Page 10 of Need Him Like Oxygen

I tossed one gauze, then soaked another, wiping the blood from her nose.

“Sorry,” I said as she winced and flinched.

Her face mostly clean, I reached for her forearm, drawing her hand over toward me, noting how swollen it already was.

It had to be broken.

And not getting it set was going to make her a fuckuva lot weaker.

“I’m not going,” she insisted, reading my mind.

“Then I’ll wrap it,” I said, going back to the kit to grab an elastic bandage and quickly wrapping it up. “I need to check your ribs,” I reminded her, reaching down to grab her elbows when she tried to stand by herself and failed.

It was a slow process to get her upright, and even so, she hissed and whimpered her way through it.

I reached to slide her jacket off of her shoulders but paused when I saw the tight shirt beneath.

“Love, I think I’m gonna have to cut this off of you.”

“Fine,” she said, gaze down.

And it was then that I noticed how the waistband of her pants was rolled oddly.

Like maybe they’d been… yanked down.

Then hastily pulled back up.

If someone…

“You’re growling,” Cinna said making my gaze shoot up.

“Just getting all worked up at finally getting to see you without your shirt, is all,” I said, both of us knowing I was lying, but neither saying anything about it.

I turned, grabbing the scissors and cutting up her stomach and down her sleeves. The material fell with no assistance by the time I was done. Leaving her in her rolled-waisted leather pants and a simple black bra.

“Oh, fuck,” I said, gaze moving over her midsection. Where bruises—violent, violet purple and blue—were spreading across her ribs.

On both fucking sides.

Like someone had, quite fucking literally, kicked her when she was down.

“Who?”

I wasn’t even aware I’d growled that out loud until she answered me.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It fucking matters,” I said, my gaze sliding to hers as a familiar cold sensation worked its way up my spine, then started to wrap itself around my throat.

“To me, not to you.”

“You’re a capo in the Lombardi crime family,” I reminded her. “It matters to all of us.”

“You can’t tell them,” she said, her voice a high, desperate sound.

“What?” I asked, sure I misunderstood her.

“You can’t tell them.”

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