My eyelids flutter. “Where’s my woman?”
Tonya answers coldly. “Still locked up. In the torture chamber. Where you left her.”
“Oh, that’s right. She tried to leave me. So I… had…to lock her up. I’m never letting her go,” I murmur, half to her, half to myself.
“You’re bleeding out fast,” Richard says sharply.
The guys start guiding me toward the stairs, but my feet barely work. My eyelids flutter.
“Mom… Dad…” I murmur. “I think it’s time I join you two…”
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Webbs growls, gripping tighter.
But I can’t feel my leg anymore.
And then everything goes black.
∞
My eyes crack open, heavy as hell. The room’s dim, but the burn in my throat is what really wakes me up.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I rasp, voice raw like I swallowed a fistful of sandpaper.
“Shut the fuck up,” Prez snaps, shoving a glass of water toward me. I don’t argue.
My lips close around the straw, and I gulp like a dying man. The cold water is a shot of life down my throat.
“Dr. Cottingham, Ruthless is awake,” Prez calls out.
The doc strides in, calm like he hasn’t been hovering over my half-dead body for days. “Good to see you finally came back to the land of the living,” he says, checking my bandages. “You were touch and go for a while.”
“How long was I out?”
“Four days.”
“Shit.”
Prez crosses his thick arms over his chest. “Problem?”
He knows damn well what’s wrong.
“Doc, how long until I’m back on my feet?”
“A couple of weeks—if you actually rest. But I want you on your feet today. Slowly. Start walking. You’ve got a way to go, but you’re healing.”
“I understand, doc.”
I push myself up a few inches, jaw tight as pain flares deep in my side. My eyes land on the red Jello cup on the nightstand. “That for me?”
Doc nods. “Yeah. I’ll be monitoring your vitals for the next few hours.”
“Appreciate it, Doc.”
“Try not to get shot again,” he says before heading out.
Once he’s gone, Prez plants his ass at the foot of my bed like a damn bodyguard.
“The crates you boys snagged on your last run? Rocket launchers,” he says casually.
