Chapter 21

twenty-one

I roar,primal fury and fear gripping hold of me, more than I’ve ever felt it before, even with McKenzie, even with Sims, and I’m running and shooting my last bullet and the assailant falls dead. I toss my gun aside, lifting the other one as I run to Mark, shooting at someone in the corner who’s now started paying attention to me.

He drops just as Roz and Isaac bust through the doors upstairs, just as Goran appears at the railing on the third floor with his pistol out and his aim steady. The air is all pops and snaps over the dreamy synth music still playing on repeat. I ignore it all, falling to my knees next to Mark and making a shield of my body the best that I can.

“Sir,” I say, my hand on his arm. He’s on his side, facing away from me, and I roll him onto his back, expecting vacant eyes or a blood-slicked mouth.

“Fuck off,” I hear as I roll him over.

He is white-faced and shaking and very, very much not dead.

The knife I thought had gone into his chest is actually closer to his shoulder, which is good, but it’s buried to the hilt.

Which is less good.

Blood is everywhere, his black tux is drenched in it. It’s all over my hands now, and I have to blink away the memory of my hands against Sims’s slippery neck.

“When you’re done panicking, a little help would be nice,” Mark bites off in a voice that could flay the skin right off a person’s body. And that’s when I know for sure that he’s not dying.

He’s something worse.

He’s furious.

* * *

Two hours later,and I’m in Mark’s bedroom with Mark, Sedge, and a small, trim man with light olive skin and a dark beard. The man—Dr. Sutcliff—is currently stripping off his gloves and walking over to the trash can. A shirtless Mark watches him from where he’s propped up in bed, his shoulder now stitched and bandaged, his hair tousled and hanging over his forehead.

“You’ll need to rest for at least four days,” the doctor says. “IV antibiotics the whole time. After that, we can move to oral antibiotics and talk about what you can and can’t do. Hint: the last list will be very long.”

“Are you still sure we shouldn’t go to the hospital?” I ask from my post at the foot of Mark’s bed. The knife was buried so deep. And Dr. Sutcliff sutured it all on Mark’s dining room table, with only a chandelier and a headlamp for light.

Mark bore the whole thing silently, mouth wrenched shut, every muscle etched in rigid pain. The only noise he made was a closed-mouth groan when the doctor sanitized the wound.

“The hospital?” Dr. Sutcliff asks. His expression is dubious as his gaze swings back to Mark.

“He was a prom king,” Mark says to the doctor in tones of apology. “And he was in the army.”

“Ah,” the doctor says and starts gathering up his things. “Well, he’ll get used to your way of doing things quick enough.”

“As opposed to doing things with, like, scans and operating rooms?” I ask. Dr. Sutcliff is just as competent and skilled as any trauma medic I’ve ever seen in Carpathia—but I’m exhausted and I’m terrified. I keep seeing that knife sticking out of Mark’s shoulder, keep feeling his soaked tuxedo jacket ooze blood like a pressed sponge as I held him.

Dr. Sutcliff finishes packing his bag. “I’d love to take him to the hospital, prom king. Do you think he’d let me?”

I look back to Mark, who somehow looks more dangerous bandaged and propped in a bed than most hardened soldiers I’ve seen in my time. “Mr. Trevena—” I start.

“No,” Mark interrupts. “No hospitals. I’ve already been stabbed. I don’t have the energy to worry about some nurse with too much student loan debt willing to let someone into my room to finish the job for a fee.”

“Despite everything, it will be safer here,” Sedge points out. “We can ensure more security and more surveillance than a hospital can provide.”

I guess I see the logic in it?.?.?.?but what if Dr. Sutcliff missed something? What if I wake up tomorrow and Mark is in horrible pain or his wound is infected or he’s dead—

“I’ll be back tomorrow to check on you,” Dr. Sutcliff says. “Do not get out of bed without help, and do not rip my stitches.” He leaves, and it’s a testament to how fucked up the night has been that I can’t even enjoy the experience of seeing Mark Trevena get bossed around by a man who looks like he plays doubles tennis on the weekends and loses.

As the doctor leaves, Goran and Nat come into the bedroom, their faces grim and tired. Nat has a dried streak of blood along her jaw. I don’t think it’s hers.

“Well?” Mark says. His knuckles are whitening on the blanket as he looks at them. The morphine has put Mark in a better mood, but better than lethally furious is still deeply, deeply pissed off. “Tell me.”

“None of our members or their guests were killed,” Goran says, and Mark’s fingers relax a little on the blanket.

“Injuries?”

“A dozen, give or take,” Nat says. “Mostly sprained ankles and knees from the evacuation. Three gunshot wounds, none of them critical. We also have seven unidentified bodies in the building, including the two in the server room.”

I think back to the hall, the rain of bullets sinking into walls and furniture. “There were more than seven.”

Goran nods. “My guess is that the rest of them escaped by blending into the evacuating crowd. It’ll be impossible to say until we can comb through the camera footage.”

“And Drobny? I didn’t see him.”

“Never showed.”

Mark looks up at both of them. “How did this happen?” he asks. The skin around his mouth is blanched white—with anger or pain, I don’t know.

Goran and Nat exchange a look, and then Nat speaks. “Drobny knew we’d be looking into anyone he brought with him. So he seeded the assailants into the guests, snuck them in through the open house.”

“And our background checks didn’t catch this?”

Goran bows his head. “It seems our standard checks can be fooled with a good enough cover identity. We’ll start the process of matching the attackers to the fake identities and then to the guests who sponsored them, and take appropriate measures.”

At my stricken expression, Mark gives an irritable sigh. “Expelling them from the club, Tristan. I’m not going to strangle them with my favorite necktie. Yet.”

Sedge’s phone pings, and he announces quietly, “The FBI will be here soon. They’ll want to talk to you, Mr. Trevena.”

Mark looks like a teenager who’s just been told to go to the principal’s office.

“This night can’t get any worse,” he mutters.

Together, with Mark growing increasingly drowsy, he, Goran, Nat, and Sedge outline what needs to happen over the next several days. The club will need to be shut down until it’s no longer a crime scene, the necessary repairs commissioned, the new furniture ordered, and a thorough audit of all server access to make completely sure nothing was compromised. Dinah will begin a press campaign to manage questions from the public; Andrea will reach out privately to members to assure them that their information is secure and that the club will be reopening with increased safety measures. We will cooperate with the local police and the FBI and hand over anything they ask for, save for the club’s proprietary information.

The security team will be pursuing their own leads to find out how Drobny did this—and why.

Goran says this last part, and Mark huffs, making his hair ruffle around his face. “There’s no elaborate motive for why. He just wanted to kill me.”

“But why you, sir?” asks Sedge. His forehead is creased and his mouth is turned down, and I can see a sheen to his pale eyes. He’s close to crying.

It hits me then that he cares for Mark. That he’s barely holding it together.

Mark drops his head back against the pillows stuffed behind him. “Why not? I probably killed his cousin’s best friend’s brother-in-law years ago or something like that. I’m at the top of many revenge lists, you know. I made myself quite famous back in the day.”

Sedge looks even more upset, and Goran shakes his head. “We’ll get to the bottom of it, sir.”

Mark lifts a hand, rather feebly. There’s an IV needle adhesived neatly to the back of it. “I think I need to be on my own for a while. Everyone go. We’ll talk later.”

Sedge, Goran, and Nat all leave the bedroom, and I turn to leave too.

A giant exhale. “Not you, Tristan.”

Despite everything, my heart lifts at that. He wants me to stay. “Sir.”

Mark gestures impatiently at the edge of the bed, like I haven’t gotten the hint fast enough.

After I’ve sat, gingerly, on the edge to face him, he looks down at where the blanket is pooled around his naked waist. “You saved my life,” he says.

“I thought—” My throat suddenly hurts so much that I can barely speak. “I thought you were dead. I really thought you were dead.” I’m shaking now, and I realize how close I’ve been to actually fucking losing it ever since I saw that knife plunge into his body.

A hot tear tracks down my cheek and I wipe it away quickly.

Mark’s face softens. “I’m hard to kill.”

It shouldn’t have come down to that. If only I’d sensed the deception earlier?.?.?.?never left his side. “I failed you.”

His brows shoot up. “You saved my life, protected my club and its treasury. You were astounding. For the last two hours, I’ve been congratulating myself on hiring you. I’d be dead if I hadn’t.”

I open my mouth, and he holds up his hand, bringing the IV cord with it.

“I can’t argue with you tonight,” he says, and he looks so tired, so etiolated and worn, that my heart aches.

“You need to rest.”

“I can’t.” And then lower, more exhausted: “I can’t.”

“You have to. And I’ll wake you up the minute you’re needed, I promise.”

He’s reluctant to agree, but I have an ally in the morphine because his eyelids keep sliding closed. They’re bruise-colored and delicate-looking, and he’s abruptly so fucking dear to me that I just want to gather him to my chest and bury my lips in his hair and keep him there and safe forever.

“Okay,” he finally mumbles. His eyes are still closed, the long lashes resting on his cheeks. “But wake me up as soon as the FBI gets here.”

“Of course, sir,” I assure him. Without asking, I slide my hand behind him to help him lie farther back. His skin is cooler than it should be but still firm and warm, and I can feel the muscles shifting under my palms as I move him.

He blinks up at me with blue, blue eyes, and there’s a fond expression on his face. “A knight in shining armor,” he murmurs as I finish settling him on the pillows. I pull the blanket up to his chest, my knuckles grazing the fresh gauze there.

“I thought heroes didn’t exist,” I say, letting out a long breath as my hands linger at their work, tucking the blanket gently around him.

“I might have to change my mind.”

I’m about to force myself to get off the bed when his hand reaches out, snares my wrist.

“Stay,” he says sleepily. “Stay close.”

He pushes his fingers through mine, and he might as well be pushing his fingers right into my heart, right into its valves and ventricles. He might as well be clutching the tender, bloody thing in his fist.

He’s asleep within seconds, his hand cool and relaxed in mine, and I bend over it, pressing my lips to his skin and confessing the words that have been clawing at me since I first felt his blood slick my hands under the dazzling dance floor lights.

“I love you, sir,” I whisper against his knuckles and his fingertips and his wrist. “I love you.”

I love you so much that I can’t bear it.