Page 39 of Sardonic Burn

I roll my eyes. “Just help me carry him inside.”

We rush and manage to put him on my kitchen table. He weighs more than I expected and by the time he’s lying lifelessly on top of the wooden table, I’m exhausted.

Cecilia puts her gloves and a mask on, then grabs a pair of scissors and cuts open his shirt.

I’m frozen in place, and she doesn’t mind me just staying there like a corpse. I’m amazed at her speed and how she’s able to quickly switch from her care-free personality to a top-notch doctor.

“How the fuck is he even alive?” she mumbles under her breath, but it’s loud enough for me to hear it.

“What’s wrong?”

“He has two bullets in his body. Not only that, but it looks like something pushed them deeper in his body. What in the world happened to this man?”

Her eyes are on me. I turn my head to the side, feigning innocence and hiding my bloodied hand behind my back. Her burning stare sends chills down my spine, and I swallow the knot that forms in my throat. Cecilia waits three seconds before speaking again.

“What did you do?”

“I may or may not have impulsively pushed my fingers in his wound.”

Her brows shoot up to her hairline. “Why not just kill him? That way, both of us would have less work.”

I ignore her. “Is he fixable?”

Cecilia snorts. “Yes. I think so.”

I don’t speak again as she starts working on him. I only bring my biggest lamp while she’s in the middle of removing his bullets to give her better light. She doesn’t say anything for the next while, and I’m sitting right across from her, watching in fascination as she performs a mini-surgery in my kitchen.

Hudson has a really nice body.

His abs are defined, and there are a lot of tattoos on his chest. He doesn’t seem like someone who would have that manytattoos. He usually wears suits and is dressed professionally and neatly. Somehow, both suit him perfectly.

Cecilia’s hands work quickly, and I can barely follow her with my eyes. She’s focused on the task at hand and silence surrounds us. At some point, I yawn and decide to clean up the hallway until she’s finished.

I grab bleach, warm water, and a lot of rugs.

Before I even begin, I see that the blood has stained my door, the tiled floor, and the walls. The door and floor can be cleaned easily, but I can’t turn the walls white again without painting them.

Thank God, I’m the only person on this floor. I make a mental note to buy some paint tomorrow and fix this.

The next hour is spent with me on my phone, ordering a pretty collar for Hudson with a big, pink pendant where his name will be engraved. Cecilia works relentlessly, trying her best to save his life.

Why did I do that?

Letting him die would make half of my problems disappear. He’s not someone I can ever bring myself to care about, nor is he someone I could ever use in the future. So why did I call Cecilia to save his life?

When Hudson closed his eyes and could no longer hear me, dread filled me. I was anxious, and I started panicking. The only thing I could think about was how he was not supposed to die in front of me.

He’s supposed to die by my hand.

I’m more concerned as to who managed to put two bullets in his body. He’s someone who always claimed to be bulletproof—that’s what I knew him for. How the fuck did this idiot allow himself to get shot not once, but twice, in the same spot, on the same night?

“I’m done.” Cecilia emerges from the kitchen.

While she was working, I took a shower and got out two glasses of wine.

She plops into the empty seat next to me, grabbing the glass from my hands and taking a full swig of it.

“I saved the bullets,” she says with a sigh.

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