Fire & Dark (The Night Horde SoCal Book 3)

by Susan Fanetti

  Relieved, he kissed her, and then he let her go to her friend.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Pilar needed to get to her grandmother.

  Her brain was so stuffed full that she could barely think at all. She felt slow and numb, and a voice in her head kept trying to convince her that she was stuck in a dream. She’d pinched herself, slapped herself, whatever, and had not been able to wake up. Because this was no dream. This was all happening.

  Her brother was dead. Fuck, Hugo was dead. He had killed people, hurt Connor’s parents, destroyed a whole street of houses, acres of wild land.

  He’d had a part in it, anyway. His first task as an Assassin.

  God, the things she’d learned on this day.

  Now she stood next to Connor and tried to listen, to focus on what the doctor was telling him about his father.

  Connor was crazed. She couldn’t keep up with his changing, charging moods: his need for her this morning, his fury and rejection of her later, his comfort of her in the aftermath, his demand of her in the clubhouse, his omnipresent jealousy.

  She understood why, understood that he was going through so much so fast, that people he loved most were teetering on the edge, but she couldn’t understand what he needed of her. She was going through shit herself. God—where was Hugo’s body? What had the Horde meant about ‘calling in a service’?

  How the fuck was she going to tell her grandmother?

  Connor’s hand clenched harder on hers, and again she tried to focus. Behind them, around them, were several of his Horde family, also listening to the doctor’s monotonous voice. They were all standing; Connor had refused the doctor’s suggestion to sit.

  “I need you to speak plain English, doc. I’m hearing a lot of syllables and no sense.”

  Dr. Philpott nodded and cleared his throat. “Yes. Apologies. Your father experienced a severe brain injury—”

  “I got that. You lost me in the rest of it.”

  “There’s a considerable amount of swelling. To give the brain its best chance to heal and recover, we removed a section of the skull.”

  “You took his head apart? The fuck?” He raked his free hand through his hair, and Pilar resisted the urge to try to liberate her hand from his demolishing grip.

  The doctor winced at Connor’s aggressive tone, but he went on in that same cool, level voice. Every doctor Pilar knew was capable of the same detached way of speaking, used to talk to families, to tell hard news in a way intended to keep emotions in check. “We need to give the brain room as it swells. The compression against the skull would be devastating.” When Connor only heaved a breath without interrupting again, Philpott continued. “We’ve implanted the skull segment into your father’s abdomen to keep it alive until we can put it back where it belongs.”

  “Again, doc. You’re telling me that you put my father’s skull inside his gut?”

  “Part of the skull, yes. Under the skin. This is common practice for traumatic brain injuries like your father’s.”

  “Jesus. What else?”

  “The respiratory system experienced trauma from the heat and smoke. There is some permanent scarring, which will limit breathing function for the rest of his life, but if he survives, he should have enough function to live fairly normally in that regard.”

  Connor’s hand, and his whole arm, were as rigid as steel. He was crushing her hand. “And his burns?”

  “These are the least of the injuries. There are second- and third-degree burns on the right side of the body. There’ll be scarring, but there’s a chance grafts won’t be necessary. For now, our attention is on the brain injury. We’ll make a further determination if he begins to recover.”

  “If you say ‘if’ again, or keep talking about my father like he’s a thing, you’re going to end up with a traumatic brain injury of your own.”

  Philpott paled and flinched, and Pilar put her free hand on Connor’s chest. “Calm down, honey.”

  Connor looked down at her, and his expression almost made her flinch, too. He was scatter-bombing his anger, and she was catching some shrapnel.

  The doctor had regained his composure. “I assure you that your father is getting the best possible care. For now, we need to wait and monitor him, see how his brain responds to the surgery and the medication we’re administering. The next hours are crucial.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “He’s in the ICU, and he’ll be comatose for at least the next two days. Understand that his appearance might be…alarming at first.”

  “I don’t care. I need to see him.”

  The doctor nodded. “I understand. Only you, and no more than five minutes. He’s being closely monitored. He’s in Room 2.” The doctor looked past Connor and Pilar at the rest of the men and women who’d been hanging on his words, and he paled again before his attention returned to Connor. “Do you have any other questions?”

  When Connor shook his head, the doctor nodded and turned away. Pilar had the clear sense that he was escaping.

  Connor squeezed her sore hand again. “Come with me.”

  “He said—”

  “Fuck that. I need you.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  He lifted her hand to his mouth, his grip relaxing as he kissed her fingers. “I love you.”

  She loved him. The way she felt about him was so strong it freaked her out. But her head was numb and overfull, and she couldn’t get the words out. He wanted to be first in her life, and she was here, setting aside her own family, the violence that had been done to it, to stand with Connor while he grappled with the violence that had been done to his. For which she was, to a large degree, responsible. She was torn, and she felt it as a tearing pain somewhere inside.

  But he needed her, and he’d asked her to choose. She’d chosen. Fuck. How would she, could she, ever make anything right for her nana? Or for Connor? For herself?

  It was too much to think about right now, so she didn’t. Her whole life, she’d been good at setting aside the need for introspection. Some questions became more troubling when they had answers.

  She stepped close and leaned her forehead on his chest, and she felt him dip his head and press his lips into her hair. For several seconds, they simply stood like that. Then he took a step back and led her toward the Intensive Care Unit.

  The ICU was arranged in a circle, with the round desk of the nurse’s station in the center. A large bank of electronics dominated half the desk. The glass-walled patient rooms faced inward so that the patients could be constantly monitored.

  When Connor, tense and angry, big and brawny, wearing his heavy boots and dark kutte, led her toward Room 2, the three nurses behind the desk looked up, but they didn’t stop them. They simply watched.

  He drew up so short when they went into the room that Pilar ran into his broad back.

  “Holy fuck. I can’t”—he turned, and his eyes were wide with shock and fear—“I can’t…”

  She grabbed his arm. “You can. I’m here.”

  When Connor nodded and turned back toward his father’s bed, Pilar saw what had him so upset. His father looked small and as pale as the sheets beneath him and the bandages around him. His long, grey beard was gone, and the thick tube of the ventilator filled his mouth. His head was wrapped in a thick swath of bandages, as was his chest and right arm. Dark bruising circled his closed eyes.

  He wasn’t a young man, but when Pilar had been around him, he had exuded a kind of eternal youth that rejected his age. Now, though, he looked ancient, his body shrunken and empty.

  “Dad.” Connor’s voice broke as he went to the bed and put his hand over his father’s left arm. “I’m so fucking sorry.” After a moment, he turned back to Pilar. “Your brother did this.”

  She nodded. “It wasn’t just him, but yes. He was part of it. I’m sorry.” The words sounded anemic. Insignificant. Powerless.

  “Who else was in his truck?”

  “You want to talk about this now? Here?”
<
br />   When he only stared at her, she dropped her head and took a deep breath. “Freddy Macias. He was Assassin. O.G. From before even my father’s and Raul’s time. He was inside for almost twenty years, for murder and arson. Got out a few months back. You killed him when you came into the apartment this morning.” He’d set the Bridges fire in August. His big comeback.

  And he’d burned her friend, Mia’s, house when Pilar was a girl. All of it Assassins vengeance. Her childhood had been steeped in more violence than she’d even been aware of.

  “What—your brother was his fucking apprentice or something?”

  Just the stooge sent to help out. “It was how he had to pay Raul back.”

  He stepped away from his father’s bedside and faced her. “Why were you there today? They had you tied up. You and Moore. What the fuck happened?”

  “I went to find him. I had to.”

  “To keep him away from me.” His expression took on that vicious sneer that had shocked her earlier, when they’d first learned of Hugo’s involvement.

  This was their breaking point, she knew. If he couldn’t be made to see, to forgive, then nothing would save what they had. “Connor, you have to understand. Please. He’s my little brother.”

  He took a deep breath, and Pilar could see it calming him a little. “I guess I do. I’m trying to. I’m trying to get past it. But you understand me: he had to die.”

  There was a part of her that agreed, and another part of her that even thought it might have been for the best. The rest of her at least understood why it was true for Connor and the Night Horde. “I know. And I had to try to save him.”

  He looked back at his father. “What happened?”

  It was too much to explain. Pilar tried to find a way in her head that would sum up those minutes—it hadn’t even been an hour—in the Aztec apartment. “I knew it was stupid to just go there, but I couldn’t think of anything better. I wanted to try to get him home, find someplace safe so I could talk to him—and then I would have come to you. I wanted to try to find another way to end all this.” At that, Connor made a scoffing, bitter sound, but Pilar went on. “I wanted to know that we were wrong, that he couldn’t have done it. But they grabbed us before we even got to the apartment door. Raul started…using me to fuck with Hugo. He wanted to make Hugo hurt me. But he wouldn’t. Connor, I know you don’t believe this. You don’t have any reason to. But my brother wasn’t a bad guy”—emotion broke her voice, and she stopped and took a breath. “Not deep inside. He was fucked up. But he was just—he was afraid more than anything else. Everything overwhelmed him, all the time. From the time he was little. I think hanging with the tough guys made him feel stronger.”

  Connor only stared at her, unmoved. So she repeated, “He wouldn’t hurt me. They were starting to knock him around and threaten him when you came in, but he was fighting back.”

  She shut her eyes against the memory of Raul’s hands on her, of the things he’d said to Hugo. What they’d tried to make him do to her. The sound of Moore’s shouts and Hugo’s protests, of Assassins’ laughter.

  They’d tried to force Hugo to rape her. When he’d refused and fought, they’d muscled him down and threatened to take his dick off and rape her with it anyway. That was what the Horde had broken in on.

  Deciding not to tell Connor any of that, she pushed it all away and opened her eyes.

  Connor’s expression had not changed; he remained stoic and determined. “Did he burn my folks? It’s all I care about, Pilar. Did he do it?”

  Maybe if she told him about what had happened in that apartment, he’d care more. But the story made her a victim, and she couldn’t stand that. So she told him what he wanted to know, what he wanted to hear.

  Freddy had gone into elaborate detail about what had happened in the Elliotts’ house. They knew Pilar’s connection to them, and they had all enjoyed the story. “Yes. Like I said, he helped. He didn’t think he had a choice. It was Raul’s order, Freddy’s plan. Raul was yelling about how the Horde tried to take them down, but the Assassins would rise from Horde ashes. They didn’t know your dad was there, and I guess he surprised them. Freddy hit him. That’s how his head was hurt. I don’t know with what. But he was laughing about the sound it made.” She closed her eyes, shuddering at that memory, and then she steeled herself to say something more. “It was meant to be a message, that the Horde had a lot to lose in a fight with them.”

  “Fucking hell.” Deeper understanding dawned in his eyes. “They knew my mother was there. They thought she was alone. They meant to kill her.”

  Pilar couldn’t say the answer to that out loud. “I’m sorry, Connor. I know it was me who brought all this down on you.”

  “Yeah. It was us. I got caught up in you. I should have…I don’t know. Fuck, I don’t even know if I’d do it differently if I could.”

  “Where does this leave us?”

  He stepped away from the bed and leaned back heavily against the wall. “I love you. I thought before that I wanted to be done, but I don’t. I can’t. I need you.”

  “We’re okay, then?” The thought that they had found their breaking point had shaken her badly, and the hope that they hadn’t was shaking her more. She went to him and slid her hands under his kutte. She’d never needed someone this way before; she’d never felt so afraid to lose a connection. It made her feel weak and afraid. It hurt so deeply that it buried the conflicted, confusing pain of losing Hugo and the electric anxiety of what she faced when she told her grandmother. Right now, the most important thing in her life was to be solid with this man.

  Connor’s big, heavy hands wrapped around her arms. “Do you love me?”

  “Yes. So much it hurts.”

  “Then I guess we’ll be okay.”

  Will be. Meaning that they weren’t yet.

  Afraid and exhausted, she leaned into him and took what comfort she could when his arms enclosed her and pulled her close. Snaking her arms around his waist, she tried to give him the same comfort back.

  She had given herself to this man, her real self. Pilar, not Cordero. Or both of them, really, all of her—the strong and the weak, the fierce and the vulnerable. She needed him to keep safe what she had never given to anyone else.

  ~oOo~

  Pilar’s grandmother worked as an office manager at an accounting firm in San Bernardino. She’d been the receptionist there when Pilar and Hugo were children, and she’d worked her way through the administrative ranks. When she’d moved her grandchildren to what she’d meant to be a safer life, she had picked up a second job, cleaning the offices of the very same building she spent her days answering phones in.

  She’d also worked weekends at a little boutique. When Pilar became a firefighter, she was able to help out with bills, and being able to cut back to one job had been almost like retirement for her grandmother.

  Pilar hated the idea of breaking this news to her while she was at work, but she had no choice. Connor had told her that the Horde’s ‘cleaner’ was dumping the Assassin bodies with the ink intact. They would be quickly identified, and Pilar didn’t want her to hear it from some fucking detective who thought the Assassins were all scum.

  It had to be her, and it had to be now. Staying with Connor this long had delayed the news too much already.

  So she walked into the building, still wearing the uniform she’d jumped into from her bunk, answering the call of the fire on Nutmeg Ridge Drive. How long ago had that been? Hours? Days? She didn’t even know anymore. A lifetime ago.

  She took the elevator up to the fourth floor and went into the office. A young receptionist sat at a desk that was far larger than was practically necessary. Pilar rarely visited her grandmother at work, so she didn’t know many of the people she worked with.

  The woman smiled up at her. “May I help you?”

  “I’m here to see Renata Salazar?”

  “Is she expecting you?”

  “No, it’s not business. I’m her granddaughter. It’s a fami
ly matter—an urgent one.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. One minute.” She picked up the phone and pressed a button. “Renata? Your granddaughter is here to see you.”

  Hanging up, the girl smiled again. “You can go back. Do you know her office?”

  “I do. Thanks.” She went back.

  ‘Office’ was a fairly optimistic term for the room that her grandmother called her own. Small and windowless, two walls dominated by shelves of office supplies, it was more of a closet. But she had a desk and a phone of her own, and a door that set her apart from the cubicles that took up most of the office suite, and she was proud of how far she’d advanced.