Page 43 of Spiteful Heart

“Harvey,” I whispered his name, my voice trembling on its own. I lifted a hand, bringing it to his face and smearing some of my blood on his cheek in the process. Oops.

“Shh,” he said, applying more pressure to the wound on my side than I could by myself. He was stronger than he looked. His gray eyes seemed sad, almost, totally unconcerned about the bright red blood I’d smeared on his cheek. His gun rested on the ground beside me, its clip empty, from what it looked like.

“How…” I couldn’t finish the question. Each word was like a knife coming up my throat, digging into my esophagus as it went, creating more pain for me to face. Pain. It always came to pain and blood. When would it ever be enough? When would I have enough? When would death take me, whether I wanted it to or not?

“Sylvester called me,” Harvey told me, eyes on me as he kept up the pressure. He had some blood splattered on him, on his clothes and on his face, blood I hadn’t gotten on him myself. My guess was from his shootout upstairs. How many men had he killed to get down here? “He pulled me off Newton for the night and told me to follow you.”

I was still too shocked at this whole turn of events to question him further. That, or I was getting woozy from the pain and what blood I’d lost. My stomach burned like it was on literal fire, and each breath I took only served to stoke the flames of agony inside.

If this was what it felt like to die, then I couldn’t blame anyone for giving in. This was the worst pain I’d ever been in, hands down. Worse than anything my brother had done to me. Worse than the doctor and his sterilization. My body had been sore afterward, but my parents had kept me hopped up on pain meds.

This… this was so much worse.

Keeping hold on my wound with one hand, Harvey pulled out his phone with his other, dialing. “Sylvester?” he spoke into the line after a moment. “Yeah, I got her. She’s been stabbed. She’s losing blood here, but I’m doing what I can. She needs a doctor.” He nodded to whatever Sylvester was saying.

When he hung up, he set his phone down. To me, he said, “Keep pressure on it, Lola. Can you do that?” His voice was so soft, so kind… and yet he was a killer too, just like me. Just like my men. How could he act so awkward and so nice and yet still be a killer?

He worked on taking off his shirt, and within another moment, he was lifting me up and tying the shirt around my midsection. He moved my hands so he could tie it like a tourniquet around me, as tight as he could make it.

“I need to go upstairs and get one of their guns to free you from the floor. Mine is out,” he told me. “I’ll be right back.”

My breath was short. “Don’t—” I couldn’t say anything else. Even then, my voice hardly came out, like it was a pain to speak. And, I guess it was. My entire body was filled to the brim with pain; I never knew being alive could hurt so much. Would it really be so awful to die?

“I’ll be back, Lola.” That was all he said to me, but I could tell he meant it.

I fought to stay conscious while he disappeared, focusing on the single lightbulb in this basement space, the smell of blood in the air. If I wasn’t so injured, I’d be throwing a little party right now, dancing in Tony’s blood. I’d be stripping off my clothes and rolling around in it, waiting until my guys got here… and then we’d have a good, old-fashioned orgy. Yeah, I could go for one of those right now.

Harvey returned, another gun in his hand. He aimed it at the chain bolted to the ground, firing once. The bullet split the chain from the bolt with a loud thud. My ears rang… or maybe they were ringing before. I couldn’t remember.

“Come on,” he said. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

With his help, I got to my feet. I had to lean heavily on him, and he wrapped an arm around my shoulders to keep me steady. If it wasn’t for him, there was no fucking way I’d be on my own two feet right now, not with how lightheaded I was and with how hazy my vision was.

“My mask,” I said, trying to pull away from him the moment we started to head to the door. My mask lay on the floor near Tony’s crumpled body, its silvery appearance dull in the basement light. Or maybe that was just because my eyes were struggling to work.

“Someone will get it,” Harvey said. “They’re on their way here, but we’re not going to wait for them. You need to see a doctor ASAP.” Everything he said was logical, but as he helped me out of the room and up the stairs, all I could think about was my mask.

My mask. I had to get it. I couldn’t leave it behind. My mask was me.

But Harvey was unrelenting, the jerk. He refused to turn around for it, no matter what I said. I barely registered all the bodies we passed as we came up into what looked like a dingy, run-down house. I was still too zeroed in on that fucking mask.

He got me in the car, and my head lolled around. He buckled me in and then hurried to get in the driver’s seat. My head rolled to face him, and I could feel my breathing slowing down. Everything had become a struggle.

“Harvey,” I managed to whisper his name as he got us out of the driveway and onto the road. My lips parted, the rest of what I was going to say dying in the back of my throat. No other words came out, and the next time I closed my eyes, I didn’t open them again.

Chapter Eleven – Viper

My brother and I were pinned down a lot longer than we should’ve been, but that’s because the assholes were coming at us from more than one direction. We were just outside the warehouse district, off the main road in the opposite direction Sylvester was. Maddox was near the front street that weaved through the warehouses, and he saw some van pull up.

But Mike and I were a little busy having a shootout to pay attention to any texts or calls we got.

We hadn’t been in an actual shootout since the Bloody Princess’s men came at us in our apartment, back when everything was different. Mike had gotten shot, badly, too. I couldn’t lie; I was worried as Mike and I hid behind a dumpster. Very worried. We’d gotten lucky once, but would we get lucky again?

Mike was near the wall of the building the dumpster was against; I had the better side to lean around and shoot from, and so I emptied my clip faster than I should’ve. Hit two of the fuckers, but not all of them. By my count, there were still two more.

Whatever this was, it was a bigger operation than we thought.

Mike handed me his gun when he saw my clip was empty, and I threw him a look that asked him what the hell he was doing. “Take it,” he grunted out. “I’m going around the building to try to get them from behind. I can take one out, at least, and when I do, you can get a better shot at the other while they’re focused on me.”

---