Page 54 of Vow of Vengeance
"Both."
"Got it."
He hangs up without another word, leaving me to stare blankly at the phone. I don't know what I'm waiting for, or how long I'll have to wait. But I can give him the opportunity.
I'm not going anywhere tonight anyway.
The nail was the easy part. The resident removed it easily, assured us there was no need for stitches. He just wrapped it and prescribed antibiotics, told the nurse to give her the tetanus shot. But he frowned when Soren told him she fell because she got lightheaded.
“I want to find out what caused that episode, so we can avoid it again.”
I appreciate that he actually does his damn job. Soren rolled her eyes when they said they wanted to keep her overnight.
“They must be really bored.” She laughed. But she relented when I agreed that it was a good idea and promised that I wouldn’t leave.
And I haven’t. I’ve been tucked on the bed with her, despite the frown the new nurse fixed me with at shift change. They took blood to run tests, but said the lab was short staffed so the results wouldn’t likely come back any time soon. She’s been good about eating, and I’m sure she’s not dehydrated, so whatever caused her to get so dizzy she fell through her bedroom wall into the attic must be something more.
I’ve already surmised the truth about the wall, though I can’t exactly explain it to her. She doesn’t need to know that the wall was paper thin so that her husband could sit on the other side of it while men fucked his wife on the other side and hear everything. I didn’t realize it until she fell, but that must bewhere he set the camera up… in the attic. It’s why some of the audio was distorted, muffled.
I guarantee most of the men didn’t know he recorded what they did. Obviously, it was illegal on all ends. But whether he kept records for blackmail or to fulfill his own personal kink, I haven’t thought much about it. The truth is, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change what he did. It does, however, open up a greater concern for her health.
I don’t know how many people he let fuck his wife. I don’t know if they all used condoms, if he vetted that they were all STD free, if the condom remained in tact every time. Her tests that I had Dr. Kane run came back clean, but what if we missed something? Or what if she has an underlying condition, something that’s never been diagnosed, something you would have to know to look for.
By his own admission, Vin stated to Khan that he’d done it hundreds of times. I don’t know if that means he drugged his own wife hundreds of times, or drugged women in general hundreds of times. But either way, there had been so many DVDs, some of which contained multiple instances of assault.
Who knows what sort of long-term effects she could be suffering as a result of the prolonged drug use?
She may hate it, but the observation is the best thing they could do for her right now.
At least she’s sleeping well. She’s been crashed for hours in a dreamless sleep, and we’ve been mostly uninterrupted during that time. I don’t think the ibuprofen did a ton for the pain, honestly, but in sleep she doesn’t seem to have any discomfort. No dreams, good or bad.
I want to crawl overtop her and kiss her mouth, but if I get my mouth on hers, I won’t be stopping until her heart monitor goes off and the nurses come running. No, I can restrain myself until we’re out of the hospital, when I get her back in our own bed.
My eyes are growing heavy, the cadence of her heart monitor and the steady rise and fall of her chest I’m lying against seducing me into a strange sense of comfort. It’s not a familiar feeling for me, but I like it. I like knowing that this woman beneath me is mine, that I control her. She surrendered to me, and now I own her body, her heart. I may have had to take them with a little force, but I don’t begrudge anything that got us here.
My eyes have just closed when my phone begins to vibrate against my hip.
I strongly consider letting it go to voicemail, but what if it’s Wes?
The name on the screen, though, says Dr. Kent.
“Declan.” He says by way of greeting when I answer the phone.
“Kent.” I grunt. My voice is thicker than I expected. Maybe I slept for more than the second where my eyes closed.
“Remember how you had me set up that alert for Miss Palmer’s medical records? If anything was manipulated or any new results came in, I’d get notified?”
“I recall.”
“Well, there’s been a few hits tonight.”
“Yeah.” I yawn, scrubbing a hand over my face. “Makes sense. We’re at the hospital now.”
“I see the admission order but wanted to be sure you were aware.”
Of course I’m aware.
“Thanks for checking in.” I shake my head, trying to cast off the dregs of sleep. Now’s as good a time as any, I suppose, to ask about the information I’ve recently learned. “I actually have something I wanted to talk to you about.”
