6. Needle and thread

SIX

Beneath the sophisticated veneer, I'm a stubborn, ruthless man. Always have been, and it's only become more noticeable with age. I need to be in control, too, and usually am.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that—even with my stiletto sticking out of my side and the pain beginning to creep up the longer it's in there—I have every intention of driving myself to see Elizabeth.

I've been stabbed before. My blade is actually a memento from the first gangster who tried to gut me back when I was still running for Gunner. He wanted the cash I was carrying, but his aim was no better than Savannah's. Just like her, he barely got through my jacket and my shirt. No organs were nicked, just fat and muscle, and I yanked that sticker out before slicing the kid's throat with his own knife.

I didn't know better then and, even if he didn't do much damage with the point, I nearly bled out anyway. Fifteen years of experience later and despite how much I want to grab that same knife out, I keep it where it is. Until I can get checked out by our doc, it'll act like a plug and keep me on my feet.

It hurts. It fucking hurts. Luckily for me, my pain tolerance is high enough to pretend like it doesn't. I want little miss murderer here to be thrown off by my nonplussed reaction to her attempt, especially since I'm going to use it to my advantage.

She tried to kill me. Why? I don't know. I still haven't figured out why she's been following me, either… but I will.

I've spent my whole life abiding by the old adage: keep your friends close and your enemies closer. It's the reason I insist on frequent dinners with Lincoln. Why I handle every interaction with the vice mayor personally instead of passing it off to one of my lieutenants, or someone in my inner circle like Michael or Vin.

And it's why I'm going to take this woman, make her mine like she's been for months now, and bring her to her knees where she belongs.

If I have to break her, I will. I look forward to it, too. From the first moment I picked up on her following me, stalking me, I've been intrigued. I won't deny that. Maybe even obsessed with the promise of what kind of woman she is.

She's nothing like I've ever had before. I'm used to women willing to throw themselves in my bed, and as much fun as that was, it's too easy. Nothing about Savannah Montgomery will be—and I like the idea of that more than I should.

I blame Lincoln for this. For fifteen years, he was a miserable bastard who obsessed over the one woman who got away. But then he blackmailed Ava Monroe into becoming Ava Crewes, and now he's a smug bastard with a devoted wife, a kid on the way, and a satisfied smirk every time I see him that says he found the secret to the pleasures in life after he said ‘I do'.

For whatever reason, Savannah hates me enough that she was willing to attack me on my own turf with my own knife. Fine. I don't need her love to make her my bride. To own her. To control her. I just need her to go along with it, and if she knows what's good for her, she will.

Prison. Death. Marriage.

I gave her a choice. It's up to her to decide what her fate will be, and when she does nothing but grit out her answer—"Yes"—it's sealed.

Vin muscled her into the backseat of my Maserati. Once she agreed to my madness, I jerked my chin at the car. I'm sure my cousin also thinks that the stab wound has rendered me temporarily insane, but he didn't hesitate. Moving quicker than he should be able to for a man of his size, he has her tucked in the back in seconds while I double-check my injury, then move toward the driver's side.

There's blood. A good amount of it, too, staining my dress shirt. The adrenaline has worn off enough that each step is agony. I swallow the pain, too stubborn to let anyone see how much it still fucking hurts, but Vin meets me at the door before I can open it.

"I'll drive, boss."

"Over my dead body."

His jaw goes tight. "If you don't hurry up and get that checked out by Dr. Lizzie, that might just be the case. C'mon. You really want me to have to tell Genny that you got offed on my watch?"

Genevieve. My baby sister might not be a baby anymore, but I'll be damned if she needs to know just how dangerous the life is. I've spent years protecting her from the realities of running a mafia syndicate in a city like Springfield. She doesn't need to know about any of this for now.

Of course, Vincent is right. If I stubbornly bleed out on the street, she will know—and he'll have to be the one to break the news to her.

Even in the Family, family comes first, and I won't do that to my sister or my cousin.

"Fine," I concede. Careful not to jostle my wounded side, I pull out my phone from my jacket pocket and check the time. "Elizabeth should still be at the office. She can patch me up first."

Vin raises his eyebrows when he hears ‘first', but he doesn't comment on it. He just waits for me to move away from the door so that he can take the driver's seat.

I don't let anyone drive my cars. I especially don't let anyone drive them when I'm still capable of taking the wheel. But if I'm going to take a page out of Lincoln's playbook, I need to move fast.

I want a wife. More than that, I want thisfeisty, murderous woman to be that wife.

And while Vin speeds toward the other side of the East End, I fire off message after message to make sure that she will be before she can change her mind and decide that she'd rather risk the wrath of my men.

Because one thing for sure? Now that I've seen this side of her and decided I wanted to keep her, I won't change mine.

Doctor Elizabeth Harperspends more than seventy hours a week at the Springfield East Clinic. The only doctor on the staff, she accepts a small paycheck to take care of any patient in need that walks through her doors.

For a much, much larger one, Elizabeth—also known as Liz to some, or Dr. Lizzie to Vin—is the Dragonflies' resident fixer-upper. Like so many of the SPD, she's on my payroll. Any one of my men who gets shot, stabbed, assaulted… any of them who needs some patchwork, they just have to head to the clinic, flash their mark, and Liz will take care of it, no questions asked.

Unlike the cops on the force, I don't have to bribe her to keep her mouth shut. The money helps—and she's worth every penny—but I earned her loyalty years ago when I found out that one of my soldiers was hassling the clinic, demanding to be paid for protection.

To me, that was outsourcing. If I didn't give the okay for the soldier to roll a local business, he was betraying the Family. You betray the Family, you die. It's as simple as that. So I had the soldier taken care of, then visited the clinic myself to assure the overworked doctor that she didn't need to pay my men to watch over her. She's a do-gooder, and I've got a bit of a soft spot for those. I could've used a place like the free clinic when I was getting started in the life, and I threw a donation her way to make up for the trouble the dead soldier caused her.

Somehow, without even meaning to, I bought myself a doc. Further proof that I didn't need to plot and plan and manipulate things for them to fall into place, and as Savannah sits silently in the exam room while Liz examines my stab wound, I just know that my impulsive decision to keep this woman will work out just the same.

It fucking has to.

I don't know what surprised the good doctor more: the way I strode into her office with the knife in my side, or the fact that Savannah was sandwiched between Vin and me. That was non-negotiable. One way or another, I won't let that woman out of my sight until I'm ready to. I also don't trust Vin not to finish her off before she can try to come after me again.

Has the blood loss gone to my head? Perhaps, because I almost look forward to her doing just that.

Liz is about my age, give or take a few years. She wears her hair pulled back and out of her face, a pencil stuck into the golden yellow bun. Her lips purse a little when she does a preliminary examination of my wound.

She doesn't ask how I ended up with my own knife in my side. She's too smart to ask questions she won't like the answer to.

Instead, she tuts as she moves away from my bloody shirt. "Sutures," she announces. "Let me gather up what I'm going to need, then… Vincent?"

Vin straightens up from his post beside Savannah. "Yeah, doc?"

"Would you brace Damien's shoulders for me, keep him steady? I'm going to remove the knife, but I don't want him jumping around in case I nick him on the exit."

And give my new fiancée the opportunity to bolt while we're all distracted?

"Stay where you are, Vin. I'll be fine."

Liz is used to my stubborn side. After all, this isn't the first time I've been one of her patients. So when she says, "I'd really rather he help," and I just look at her, she sighs and goes to grab the sterilized needle, thread, and everything else she'll need to stitch me up.

Once she has it all on a tray, she grabs a wad of gauze in one hand. With the other, she takes a firm hold on the hilt of my knife.

I can tell she wishes I would reconsider, but all she says is, "Ready?"

If only to make Liz feel a little better about being the doc in charge at the clinic, I move over to the examination table. I brace my legs and grip the edge of the cushion. There. I should be steady enough.

"On three."

Turning to look over my shoulder, I lock eyes with Savannah. "Of course."

I know the old trick. The doctor will count to three, I'll be waiting for the third count, but she'll pull on the second before I can tense up and make it worse?—

"One."

Pain blossoms behind my eyes as Liz doesn't even wait until two. I refuse to react, refuse to blink, watching the look on Savannah's face go from horrified to stunned to plainly disturbed as I remain standing still as the doctor removes the knife.

I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from cursing, but it was worth it for Savannah to watch Liz work on me while I act completely unfazed.

That's right, cara mia. It takes more than a single slice in my side to take me down.

Of course, the good doctor wants to ensure that. With one firm tug, she yanks the stiletto out of me the same time as she shoves the wad of gauze against my side. She quickly applies pressure in case I start bleeding profusely, but after a few seconds she checks and lets out a sigh of relief.

I don't blame her. She's probably worried that, if anything happens to me, her security at the clinic might be in jeopardy.

She doesn't have to be. While I've purposely kept Genevieve out of the family business, there is one more Libellula around. Vin is one of my enforcers, my most trusted bodyguard, and my cousin. He'll take over if I die first, and he'll protect his Dr. Lizzie as much as I have.

And if he dies first? Then I better not.

Luckily, I'm not dying tonight. As Liz cleans up my wound to prep for stitching, she remarks again how lucky I was that the angle of the knife tore through muscle instead of my intestines or one of my kidneys.

I haven't turned away from Savannah. Not as Liz examined the stab wound, or when she instructed me to remove my jacket and my bloody dress shirt so that she could access the stab wound itself.

The doc notices. As she dabs my skin with some sort of analgesic, she says, "I'm sorry that your date got cut short."

I raise my eyebrows at my soon-to-be wife.

Savannah chokes.

Liz threads the needle, unaware just how wrong of an idea she has. "When I was married to my ex, the most exciting thing that happened to us was the waiter bringing out a free dessert because they thought it was one of our birthdays. But then I started to work for Damien here and these boys getting into gunfights and knife fights and even fistfights during a night out seems to be a lot more common."

With his back leaning against the wall, booted foot blocking the door from opening inward, Vin shrugs. "That's ‘cause you've never been out to dinner with me, Dr. Lizzie. If you don't start none, there won't be none. Right, Damien?"

I know exactly what my cousin is doing. In his way, he's letting me know that he disapproves of my temporary lapse of judgment. If Savannah hadn't stabbed me, we wouldn't be here right now.

Very true. And, yet, I can't bring myself to care.

Instead, I'm suddenly eager to have this finished so that I can move on to the rest of the night.

"How much longer?" I ask, trying to gauge the amount of stitches she still needs to make in order to close the gap. The single stab wound itself is about eight, nine centimeters. I'm looking at about fifteen to twenty stitches when she's done so maybe we're halfway there? "I have plans for the evening." A quick glance at Savannah. "Don't we, my dear?"

Savannah still hasn't said a word. At that, though, she sputters, and I raise my eyebrows, daring her to refuse.

Liz tugs on the thread. Thanks to the numbing agents in the analgesic she applied, it doesn't hurt, though the sensation is strange enough that I feel it. I turn back around, but she's already on the next suture as if she hadn't pulled so roughly on the last one.

It must've been an accident, especially since she peers up at me during the next stitch, an amused expression on her face. "Grab dinner, get stabbed, go back for dessert. I tell you… there's never a dull moment with a Dragonfly."

I wonder how Liz would react if she knew it wasn't dessert we were heading off to get once she covers up my stitches, but a rushed wedding license instead. To be fair, it's probably the same way the good doc would react if she knew that it was Savannah who stuck me with my own knife.

But the knife's out now, my side is stitched, and Liz is giving instructions to Vin about how to take care of the dissolvable sutures because even she knows that it would be a waste of breath for her to try and tell me. Savannah is rubbing her thumbnail over her bottom lip, gaze darting from each of the three of us to the closed door as though she's wondering if it would be worth it to try to run now.

She could try. If I didn't chase her, Vin would, and she won't like what'll happen if my enforcer gets his hands on her again and I'm not there to stop him.

I think she knows it, too. At the very least, she's resigned enough not to try to break out of the clinic.

I'm sure she thinks she has more time to escape me. I decide to let her live in that fantasy world a little longer. She'll be thrust into my world before she knows it. The least I can do is let her have some hope before I steal the last of it away from her.

It's the least she deserves for ruining one of my favorite jackets.

Moving away from the examination table, I grab my dress shirt, shrugging it back on so that it's covering the large white bandage that Liz used to protect my stitches. I do up the buttons, then pull on my suit jacket.

My first instinct is to get rid of it. Even if I send it off to my tailor, it'll never be the same again. But since I don't want to waste time getting another one—and I didn't think about my ruined shirt and coat when I was making my arrangements earlier—I wear it regardless.

It's almost poetic, isn't it? She tried to kill me while I was wearing this jacket. Why shouldn't I keep it on as I force her into marrying me?

Because that's exactly what I'm going to do.

And, now that I'm all patched up, I'm going to be the one to drive us there.