Page 68 of Bound to Him

I nodded in reply, feeling my mind come back to me. I also felt all the pain come back to me and grabbed my arm. “Ah, fuck!”

Vinnie helped me to the car. I slid into the back seat next to Antonio. As we drove off the property, a cop car pulled in. Antonio opened his window, nodded at the man. The cop touched the tip of his hat and nodded back.

Tony and his guys were just ahead of us, the rest of our guys in the black SUV behind.

“Did we lose any?” I asked, holding my arm where the bullet grazed me, and I was still losing blood.

“No. Johnny got hit pretty bad, but he should make it. Those guys must have had no training, all their shots were off by inches.”

“Maybe bad weapons,” I added. “Cheap cunt.”

Vinnie chuckled from the driver's seat.

The commissioner would pull onto that scene with his cops and the press. He would go on to tell them that his cops caught the man responsible for corrupting the labor unions and trafficking girls from our communities. They would present the drugs and take credit for cleaning up the streets. Meanwhile, we drove away smiling.

30

Olivia

The front door crashed open at one a.m. We all jolted up and ran to the lobby. Vinnie held the door open while Tony helped someone inside. The man was limping with his hand on his arm. Only when he turned around to face us did I realize it was Huxley.

“Huxley!” I shouted and ran to him.

“He’s alright, just banged up,” Tony told me, helping Huxley get to the kitchen and drop into a seat.

When I rushed in front of him, Huxley reached out and pulled me onto his lap and into his arms.

“Hey, baby,” he whispered tiredly.

I looked him over. There was a lot of blood on his left arm, and his face had been scraped open.

“Why didn’t you go to the clinic?” I asked.

“I wanted to see you,” he said, his eyes looking into mine happily.

Feeling my own mixture of happy and worried, I shook my head and smiled, leaning in to kiss him. “Okay but let me get some things to clean you up then.”

Back in the lobby, Antonio walked in and picked Mia up into his arms. Tony had walked back and was hugging Viola. My father appeared from his office and held his hands out.

“Thank the Lord, everyone is alive?”

“Yes.” Antonio smiled. “Except Christian Reyes, of course.” The dons shook hands and laughed triumphantly. “The rest of the guys are at Suzie’s,” Antonio told him. “Both our guys.” He nodded, meaning that the Romano men were also taken to the small private clinic that we had a deal with. Enzo squeezed Antonio’s shoulder thankfully.

By the time I had a bowl of warm water and some medical supplies, everyone had said their piece to Huxley and each other, and headed off home or to bed. Cousin Ziggy and Viola checked that I had everything I needed before they went off to bed as well. The house became quiet, and it was only the two of us.

I stripped his shirt off and found a lot more blood and bruising underneath his clothes. His ribs were most likely broken on one side, and his arm was gashed pretty deep.

“You were shot here?”

“Only grazed.” He grinned. He was more awake now after settling down and drinking some water. He’d lost blood from his arm but clearly not that much.

I pulled up a chair and sat down between his legs to start dabbing his wounds clean. “So… what happened?”

He leaned forward and smiled. “Christian’s gone. The commissioner is taking the credit. The True Workers are disbanded, our people will all get their jobs back.”

“And the girls?”

“The cops are on it now. They’ve probably already found the girls at one of his properties on the Romano turf.”

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