Page 79 of The Players

Someone put a hand on his shoulder. It was Vince.

“Back down, Sy. She’s gonna call security.”

“Like I give a crap,” he growled. Seeing Carmen with blood oozing out of her had cracked something inside him, and he wasn’t sure if it would ever mend. He’d never felt so powerless and on edge before.

A loud ringing started inside his head, overpowering every other sound. His vision, however, was crystal clear and latched on to everything surrounding him. The Emergency Department had six rooms. The corridor had four lightbulbs and a nurse rushing from one side to the other. She held a lunch bag in her hand. How could everyday life just continue as if nothing had happened, while his life had imploded?

“Dr. Oliver,” the nurse exclaimed, when a balding man in a white coat stepped out of the elevator.

Sy was about to grab the man’s stethoscope to get his attention when Jazzy came around the corner. The second she spotted the doctor, she latched onto the man.

“Carmen Russo. I’m her sister. Please, tell me. Is she okay?”

The good doctor looked uncomfortable with the wall of men surrounding him, but Sy didn’t give a fuck.

“The surgery went well,” he said in his professional doctor’s voice. “She’s stable but not awake yet. She needs her rest. We’re doing everything we can to save her and the baby.”

“Baby?” Jazzy looked shocked.

Sy froze and saw Vince turn into a statue next to him as well.

The doctor eyed both him and Vince. “Are you the father?”

Vince nodded. “We both are.”

If the doctor thought anything of that, he kept it to himself. Smart man.

Shit, he was going to be a father. He’d fucked up by leaving Carmen, but that was going to change now. Everything was gonna change. She didn’t know it yet, but he was going to stay so close to her, they would have to pry him away with a crowbar. It didn’t matter who the biological father was; that kid would have two fathers, an army of uncles, and anyone who came too close would feel Sy’s blade.

But first, he had to wipe away all and every threat to his woman and kid. Keegan and Morelli were out. The first was spiked onto a cactus in the desert, his carcass left for the picking. Kristoff was creative like that. Morelli was blown into a million pieces, courtesy of Viking. Which left Sy with only two little errands to run.

He couldn’t stay here and just wait. He’d go mad.

“Call me when she wakes up,” he told Vince. “I have some unfinished business.”

“Manila envelope?” Vince asked, referring to the envelope he gave him, reading him like he always did.

“That, and a promise I need to keep,” he said, grim.

He went home to pick up his gear. First on the list—dear old Mom and the latest fuck-up she was shacked up with.

He found her exactly where he’d left her; in a rundown apartment in the bad part of town. He was greeted by the rusty smell of hard water in the corridor and the blasting sound of a TV coming through the thin walls.

Not bothering to knock, he bashed in the door and tore past the thin doorframe.

A yelp sounded. His mother jumped up, her feet skittering over the peeling linoleum floor.

“Sy?”

His eyes went over the chipped cabinet doors and crooked blinds, until they landed on her boyfriend, who lay passed out on a worn couch.

When he stepped up to him, his mother jumped in front of him.

“What are you doing here?” she shrieked.

“You think I didn’t know what you did?” He’d called Brian to rip him a new one for letting Carmen mud fight, only to find out what had really happened. The bastard had even made it home. After all, by throwing Carmen before the lions, he’d paid off part of his debt. He got to live to see another day unscathed. Or so he thought.

“Remember what I said I would do to your junk ass boyfriend if you ever stole from me again? Guess what? You stole Carmen from me!”

---