Page 79 of Blood & Loyalties
“Don’t give a shit. Gotta get her to the hospital.”
“Boss, I know an explosives guy. I’ll take care of it,” Rex said, opening the car door for us.
I nodded as we sped off.
For two days,I had been sitting in this white hell hole, but at least I was holding my girl’s hand. Doctors had performed all kinds of tests to find out what she had been given. They thought it was a mixture of different drugs. The good thing was that all the tests came back good. Her brain was doing whatever the hell it was supposed to do. The doctor didn’t suspect there would be any side effects from the drugs, but he said he would keep a close eye on her for a while to make sure.
She had to be put on serious antibiotics because of an almost deadly bladder infection. I guessed lying in your own piss and shit for days after attempting to hold it would do that to someone. Again, doctors said she should be fine, just in pain for a while.
I had been waiting five hours by then for her to wake up. It had been said the drugs were totally out of her system, but her not waking up was a concern.
No fucking shit it was a concern. I couldn’t eat, sleep, or move from her side. My insides were shredded every time I looked at her. I wasn’t a praying man, but I fucking prayed every minute I could. I just wanted her to open her fucking eyes. To come back to me.
I wiped my hand over my face. I was so fucking tired, but nothing I did would allow me to sleep. I didn’t deserve to sleep, anyway. Not until my woman woke up, until we could sleep side by side again. Then I would sleep.
Rex defused the bomb that was big enough to blow the whole block. When I told everyone about Flynn and Ghost being brothers, shit hit the roof. No one believed it, but when Techie really started digging deeper, just focusing on those two, he found it. They were in fact brothers, same father although Ghost’s mother never put it on his birth certificate. No, the confirmation came from Flynn’s mother. Once Techie got an exact location, we sent out guys to investigate. They let themselves in and found an old box with one small letter inside of it. In that letter was the confirmation we were looking for.
We got a hit on Ghost and Flynn’s whereabouts via Rex not even ten hours later. He and his men worked fucking fast. They had better fucking be in the little town in South America as expected since I had talked Vino and Sal into sending Rex, Val, and a few enforcers to take them out. I could have waited. Shit, I wanted to wait so I could pull the fucking trigger, but being in the hospital with Catarina was more important. I only prayed I got the fucking call soon. That this nightmare was over. I wasn’t giving them time to run again.
Mumbling from the bed had my attention turning to it. Catarina’s head moved from side to side, exactly like it had a few times over the past few hours.
I moved up and rested my hand on her forehead. “You’re all right,dolcezza. I’ve got you, baby.” I repeated the words over and over to her, not knowing if they made a bit of difference.
When her eyes fluttered open, my heart stopped, and breath was hard to come by.
“Catarina?” I breathed.
Her hand moved to her throat, no doubt dry as a bone.
“You’re okay. You’re in the hospital. Safe.”
I replayed the moment when the doctor told me she hadn’t been raped in my head. I had never been so fucking relieved to hear something in my life. That stupid son of a bitch had played me, and I was glad the fucker was gone.
Her head shook from side to side. “Blow,” she croaked out, her voice sounding nothing like her own.
“Rex took care of it. Nothing blew.” Questions rose in her eyes, but before she could talk, I answered for her. “He’s dead. Gone.”
“Ghost?” Her eyes closed as exhaustion took over.
After all of this, I realized just how much I loved this woman, and I would do anything and everything to make sure she knew it every day for the rest of our lives. I evaded her question not wanting her to worry. “You have nothing to worry about.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
ONE MONTH LATER
NIGHTMARES.EVERY DAMN night, it was the same one. Me, strapped to a bed, being injected with drugs and wanting to scream yet not being able to find a strong enough voice.
Wait.
It wasn’t a nightmare.
It had been reality, one that, when I closed my eyes at night, replayed over and over again, not relenting. Even lying in Jag’s arms, the nightmares came, and I saw thatman. I could even hear the smirk in his voice.
When I woke up screaming, Jag was always there, trying to calm me. I would scream, yell, kick, and fight until I finally woke up and saw it was Jag who was holding me. He had taken quite a few hits from me, one catching him off guard and giving him a black eye. I had never felt so horrible about something in my life.
Yet, even after all the dreams and thrashings, he was still there. He refused to leave. I was positive I wouldn’t have made it as far as I had, even in small steps, without him there every day.
I had gone to the doctor the day before and told her all about my dreams. She had prescribed me some medicine that was supposed to help me sleep. We would see how that worked. She had also told me all my infections were healed and had been for a while now.
