11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

ORION

After a morning spent beating the hell out of the punching bag at the gym and failing to convince anyone to spar with me yet again, my thoughts are no less twisted up than they were last night.

I slept like shit, tossing and turning, ping-ponging between being pissed at Elio for leaving and annoyed at myself for caring. I spent another hour or so before sunrise trying to guess why he would want to meet me at a dive like The Starlight, spinning scenarios in my head that became more and more outlandish the more tired I got, until I eventually crashed and managed a couple hours of sleep.

I take the steps of the care facility two at a time. There have been a million times over the past few years that I wished like hell things were different, for Jack’s sake and for my own selfish reasons. This morning, it’s definitely the latter.

I want to be able to tell my brother about last night. All of it. I want to vomit this confused tangle of emotions at his feet and let him help me sort them out. He was always good at that—talking me down when my emotions got too high, settling me down when my thoughts turned into a tornado. But this situation is so tangled up in shit I can’t tell Jack. Pulling at any of the threads would unravel the whole thing. I’d have to tell him about the loan I took out from the Morettis, about the underground fights and his mounting medical bills.

I push through the door and the familiar smell of antiseptic burns the back of my throat. I force a smile and approach the desk to sign in, but instead of the normal friendly greeting, the blond receptionist grimaces. My heart forces its way into my throat and my limbs go numb in an instant.

“What happened? Is Jack okay?”

She pulls her expression together, turning it into a sympathetic half smile. “He’s fine. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you, I just wasn’t expecting to see you this morning. You didn’t get the voicemail the doctor left you?” She tucks her hair behind her ear and fidgets with her pen, tapping the tip of it on the desk, leaving black dots of ink on the glossy surface.

I shake my head and reach for my phone, pulling it out of my back pocket. “I was at the gym all morning,” I mutter. As promised, there is a voicemail waiting for me. I click on the notification and bring the phone to my ear to listen.

“ Good morning, Mr. Barros. This is Doctor Simmons. I’m calling to let you know that we’ve been monitoring a mild cough Jack has had for a few days, and unfortunately, it has progressed into full-blown pneumonia. I know we’ve discussed before how serious pneumonia is for someone in your brother’s condition, so I called for medical transport to move him to Wildcliff General. He’s under the care of Doctor Ross. If you have any questions, feel free to call me back. ” The numbness in my limbs spreads through the rest of my body as I listen to Doctor Simmons’s polite, detached voice relaying the information.

When the message ends, I shove my phone back into my pocket and mutter a, “Thanks,” to the receptionist before pivoting back towards the doors I just came through.

I hate that my first thought as I step back outside is that Jack’s insurance isn’t going to cover the cost of the medical transport from Shady Oaks to Wildcliff General. Last time he had to be moved, I got a bill for nearly six thousand dollars in the mail. The muscle in my jaw twitches as I do a mental calculation of how many fights it’s going to take to make up that amount on top of all the regular expenses. One good underground fight should do it though. The nearly healed cut on my face twinges, but I ignore it.

The hospital is practically on the other side of the city, but the dollar signs still floating through my mind keep me from hailing a cab. Six thousand for the transport, plus fuck knows how many days he’ll have to be on a ventilator in intensive care. Those costs add up so fast they’ll make me sick if I let myself think too hard about it. And fuck knows what the insurance will try to wiggle out of paying for. I swallow down the bile rising in my throat and walk faster.

Maybe selling my soul to the Morettis is the best way out of this. How much would they be willing to pay? Resentment is bitter on my tongue. Resentment towards Elio and his family for having the kind of money that would make all this shit easier, towards the stupid prick who hit Jack too hard in the first place, towards Jack for being at that underground fight when he was already well on his way to being a fucking all-star in the Ultimate Fighting League, and at the goddamn world for dropping all of this on my shoulders without the option to tap out, no matter how heavy it gets.

I’m so caught up in my thoughts that the sight of the hospital looming over me startles me for a second. The automatic doors slide open in front of me, and I step inside. The antiseptic smell is a thousand times worse here than it is at Shady Oaks, making me gag. It resurrects the tight, panicked feeling in my chest, throwing me straight back to that night a lifetime ago when I paced the waiting room of this hospital, praying to a god I don’t believe in that my brother would be okay. I drag in a slow breath through my nose that does nothing whatsoever to calm me.

I’ve spent enough time at Jack’s bedside in the intensive care unit here to know the way without needing to read any of the signs. I don’t have the energy to even fake a smile when I reach the reception desk.

The man behind the desk has messy red hair and a face full of freckles. He looks too young to be wearing a pair of scrubs, even as a nurse, but what the fuck do I know.

“Hey, my brother is here. Jack Barros.” My voice sounds rough and lifeless in my own ears. He gives me that same irritating, sympathetic smile they must teach medical professionals to use in school, then checks Jack’s file.

“It looks like Doctor Ross is scheduled to check in on him in about an hour, so if you want to talk to him, he’ll be able to go over Jack’s condition and answer any questions. For right now, we do have him on a mild sedative, so he might be a little out of it, but you’re welcome to go in and sit with him. He’s in room three.” He points to the third curtain to the left of the nursing station. “And I know that the ventilator looks pretty scary, but he is stable at the moment. I’m sure he’ll be glad to see a friendly face.”

“Thanks.” I give a jerky nod, then head for the room that he pointed to.

I slide back the curtain and step inside the brightly lit room. It’s not the first time I’ve seen him hooked up to all the wires and tubes, but it makes my skin crawl and my heart thunder the same way every time. He blinks his eyes open slowly, and this time I do quirk my lips in a grin.

“This is about that cute nurse who kept flirting with you the last time you were here, isn’t it?” I tease. I can tell by the crinkle in the corner of his eyes that he would laugh if he could. “Maybe this time you can close the deal and wife her up already,” I say, grabbing the chair from the corner and dragging it across the floor towards his bed. “I know what you’re thinking. ‘ How am I going to get her to fall in love with me with a tube down my throat ?’ but hear me out here, because I think not being able to talk might actually work for you.”

His hand twitches weakly, and he lazily flips his middle finger at me. I chuckle, hoping he doesn’t notice the way the sound gets caught in my throat for a second.

I’ve become a master at keeping up a one-way stream of chatter to fill the silence and cover the steady beeping of all the machines in the room. So, that’s exactly what I do. I spend the next hour rambling about the many adventures of Mrs. Stevens’s wandering cat and Fitz’s progress at the gym, responding to the cadence of Jack’s blinks and the subtle twitches of his expression as if they’re full sentences.

Dr. Ross comes in eventually and shows me Jack’s chest x-rays, breaking down all the medical mumbo jumbo into the easily digestible bottom line that things don’t look too bad right now, but the quadriplegia complicates things. I’ve heard most of it before. I’ve spent plenty of nights sleeping in a chair just like this one next to Jack’s bed, with the knowledge swimming in my head that pneumonia is the leading cause of death for people with his condition.

“We’ve got him on intravenous antibiotics for now, and we’re monitoring him closely. Now, it’s up to his body to do what it needs to do,” he concludes, and I nod.

“Right. Thanks, Doc.” I shake his hand, then stay out of his way while he finishes checking Jack over.

After the doctor leaves, I switch on the TV and sit with Jack until his eyes drift closed. Like an internal alarm, at five-thirty I stand up and push the chair back into the corner of the room. I’m not sure when I actually made the decision to go through with meeting Elio, but it feels inevitable. Maybe I decided last night when he asked, and I just needed to pretend I might make a different choice.

ELIO

Salvatore wasn’t kidding when he said this place was a ghost town. There wasn’t even a bartender behind the bar when I stepped inside The Starlight half an hour ago. When one finally did show up, he looked confused to see a customer. There’s no way Casimir is making his payments with the bar itself.

Just to be sure, I had Sparrow do a quick check of Casimir’s financials this morning and he doesn’t have any other legit business assets. What he does have is a number of direct deposits into his bank account from a shell corporation based in the Caymans.

I take a measured sip of the cheap Scotch in my glass, my eyes glued to the door as the minutes tick closer to six o’clock. Is Orion going to show? I drag the rim of my glass against my bottom lip and let the memory of his grunts and growls last night echo in my ears. My eyes flutter closed for a second and I suck in a deep breath, the smell of the Scotch and the musty stench of the bar filling my lungs.

The air shifts and the sound of traffic from outside intensifies. My eyes spring open, and sure enough, the door is in the process of swinging closed behind Orion. He looks the way he usually does, dressed in athletic clothing, his hair pulled up out of the way like he just came from a workout or a fight. But as he crosses the bar towards my table, I notice something different in his eyes. They look even more wild than usual, filled with the kind of panic fit for a caged animal. Did something happen?

I sit up a little straighter in my seat and gesture to the bartender to bring another round. The man nods and turns to fill another glass with the same bottom shelf booze he gave me. The chair across from me scrapes noisily against the wood floor, jarringly loud in the desolate bar. Maybe meeting here to discuss things wasn’t the best plan. It might be private, but it’s hardly subtle if the bartender has any idea about what’s going on behind the scenes. He might end up tipping off Casimir to our suspicions before I’ve had a chance to look into things. But it’s done now, so we might as well have a drink and deal with Casimir if the problem comes up.

“You made it.” I let a slow smile spread over my lips, my dick hardening eagerly as Orion claims the seat across from me, his expression thunderous and savage, exactly the way I like it.

“I made it,” he agrees, grunting in thanks when the bartender sets the drink down in front of him. Orion picks the glass up and downs the Scotch in a few gulps, his throat bobbing as he swallows. He sets the glass on the table with more force than necessary and wipes the back of his hand over his mouth.

The tension rolling off him in waves has me shifting in my seat and leaning across the table to get a few inches closer to him as I study his expression for clues about what caused his mood. I want to reach over and brush the stray hairs back off his forehead. I want to drop to my knees and slink under the table to cheer him up the best way I know how. I want to be the person he wants to tell his problems to, and that feels like a hell of a lot more to ask than simply wanting him not to hate me anymore.

“Do you want another drink?” I offer, tilting my head back to empty my own glass, then signaling the bartender again without waiting for Orion’s reply.

“I want to know what your problem is,” he says gruffly, his hand still wrapped around his empty glass, his eyebrows pulling together as he stares at me with mounting heat in his eyes.

“My problem?” I echo. My heart rate kicks up. Is this another game like last night? Is it foreplay? Or did I actually piss him off when I left last night?

Orion’s hand darts out so fast it’s nothing but a blur. I couldn’t dodge it if I wanted to, and I definitely don’t want to. He wraps his fist around my tie just like he did last night and hauls me halfway across the table, rattling our empty glasses and making the legs of the table grind against the floor the same way his chair did when he sat down. His face is a few inches from mine, his teeth bared, and his nostrils flaring with each breath. The panic I noticed in his eyes when he came in is still there, buried under a layer of rage.

“Why were you so eager to leave?” he demands. His breath bathes my face, heavy with the smell of Scotch. My lips ache for him to kiss me again the way he did last night, hard and hungry, like he fucking owns me.

It takes several seconds for my brain to catch up with the fact that he asked me a question.

“Because I wanted to stay.” It’s too simple of an explanation for the way everything crashed down around me last night after he untied me, but it’s the best I can do. It was like he made me feel so damn good, so fucking right that when it ended, nothing else felt real. It was too much, and I was so greedy for more that I knew if I didn’t leave, I never would.

His fingers twitch and he releases his grip on my tie. I flatten it out and ease back into my chair.

“The next time I put you in my bed, you’re going to keep your ass there until I decide I’m finished with you,” Orion growls, not even glancing at the bartender as he sets down our second round of drinks.

My dick jerks and my lips twitch. “The next time, huh?”

“I’m not fucking around with you, Brat.” The tense edge in his voice makes me flinch and nearly start panting.

I swallow hard and nod. “Yes, Boss.”

“Good boy,” he murmurs the words quietly, but they boom in my ears as if he shouted them through a megaphone. They knock me off balance and make me shift eagerly in my seat. I didn’t know how satisfying it would be to earn praise from him after all the harsh words I’ve greedily lapped up, always desperate for them to sting a little more. But Orion calling me his good boy is as soothing as the feeling of his lips brushing softly against my bruised wrists was last night.

I clear my throat and reach for the fresh drink, but I don’t bring it to my lips, I just wrap my hand around the glass and try to slow my breathing.

“So, why did we meet at this dump?” he asks, reminding me that there’s a reason I wanted to meet him tonight, and it’s not just because I crave him in the worst ways.

“I need your help,” I say, and his eyebrows go up.

“With what?”