by K. J. Thomas
I snuggle Avery closer to my chest. Me, Vito and Carter run to one of my waiting SUVs and get in.
I know Vito wants to take Avery from me, but I hold onto her tight. She needs the least amount of movement. Every time we do move, she groans and tries to reach for her head.
“It’s okay baby,” I whisper in her ear, rubbing her arms and legs trying to help make her feel warm and safe.
Vito grabs her hand and holds it. I swear I can hear Carter sniffling in the front seat, waiting impatiently for us to get there. Tate is not doing well, I won’t even question it if he says we need to take her to the hospital. It’s going to bring up a lot of fucking questions, but if it saves my niece’s life, we’ll deal.
I’m grateful that Vito Mancini is letting me go into the house. I wonder if he knew I was there before?
I’m shocked when I spot all the medical personnel as we pull up to the house. There are ambulances in the driveway and even a couple box trucks with some huge fucking guys unloading shit.
When they spot us pulling up, the team of doctors and nurses convene on the SUV grabbing the girls from us. All three of us follow, hot on the trail not letting Tate or Avery out of our sight.
We’re pushed to the side when we enter the house. The dining room has been made into an operating room, divided into two sections. One for Avery and one for Tate. Hopefully, they don’t need both of them.
We sit down for what’s gonna be a long fucking time. I just hope to God that my niece and Avery are okay.
Fifteen
AVERY
I roll slowly to my side and open my eyes, smiling from ear to ear. Tate is laying in the bed next to me and wide awake on her side looking straight at me.
I groan as I move, feeling the bandages around my ribs under my shirt.
Tate types in her phone, letting someone know that I finally woke my ass up. I know my friend was hurt, at least ten times more than me and she’s awake.
The tears start to come as I reach out and grab her hand. I thought for sure that I had lost her. I thought for sure that her brothers decided to end her, for their own sick reasons. I know that they wanted to take her back. I heard them talking about that, I can only imagine what hell that would’ve been.
If they could do what they did to her just now, she would end up as a female punching bag for them.
The door opens and I expect Asher Mancini to stroll in, but when I see my grandfather the tears really let loose.
Vito Romano walks in with an ashen face. He looks so relieved when he finally sees that I’m awake.
“Avery,” he says as he grabs my hand gently. I would love for him to give me a hug like normally, but I have no idea what damage I have. I really don’t want to find out. Just breathing is painful.
He grabs a bottle off the nightstand and pops out two pills handing them to me. “It’s for the pain.”
I swallow them, effectively chasing them down with water that was offered.
“The doctors decided to put you in a coma for three days. With the last major concussion you had, they were trying to give your brain a rest, it helped immensely, also helped with the healing process.”
His eyes water before he continues, I know this is hard for him, so I squeeze his hand letting him know that it’s okay. This man has been through so much.
“You were screaming and crying then you just prayed that someone would kill you.” Oh my God, I think as my grandpa continues. “They couldn’t give you anything right away because they had to assess the damage. It didn’t last long, though, they probably still want to check you thoroughly now that your brain is healed and your swelling has gone down.” I didn’t realize I was that bad, thankfully I don’t remember. I do feel horrible that others had to witness that.
“At least you didn’t need surgery,” he says and gives me and Tate a sad smile.
“Hey,” she waves her hands at us. “I’m fine. I feel better, I just won’t be doing any running.”
I take a closer look at my best friend and see all the damage that’s been done to her. She has stitches on her head in multiple places, over an eyebrow, on the hairline, even down by her neck, plus the bridge of her nose. God, the Mancini men are fucking psycho.
I get a closer look at her leg and it looks like it has metal coming out of it, that looks painful. Bolts are screwed into metal rings and the other ends are screwed into her leg at all different angles. It’s really hard to look at.
She also has a cast on her wrist and a bunch of bruises and shit. Like me.
“Thank you for telling me all this.” I pause for a second. “Do you know where Asher is?”
I didn’t know what I expected from my grandfather, either he was going to get really upset or be okay with me asking about Asher. I’m thrilled when he smiles and says, “he’s dealing with the Mancini’s.” Tate smiles at me.
“We’re going to leave you guys tonight with a multitude of guards, to make sure you’re safe, but we won’t be far. If we get word or wind of anything, we might just schedule the meeting here. But I don’t want all the families to see my granddaughter.” I knew a meeting would come up sooner or later. The brothers have to pay for what they did to Tate and me. We’re almost as high as women can get on the food chain in our world, so hell is going to rain down on them.
I give him a small smile. I am so freaking lucky that I have my grandfather.
He leaves, closing the door behind him and giving Tate and me our space.
“Asher picked you up.” I snap my attention toward Tate because of what she said.
“Yeah, he told me he got you out of there.”
I smile because it’s just the sweetest thing to do for me, when I needed him the most. I haven’t seen him in so long, it sucks the only time he’s around is when I’m unconscious. I chuckle then shake my head at Tate, letting her know I’m in my thoughts.
“So, what happened? How did this all start?” I turn my body slowly so I’m facing her. She’s stuck in the same position with her leg under several pillows.
“Not much really, I was home the whole night. They came in, extremely loud, about four or five in the morning.”
She’s quiet for a second as she thinks, remembering something she doesn’t want to. I check her nightstand to see if she has bottles of medicine or maybe we’re just supposed to share. I try to hand Tate mine, but she shakes her head.
“That shit just knocks me out. Anyway,” she continues her story, “I could hear noise coming from the house. Started freaking me the fuck out.”
She takes a deep breath and blinks away the unshed tears. “I got up to check, but it sounded like the noise was everywhere. I went out in the hall, but I forgot to take my phone with me. I could hear them come in my direction, so I just started running.” Tate wipes her eyes. I hand her a tissue from my nightstand. “I went all the way downstairs to the basement. Nobody ever goes down there, it seemed like the safest place for me to be.”
Tate uses the tissue and dabs her eyes. “They must’ve heard me because Armani came running down right after me. He was so mad and Rocco seemed happy. Gino acted like he didn’t want to be there, as usual.”
I know Tate loves her brother, but I can sense that she feels the same way about him as I did, useless.
“He didn’t give me any warning, Avery,” Tate sniffs as I grab her hand and squeeze it tight. “He just started punching me in the head, and when I fell, both him and Rocco started kicking. They made Gino come over, but he barely tapped me. I know they would’ve done the same to him if he didn’t do that.”
I hand Tate the box of tissues, she took several minutes to get herself together. “It seemed like it went on for hours and hours. If I passed out, they would wait till I came back, or they would smack me in the face till I was coherent. I knew what they were doing was wrong, but there was nothing I could do about it. I thought for sure I was going to die. When you arrived my heart broke because they would kill you, too.”
What they did was horribl
y wrong. That’s why there’s going to be a family emergency meeting tonight. I knew that she heard my grandfather. I want to ask her about all that stuff with me being a Romano but right now I wanna let her finish, getting everything out, it’ll help her.
They should be killed, and Tate knows this. That girl has a heart of gold, they’re her brothers. Maybe one day she just figures they’ll get their shit together and come back and treat her like the sister she is.
Her brothers are all kind of fucked up, each and every one of them. There’s no way that she’s ever going to have that with them. It makes my heart sad because she’s lucky to have three other siblings even though she’s not close to them. I would kill to be able to have that. Not the psycho brother’s, but siblings.
When Tate was picked up, I got a flash, an image that was seared into my brain. Carter had just lifted her up, but I could see the blood on his left shoulder. It must’ve been from a gunshot or maybe he was stabbed. There was blood all over him, he must’ve had nasty cuts and everything.
“Is Carter okay?” I ask her but she gives me a confused expression.
“Yeah, I think so, why wouldn’t he be?”
Oh God, she doesn’t even know. She was unconscious and was being carried out.
“I got a slight glimpse of Carter and he was in rough shape. I swear he was either shot or stabbed.”
“What?” Tate cries out as she tries to sit up.
“You haven’t seen him in three days?”
She shakes her head no. “For some reason I just thought he was mad at me, he’s always mad.”’
It doesn’t take me long to figure it out. I should’ve known from the beginning. “That’s Carter’s house, isn’t it?”
Tate’s eyes go wide in surprise, the widest I’ve ever seen them. Her stitches tighten, I know that has to hurt. She’s frantically thinking of something to tell me but then she gives in.
“Yes,” Tate looks down, dejected. She told me and I feel better, I’m sure as shit not gonna push this right now.
One day, I hope she trusts me enough to tell me everything, but we made a ton of progress.
She keeps frantically texting, ignoring me. I know she’s trying to find out if Carter’s okay. I wonder if anybody else was hurt.
“Is anybody else hurt, besides us?”
She gives me a tight smile and goes back to texting. I’ll ask her again after she finds out about Carter. Within a few minutes, she holds up her phone and starts reading back all the info I’ve asked for.
“Carter, Walker and Noah have all been injured. Two of them were shot, Noah and Carter. They’re okay just severely sore.”
It takes her a minute to keep looking through texts. “My brother lost fifteen of the Mancini guys. The Romano’s lost ten guys, well we lost ten guys, I should say.”
I give her a guilty look. This conversation we don’t need to have yet. Her knowing this is probably the only reason she told me who owns the house.
I could see it in her eyes, when she did tell me, that secret is still meant to be kept a secret. Which means Asher doesn’t know anything, shocking. Even if he loves Tate, it still won’t make a difference, something else is going on, something big.
“Besides the men that were lost, the majority of the people will be okay. You know, gunshots, stabbings, the normal shit we have to deal with every day.” The plastered on fake smile Tate’s wearing is not very reassuring.
One day we’ll come back to this, but not now while everything is so overwhelming.
“I wanted to thank you, Avery, for coming back for me. If you didn’t, I probably would’ve died.” She full on sobs now. These are not little sniffles or leaky tears anymore, we are both full on having a major meltdown.
I don’t even respond. I don’t even think I need to. I’m not gonna let my friend get hurt, especially if I have a bad feeling. I’m glad we both got out of it, all of us did.
“What about Mac?” I ask Tate, she quickly starts to type on her phone. In the meantime, I start to look around for mine, but it’s nowhere in sight.
I’ll have to ask them next time they come in. “He’s going to be okay, he has one gunshot wound, through-and-through, a few broken ribs and a shit ton of bruises.”
That makes me relax. Mac is like a second father figure to me now. One day I want to find out what happened, but not now, we all need to heal.
Earlier Vito told me the doc said we’re gonna have to relax and take it easy for the next couple weeks, so no school. I want to get happy at the fact of no school but in actuality we still get all of our shit at home. So, there is school. Doing school there or here doesn’t matter it still sucks either way, but for now here is better.
I look over at Tate. “We’re gonna have like a two-week summer party. I’ll get the guys to bring alcohol and a shit ton of snacks.”
We high-fived each other, then we both realize what this means. At the same time, we both groan and reach for the pain pills. I read my bottle just to make sure I can take some, but the pain pills look differently from the ones my grandfather gave me earlier. He gave me antibiotics, well at least my pain level is not that bad.
Now Tate and I need to enjoy our time, it’s like a forced awesome vacation.
Sixteen
AVERY
It’s been two weeks since I’ve seen Asher. Two long excruciatingly painful weeks. Even Vito Romano has left. I would have to say I am freaking out, but I’m trying not to.
I tried texting Asher, but I get a message that it was never sent. I thought about sending a text to my grandfather, he would respond right away. Deep in my heart I know that they are extremely busy taking care of things.
If Asher and I are going to survive, we are gonna have to communicate better. It takes two seconds to send a damn text message. Not much more than that to come and tell me goodbye when you have to leave.
I know he is feeling what he has to do right now is right, and it’s very personal at the same time because of the family issue.
I promise myself right then and there that we will talk about this when he gets back. I just hope for his sake and Tate’s that he did not get rid of all three of them. Yeah, those fuckers deserve to die, but not by his hands. If anyone deserves to kill them it would be Tate or me.
I know she’s still hoping and praying that she’ll have her brothers back one day, but that will never happen, and all of us know that. But I don’t want to destroy her family dreams. It’s not up to me either way, besides, I couldn’t give a shit what happens to those fuckers.
My only concern is, if they do keep them around, who will guarantee another girl won’t go through this. Armani had a sick type of excitement in his eyes when this was taking place. I swear it grew when the best friend showed up. He was happy that I was a Romano.
Our time together was awesome. We each had our own laptops and we still had to do school for about four hours a day. Tate and I were able to watch all the movies we’ve missed, pretty much for our lifetime, gorge out on food and alcohol every now and then. It was a never-ending slumber party.
One of the best parts of the last two weeks is Arya took care of us the whole time. She brought us food, made us food, ordered us food, cleaned up, anything you could think of. She even came and watched a fucking movie with us one night, it was awesome.
We can hear Garrett around the house, he’s probably just doing honey-to-do stuff. The man actually seems a little more relaxed, even though this isn’t the way he should take a vacation, but at least now, he’s relaxed.
Tate and I were able to talk about everything. Not too much about Carter and her because there’s not much to say. But she says he’s got such a deep hatred for her and she doesn’t know why. She is fascinated about my life, her and I both cried when I told her about the night my parents died. She agrees with everybody else that Luca’s sick. She’s glad I’m away from him. She then goes on to tell me Asher is way better than Luca, while giving me a wink.
She was hoping to leave, then
they all came into town and stayed in the house. That idea went out the window. Tate was stuck with Asher in Carter’s house that no one knows about. I laughed, I couldn’t help it.
I watch my friend as she slowly moves toward her dresser. Today is the first day we get to physically go back to school, and thankfully we are both doing a ton better.
They took all those metal rods and screws out of Tate’s leg and now she’s in a cast. Well one of those black-foot casts, the kind you can walk on. Tate tried out crutches for a while, that was horribly entertaining.
Garrett did everything to make her comfortable by adding different handles on the top of the crutches, he even put tennis balls on the bottom of them, which were way too slippery, but entertaining. I think he’s really digging this staying at home thing. Maybe he just likes keeping busy with his list.
Tate’s mood has improved tremendously. She’ll never have to deal with her brothers on a bad note again. She might never have to deal with them period. Now it’s a waiting game to find out what happened.
My stomach is a little tight as I wonder if maybe that’s why they’re taking so long. Maybe something bad happened to Asher and my grandfather.
I shake that off. If something bad did happen the brothers would probably come for Tate anyway. My grandfather’s a big man, we would’ve heard something.
I swear it took me ten minutes to get dressed and brush my hair. I was in the shower for twenty-minutes. In a half an hour I was ready. Tate is on her second hour now. Well, she’s moving slower, but she still takes this long normally.
Half an hour later we are finally moving out toward my truck. Mac rides in the back, while Tate is helped into the passenger seat.
Mac has been unusually quiet the past several days. I know he really worries about Vito, they have a close connection, it’s pretty cool. I think of Mac like a second dad and he probably thinks the same of Vito.
After we park the truck there are tons of people in the parking lot looking at us. I glance over at Paisley’s group. Megan wears an expression of pity. Most of the kids at the school do. Paisley and Palmer laugh, but that just shows how sick they are.