Page 112 of Cruel Lies

The man was broken, on his knees, begging our younger brother for help.

Under any other circumstance, I’d laugh. I’d rub it in his face, never let him live it down. But just like him, I was torn, an emotional dumpster fire as the girl I swore not to love,not to let in, sat there on the couch, bleeding out from between her slack fingers.

"Someone call Lilly," Jackal ordered, and his other man pulled out a phone and dialed a number quickly?—

She picked up on the first ring.

"This better be good, you buffoon, or I’m going to kick your ass."

"We need the Surgeon, and we need him like an hour ago. We’re in the commons."

Lilly didn’t ask any questions. The line went dead, and if I knew her at all, she’d be on the phone with the resident whack job who’d gone to medical school.

The Surgeon was a sort of on-call, on-hand doctor who’d gone through medical school and been a combat medic once upon a time.

Until he got caught carving up cadavers and killing assholes who ended up on his table and didn’t deserve to live.

The board took his license for killing those fucks.

Lilly gave him a job.

Rowan had both hands on Harper’s torso, trying desperately to keep what was left of her blood inside her as two sets of feet thundered down a nearby hallway. "Come on, dammit, Harper, just hang in there." Dingo and Coyote watched as he tried not to break in front of the crowd, but it was like fighting a losing battle. Tears choked his words, fell freely down his face, and dropped on her bare knee as he and Nash crumbled to pieces in front of her.

A part of me was glad she wasn’t awake to witness it.

A part of me still wished she’d died that night seven years ago.

Not because it would have changed our whole lives. But because I couldn’t stand to see her hurt like this. Facing death at her door, nothing in her hands but a wrench and an attitude, like some sort of avenging angel. She wouldn’t have been forced torun for her life tonight, chased by two complete psychos as they shot at her.

Bullet holes in her fucking guts, bleeding to death on the fucking leather couch in the Guild, of all places.

Nash stood suddenly as the Surgeon stepped up, bag in hand, and put a firm grip on my brother’s shoulder. "Okay, man, it’s time to get out of the way so I can help this young lady."

"If you don’t save her, it’ll be your head, Surg," he muttered, shaking off the older man’s reassuring pats like a recalcitrant child.

Lilly met Rowan’s gaze as he moved out of the way and let the man get to work, the two of them having an in-depth conversation without any spoken words.

"Angel," he began, but I shook my head. I couldn’t look away fromheras the Surgeon worked on her life-threatening wounds. He sliced her top in two from the bottom, baring her blood-soaked skin to the room.

Dingo and Coyote had the decency to look away. Nash looked like he was one step away from snapping on a level none of us had ever seen before. Rowan looked like he might be sick.

Lilly looked at me. "Can you help him move her to the kitchen so he can work?"

I gave her a nod and put my hands around Harper’s shoulders, watching Surgeon put his hands under her knees, and we shifted her weight.

The scream she let out was inhuman.

"Fuck, man, fuck,fuck stop it,you’re hurting her?—"

"Nash, man, chill the fuck out," Rowan yelled, gripping him by the collar of his shirt so he wouldn’t interfere. "She’s gotta move so he can get the bullets out."

"She’s inpain,Ro," he whined, nothing like the man he usually was. This was a broken Nash, thrown back to the years his younger brother took his beatings and all he could do washide behind the door and whine as each lash of Father’s belt peeled a layer of flesh from someone else’s back on his behalf.

"I know, man, I know," Rowan muttered, wrapping his massive wingspan around Nash’s shoulders to hold him in place and keep him from falling apart.

Something in Nash snapped as he followed us into the kitchen, as he watched Harper wince as her body hit the cold steel countertop. The moment when Surgeon pulled a pair of hemostats and a scalpel from his bag, I thought he might hit the man.

Lilly saw it, too. Her glare of disapproval pegged Rowan on the spot. "Get him out of here so the man can do his work."

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