Page 77 of The Vow

“Jared, Phantom, get him in a hot fucking bath, I don’t care if we have to carry him down the aisle, this fucking wedding is happening today, I’ll be damned if the slithery Zakarian’s find a way to pin this back on us.”

Carmelo felt more hands on him. He realized he was naked, in bed. Being carried into the ensuite of his hotel room. Being lowered into a steaming hot bath. His body stung and shivered and he wanted to cry. He kept his eyes closed.

“Prez.” An urgent voice, at the hotel door. It was Sully. Carmelo turned his head slightly to hear what was being said.

“April couldn’t get to Lena, but she bumped into the hairdresser’s assistant in the bathroom-”

“And?” Colt was impatient.

“She’s all over the place apparently. Jittery, can’t remember anything from last night. Got a corker of a bruise under her hair. Had to comb out dried blood apparently. Hairdresser hid it, no one mentioned it so she didn’t ask any questions, awkward as hell apparently. Headache-”

“Has she been… hurt? Like, you know?”

“There are other bruises on her torso, so it’s a possibility-”

Carmelo felt things now. He wanted to fight against the gray fog. Lena was hurt? He wouldn’t stand for that. Why wasn’t he there to help her? Why couldn’t he remember anything? Why did he feel like death and had bruises all over him?

He flailed about in the bath now, trying to sit up.

“Lena?” he croaked. Jared’s hand was on his shoulder.

“She’s okay, buddy, she’s just… had a rough night, like you did-”

Colt clattered in. “Carmelo! Buddy, you gave us a fucking scare. What the fuck happened? We saw you at dinner, you did a speech, then we all got drunk and partied and we didn’t see anything go down-”

“I… don’t know,” Carmelo said honestly, shocked that his brain was drawing a complete blank. “I was going to go to Lena’s room to fuck her… we were going to have a quickie them come back but…” He pushed his palms into his eye sockets. “I got no fucking idea…”

“Dude, did you get wasted or something? I know it’s a crazy fucked up situation but-” Sully said.

“No, like I said, my plan for the night was to be balls deep in Lena and fuck through to the morning-”

“Roofies,” Nix said the word quietly.

Carmelo felt a creeping cold dread at the base of his spine. “What the actual-”

“The date rape drug?” Colt’s voice was steel.

“Yeah. Untraceable, easy to slip into a drink…” Nix tapered off.

Carmelo sat up in the bath, stark naked. Thankfully Phantom had filled it full of fucking fruity bubble bath. You could say a lot of things about Phantom, but that he was inconsiderate was not one of those things.

“I saw… someone said I had to have a drink, toast with the men of the family…” Carmelo began slowly, as memories swirled back to him. He remembered feeling threatened, feeling uncomfortable, feeling like he wanted to get out of the situation, but he couldn’t picture who was there, what happened, what he did. It had been half-dark. He remembered kissing Lena in the dark, then he remembered drinking something, in the dark…Yes, he’d tucked his cock in after the fumble with Lena and was about to go out into the corridor when that fucker Kavan had opened the door, pushed him back in again.

Carmelo had tried to play it cool, why he’d been in a storage room in the first place but Kavan didn’t seem to care. He was blabbing on about letting the past be water under the bridge, he didn’t want anything to come between them because they would be working together going forward… then he’d produced a hip flask. Said it was Armenian Cognac. Said it was a tradition to toast with the men of the family the night before. Carmelo had at first tried to decline. A polite thanks but no thanks, but Kavan had gotten pushy and weird so Carmelo had relented, and taken the little shot glass full. It had tasted strong. In the dark he couldn’t see what color it had been. He remembered his head swimming and how he almost fell out of the cupboard back into the corridor. He seemed to remember someone taking him to his room. Then it was all black.

“Those fucking Zakarian’s!” Colt roared. “This is too far now, it’s been one disrespect after another, so many demands that we’ve had to fucking accommodate because the Mayor wants peace! I don’t know if I can take it any more!” Colt finished.

Jared and Phantom looked at each other.

“Prez, we got a couple of options here, we could give Blue a call and get the FBI boys involved-” Jared began, licking his lips, clearly talking out of his ass but trying to buy time and prevent Colt having some sort of breakdown. Carmelo would save him from one, enough was enough, as Colt said. Carmelo wouldn’t stand for it any longer either.

“Pass me a towel,” Carmelo rasped, reaching his hand up, taking action now. Phantom shoved a giant white towel, nicely warmed on the heated towel rail, into his hand. Carmelo went to stand up. His body was wrecked, his legs screamed like he’d run a marathon the day before. Phantom’s arm’s came underneath his armpits and Carmelo was grateful for the wordless help.

“This is what we do.” Carmelo licked his lips and felt a crusty cut on them. “No Blue, no FBI, we deal with this in house, got it? We go through with it all. You get me cleaned up, you stand me up in that suit at the front of the church, and we fucking pretend like nothing is wrong.”

The others listened, Jared nodded, Colt gritted his jaw. Phantom blinked.

“I don’t care if you have to tie my legs to planks of wood and prop me up by that altar, okay, the show goes on. We show them they haven’t won. We’ll go through with their fucking stupid circus of a ceremony -”

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