Page 79 of Ruthless Reign

He nodded. “Doesn’t look too serious.”

I shuddered, wiping clammy palms down my face even though the movement sent more spasms of pain flickering through my chest. “Fuck,” I said on an exhale, my breath and voice shaky even to my own ears.

“She’ll be all right. She’s a St. Vincent. We don’t die easy.”

Clearly.

I was proof of that, but I had a strange feeling that the reason I was lying here still breathing was more than just dumb luck.

But Becca?

Shit.

I should’ve been there.

I should be there right now. Down in emergency, holding her hand while the nurses and doctors fixed her up.

“Tell me,” I asked Dad, and he stepped away from the window and dragged the chair in the corner up to the edge of the bed.

He leaned over his knees. “Looks a little banged up. Might have a leg injury. She was limping until your brother picked her up.”

“And it was Séamas?”

Dad nodded. “That’s what she told Hardin.”

Zade filled us in on all the gritty details as soon as she and Hardin left her old apartment.

“Why?” I seethed. “He already took his payment in my fucking blood. And Jack Green. He had no right to lay a hand on her or Toby. They’re innocent.”

Becca would be crushed. Toby and Kate were her first friends here. They took her in. Helped her get a job. She’d blame herself. I knew she would. For that alone, I was tempted to raze this entire godforsaken city to ash just to smoke out all the rats.

“Unless he found out about Gilligan’s Finch,” Dad corrected.

Ma pursed her lips, shaking her head. “Nah. If he did, she’d be dead, not just injured.”

“I want to see her.”

“And you will,” Ma clipped. “Let her get the attention she needs first and then we’ll get her brought upstairs.”

“I’ll go,” Dad said, pulling my phone from the little table next to the hospital bed to set it next to me, within reach. “Call me if you want to talk to her. I’ll pass the phone.”

I clenched my jaw. I didn’t want to talk to her on the damn phone.

You know what? Fuck this.

I knocked the phone from the bed and threw off the thin cover on my legs.

“Kaleb,” Dad gripped my shoulder.

“It didn’t even hit anything,” I argued, speaking quickly so neither of them could have the chance to argue with me. “It barely clipped my lung. It was through and through. The artery is stitched up. They?—”

“They said you need to?—”

“No, I need to see Vixen.”

“It’s three fucking days,” Dad hissed, but he was already letting me up.

The doc had only ordered bed rest for three days.

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