, I want you on this fuck,” I said, jaw tightening at the idea of what might have happened to Max if she hadn’t gotten her hands on that gun. “Find him. I want this done.”
He headed back out, leaving me to join Max on the floor for what seemed like an almost hopeless task.
“I’m starting to see why Lil thought it was absurd that I might think she had my diamonds,” I decided as we filled container after container of various gemstones.
“Yeah,” Max agreed, placing the last of the emeralds into a bin, then placing it on the table. “I guess this is her retirement plan when she gets sick of the work.”
“Did you happen to get a chance to talk to Lil?” I asked. “About why he was here?”
“No. There wasn’t time. He was here. Then we were fighting. She passed me the gun. Then he was gone, and I was trying to see how she was.”
“We can talk to her once Sal gets her patched up.”
“Does he actually know what he’s doing?”
“The whole Family uses him. He works out of an actual doctor’s office. And he’s been slowly adding fancy-ass medical equipment to it. He even has a surgery room now. She’s in the best hands. Definitely getting more one-on-one care than she’d get at one of the overcrowded hospitals.”
“Okay,” Max agreed, finished with the bigger diamonds, then reached for a piece of paper, using it to sweep the tiniest of them into a pile.
“As soon as he’s done, he will call me. We can go there, talk to her. Bring her home, if that’s what she wants.”
“She can’t come back here. She can’t be alone,” Max said. “She needs someone to help her. To… protect her.”
“We will figure it out,” I assured her. “I’ve got security covered. And if she needs help getting around, I can hire a nurse. Or have one of my sisters come and help. Whatever she needs. She’s not going to be alone.”