Page 36 of The Dollhouse

And it wasn’t. Why? Because I’d been thinking of Zoey, as stupid as it was.

“Your shirt,” Roman muttered as he got out tiny metal pliers and disinfectant.

I winced as I worked to unbutton my shirt, soon enough pulling it off my chest and my arm, exposing the red hole in my upper bicep. I could still move my arm, so it didn’t hit anything too important, but it would take a while to heal, and if he needed me again, I’d be useless.

Although, I’d been damned near useless tonight. It was like Roman had brought a knife to a gunfight instead of the nine-millimeter he normally used.

Fuck. I really fucked up.

He rolled a stool beside me, fixing my arm to the armrest with a tight leather strap to my elbow. You know, so my body didn’t jerk when he was digging around inside it, trying to find and pull out the bullet.

The man who shot me was dead now, but that was beside the point. I should never have gotten shot to begin with.

Roman’s dark eyes were on the metal instrument he’d shortly use to dig into my arm and pull it out with. He was in the process of sterilizing it before he grabbed a clean rag and dumped a whole bunch of the fluid onto it, pressing it against my arm. It stung like a motherfucker, but I did my best not to let the pain show.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Roman asked. “You’ve never been so careless before, Carter.” His jaw tensed, a vein in his forehead throbbing, pulsing as he added, “You could’ve died tonight because you were so stupid.”

“I know,” I muttered. It wasn’t like I was happy about it myself. Almost dying was not on my agenda anytime soon, let alone ever. If there was one man I never wanted to disappoint, it was Roman. I literally owed him everything; without him, I was nothing, so the least I could do was have a clear head when he needed me on jobs.

“What we do is dangerous,” Roman spoke, tossing down the towel, which was now stained with my blood, before grabbing the surgical tweezers he’d use to dig in and grab the bullet. It was a weird thing, to feel metal caught inside of you, almost worse than the pain itself—a foreign object lodged inside your body that most definitely should not be there. “When you work for the mob, you need to always have a level head, and tonight, Carter, you acted like you were fifteen again.”

I said nothing, because there was nothing to say. He was right. Roman was always right.

Searing hot agony blew through me when he dug the metal tweezers inside the small hole in search of the bullet, and I ground my teeth in order to keep myself from wincing. The muscles in my arm were spasming uncontrollably; it was a good thing he’d tied it down.

“Where was your mind?” Roman hissed, eyes zeroed in on my arm as he worked. “What the fuck were you thinking about?”

I didn’t want to tell him, but I knew if I kept quiet, he might start to think I would forever be useless on jobs, and that wasn’t something I wanted to be. No, I wasn’t helpless or inept; I had been training to follow in Roman’s footsteps for the last ten years now. This wasn’t my first rodeo, and yet I’d gone into it like a blind man.

So I told him. I told him the truth, because he’d find out eventually—that, or he’d draw his own conclusions about where my mind was at. If there was one man whose trust I never wanted to lose, it was his.

“I was thinking about her,” I muttered. When I spoke it, his dark eyes lifted from the wound in my arm, the metal in his hands freezing as we met stares.

Zoey. I had been thinking about Zoey, and it could’ve cost me my life.

I mean, what the fuck?

Roman said nothing for a while, returning his focus on finding the bullet. It was a few minutes later when the red-stained bullet was dropped on the metal tray near his feet, pulled out of my body as carefully as it could possibly be without going to a hospital.

Bullet wounds were something that had to be reported to the police, and though there were some members of the local law enforcement that were in our pocket, not all of them were. It was always best to avoid them whenever possible.

“You need to learn to separate your private life from your work life,” Roman chided me, sounding almost like a parent—or, at least, how I imagined a parent would, in a situation like this. Roman was only ten years older than me, not much considering everything, but he’d seen a lot more of the world than I had, he’d done more, experienced more. He knew what he was talking about.

I nodded, turning away as he started to stitch me up and slap a bandage on the wound. My arm would be sore for a while; it was my shooting arm, too.

Goddamn it all to hell, I think… I think, in spite of everything, I liked her.

I liked the fucking pink-haired girl.

I liked Zoey Marbella.

Chapter Eleven – Zoey

Eventually I got used to the routine. Carter would watch me during the day and even some nights, meet up with Roman at the Dollhouse when I worked Tuesdays and Thursdays. It wasn’t like I enjoyed being babysat like a child, like someone neither man trusted, but I couldn’t fight the way I grew weak when I was around them, how my thoughts always ended up in the gutter.

How could they not, when I was constantly surrounded by two sex gods with faces and dicks that could kill?

But then, just when I started to get used to the grind, something strange happened. Carter stopped showing up at my apartment, leaving me to wonder just what the hell happened. Of course, I didn’t have either his or Roman’s number, so it wasn’t like I could call either of them and ask. Maybe I was just being silly.

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