by Bethany-Kris
“We come back another day. It’s not like we’re regular nine to fivers, here.”
“How would you know about anything being there?” Lucian asked. “What in the hell does that even mean?”
Dante shrugged. “You’re asking the wrong man. I don’t make time to find love, I make an effort to find a good fuck.”
“Classy,” Gio mumbled around a freshly lit cigarette.
“Like you’re any different,” Dante replied, unaffected. “Deny it, I dare you.”
Lucian quickly decided this conversation was going nowhere.
“This could be bad,” Lucian muttered, shooting a glance at the apartment building which may or may not house a woman who just wouldn’t get off his damned mind. “She said it herself, I probably got her in shit as it was. It’s complicated. She’s mixed up in bad people.”
“We are the bad people. You are aware what we do for a living, right? How many people have we whacked, again?”
Dante had him there.
Lucian flipped him off. “Not what I mean.”
“I know what you mean, idiot. Quit stalling. I promised Mom I’d take her to dinner with Jessica later.”
Lucian cringed. Their mother had some sort of crazy idea Dante was in love with this Jessica chick. She was not wife material, but no one wanted to break their mother’s heart by telling her the truth. “Christo, Dante. You need to put a stop to that before it continues. The next thing you know, Mom will be picking out wedding colors and nursery schemes. Once she starts doing that nonsense, she’s in it to win it and you’ll be screwed.”
Forget wife material. Dante wasn’t husband material.
“Tell Mom I let Jess suck my dick at the last get-together we had,” Gio put in from the back. “Problem solved.”
“Seriously?” Dante asked, staring in the review mirror at their youngest brother.
Gio shrugged. “What? She offered. It wasn’t like she was particularly good at it, so I forgot about it.”
Jesus.
Lucian didn’t even know what to say to that.
Dante nodded, smirking. “That could work.”
“All right, I’m done,” Lucian said with a sigh. “You two bond over mutual exploits, I have better business needing attention.”
“Good luck,” Gio chimed from the backseat.
Dante met his brother’s stare and spoke nothing, but what lay behind his eyes said everything.
• • •
Lucian knew instantly something was wrong when he arrived at Jordyn’s second floor apartment. The building was definitely crap, locks were practically nonexistent, and some of the tenants were probably suspect, to say the least, but that wasn’t what gave him the hint.
Jordyn’s door had been kicked in, and recently, by the looks of it.
There was a large crack in the framing preventing the door from closing properly. Lucian simply pushed on the wood and the door tried to open, albeit a metal chain that wasn’t worth shit kept it from swinging open completely.
Lucian called her name once through the small crack opening the door created, but received no response. He couldn’t see very much inside the apartment, and what he could see, he didn’t feel all too great about. There was a mess, but he couldn’t make much of it out.
This was wrong. He just knew it.
A quiet little voice from behind Lucian jerked him back into the present.
“Hi. My name’s Nevaeh.”
Lucian looked at the little girl poking her head out of her own doorway that was directly across from Jordyn’s apartment. She was maybe five, possibly six-years-old. Cute, for a kid. Truthfully, kids kind of freaked him out. It wasn’t like he knew what to do with them.
“Hello, sweetheart. I’m Lucian. Do you know Jordyn?”
The little girl with her dark eyes and hair nodded, smiling wide. “Sometimes she watches me when Mommy doesn’t get home until late. And she takes me to the school so I don’t have to walk alone. She’s my friend.”
Oh, Jordyn.
Jesus.
Something about the little girl’s words cracked him straight in the chest. Lucian had taken the time over the last day to carefully read over the file his father provided. Sure, it felt like an invasion of Jordyn’s privacy, but Lucian needed to know about her.
Desperately, he wanted to know this woman.
It was very likely she found a kindred spirit in this little girl. Something similar between them.
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” he asked the girl.
Nevaeh shrugged. “It’s Saturday.”
“Oh.” Lucian shoved his hands in his pockets, feeling uncomfortable. “Did you have school yesterday?”
“Yep, but I didn’t go.”
“School is important. Why didn’t you go?”
“Mommy slept in, so she couldn’t take me. Jordyn was sick, I think. The big men came. I heard them yell at her. They broke her door. See?” She pointed at Jordyn’s door with a frown. “When Mommy woke up, and I told her, she said I couldn’t visit Jordyn anymore. I don’t know why. I like her.”
Lucian’s heart stopped beating. He was sure it did.
If what this child said was true, what lay behind Jordyn’s door might not be a pretty sight. Especially not for a little girl who thought of the older woman as her friend. It didn’t matter, though. Lucian was going in anyway once he got the girl back inside her own apartment.
He did take into account the chain had been locked, so at some point, Jordyn managed that.
That had to be a good sign. It just had to be.
“Go inside, okay? Thank you,” he told her, trying to smile, but it didn’t feel right. “And make sure you go to school on Monday, even if you have to find someone new to walk you.”
The little girl nodded. Once her apartment door shut, Lucian turned back to Jordyn’s. He called her name through the crack once more and still, nothing and no one answered him. Without thinking about it, he slammed his booted foot into the wood just beside the doorknob. The powerful kick effectively broke the weak chain and allowed the door to swing open with a bang.
The moment he stepped inside the apartment, Lucian was surveying everything.
The doorway led straight into the living room. There was a mess on the floor, like he’d seen from the crack, but it was much worse than he thought. Things had been strewed, like they were kicked around, or possibly messed up in a struggle. A yellow top lay ripped and forgotten on the couch. Vomit, or what he assumed to be vomit, had stained the floor.
There was a bit of blood. Too much, really. Starting to dry, he noted.
A studded belt was also on the floor in the clutter, as were darkened, burned knives.
Panic swelled in Lucian’s chest.
“Jordyn!” Lucian shouted.
Quickly, he moved through the living room, pushing open a door to find a bedroom with sheets and blankets messed up on the mattress. The second door he opened was the bathroom.
It was there that he found her.
“Merda … Jordyn … Sweetheart.”
Lucian took one step into the bathroom and wished he was one day early.
Jordyn was bloodied, and beaten. Lucian didn’t have time to think, let alone consider all of her visible injuries, but his fast paced mind couldn’t help but take note of everything. Several lacerations covered her arms, back, and legs. Crimson stained the tub. Some wounds were swelled so badly, with bruises forming, he knew they were breeding infection, or had to be.
Slightly turned in the bathtub so part of her shoulder and back faced the doorway, he could see the marks left behind there, too. That beautiful cherry blossom tattoo of hers wasn’t entirely ruined, but it took some major damage. On her face was another brutal lash from where she’d been hit, the swelling severe and frightening.
She must have tried to clean herself up after whatever happened. The tub wasn’t wet, but she had set out a first aid kit, some pain killers, and clean towels. Obviously she’d been awake for some time, but even
tually she gave up.
Lucian forced the sickness rising in his stomach down.
The slight rise and fall of her shoulders allowed him one sigh of relief.
He wasted no more time.
Lucian had his cell phone dialing as he crossed the small space. Dante hadn’t even finished saying hello before he was shouting orders. “Call Paulie, right now, Dante. Get him on the phone. Tell him we need meds, lots of them. IV’s, morphine, antibiotics. I want him close, and quick.”
“Lucian … what’s wrong?”
“Call Paulie,” Lucian repeated, a tremor rocking his words. He hadn’t realized it until right then, but wetness was slipping down his cheeks. Tears, he realized. It was years since he cried. “You’ll have to call Antony, too, and let him know. She’s hurt. They hurt her so bad, man.”
“Maybe a hospital would—”
“No,” he interrupted fiercely. “That’ll go on record. They can’t find her and they will be looking for her.”
Dante heaved a breath and Lucian heard his car engine turn over. “Do you need help?”
“No. She’s maybe one-hundred-fifteen pounds soaking wet. I’ll bring her down, just get the car ready.”
Not to mention, Jordyn was naked from the waist up. Lucian needed to find something to cover her, and at the same time, be mindful of her injuries.
“Oh, bella mia,” he whispered, leaning down into the tub to brush the hair from her face. Jordyn’s eyes were open, but they weren’t focusing. Lucian wasn’t sure she could even hear him. “It’s okay, sweetheart. This isn’t going to happen again. Ever. He won’t ever touch you again.”
“Jesus,” Dante muttered. “Get her down here. I’m calling Paulie.”
Lucian hung up his phone and dropped it into his pocket. Using the clean towels Jordyn had sat out, he covered her chest and back loosely, making sure not to wrap the fluffy fabric to her skin too tightly. Cradling her lower back and slipping his arm under her bent knees, he pulled her from the bathtub like she weighed nothing at all.
It was only then he noticed what must have hurt her the worst.
The tattoo on her hip he touched, the one that gave her safety for so long, was burned off.
Chapter Eight
The apartment Lucian took Jordyn to for recovering and safety was owned by his father. It was one of many residential properties their family owned. Being in realty could be a good thing, considering they had apartments ready to move in all over the city just in case something happened and they needed a safe retreat. Unlike Jordyn’s apartment building, one step away from being condemned, this one bedroom Brooklyn apartment was well maintained, safe, and would work for as long as Lucian needed it to.
Lucian’s Manhattan apartment was too far away for him to keep an eye on Jordyn and do his business all the same, so until she was well enough to travel again, they would have to stay here.
Paulie cleared his throat to get Lucian’s attention. The low hum of the television in the living room reminded him his brothers were still there, too. They refused to leave, even after Paulie assured them both Lucian and he could handle caring for Jordyn.
Antony had yet to arrive, but he was mixed up at the office handling some issue with management. The man was just as good as a crime boss as he was a normal boss. Scarily so.
“She’s clean of track marks, so she doesn’t use needles.” Paulie went from looked at the creases of Jordyn’s limp, abused arms, to examining the teeth in her mouth. Perfect, white pearls stared back at the doctor. “And she isn’t sucking on a pipe, either. Her mouth is in too good of condition for that. If you want, I can take a blood sample and have it tested to be sure she’s clean of other things.”
Lucian shook his head to decline that offer. “I think if she were addicted to something particular and using as often as an addict would, it’d be obvious, regardless of how functioning of an addict she is.”
“It would, you’re right.”
“What about …?” Lucian trailed off, leaving the question hanging as he waved towards his own groin area. It’d been a great worry of his to think about the possibility she was raped. He didn’t want to even say it.
“I’d say no,” Paulie replied, keeping his usual professionalism. “And that’s without doing an exam, which I’m not comfortable with unless she was awake. Frankly, I’m okay with saying she wasn’t just from when we removed her shorts alone. There were no bruises on her thighs to suggest someone had forced them open, and trust me, there would be as she fought hard. The marks would be very obvious as to what they were. Similar to the handprint bruises on her arms. There were no fluids, and no blood in her shorts. She isn’t swollen or irritated on the surface in that area. No, definitely not.”
Lucian breathed a silent sigh of relief. It was one small victory.
“She took one hell of an awful beating,” the doctor noted. “She was hit hard, repeatedly. Whatever was used, it left imprints all over her body.”
“A belt. There was one on the floor. The studs match the welts. A man’s, certainly not hers.”
“I can hear the anger in your voice. You need to calm down and think about all of this, Lucian. You can’t go off half-cocked because of whoever doing what they did to her.”
“It’s not whoever, Paulie. I know who did this.”
“You look like a guilty man,” Paulie said quietly.
Lucian shrugged. Of course he looked guilty. He felt as terrible as shit. Being one day late had cost Jordyn a lot.
“It wasn’t you who hurt her,” his father’s consigliere continued. “If anything, you helped to prevent this infection from turning into something nastier. The pain alone must have been unimaginable for her. I don’t know how she managed to keep lucid enough to lock her door and get into the bathroom like she did.”
A shiver rolled down Lucian’s spine. More than once, he was a witness to a well-deserved beating. He’d seen tattoos burned from men before as a form of punishment or torture. Their business—as grizzly as it could be—did not mess with women in that way.
“She’s going to have some scarring,” Paulie informed, looking over the wounds on her shoulders once more. He hadn’t tapped the gauze bandages down, simply wrapped them loosely for the night to allow the creams to do what work they could. “Especially these ones that broke through her tattoo, and that awful burn on her hip. It won’t be too bad, and later on, if she wants, cosmetic correction is a good possibility for the burn sight. I’ve seen great work done, Lucian. Not that she isn’t a healthy, pretty young woman as it is.”
Lucian cocked his head to the side, confused. “Scars don’t bother me. She’s fine. Still beautiful.”
Paulie chuckled deeply. “I wasn’t saying it for your benefit, son. I meant for you to explain to her when she was lucid enough to understand if she was concerned about the scarring. It’s good to know you think she’s beautiful even in this condition, however. That speaks well for your feelings.”
Huh?
“I’m not … I don’t know her, Paulie. I just …” Lucian sighed, frustrated at being unable to finish a sentence. “I would like to know her, but considering I was probably the one who caused her to get a beating like this, I doubt she’ll be happy to see me when she wakes up.”
“Ah, don’t sell yourself so short just yet, Lucian. When your father called me a couple of days ago about this … infatuation … of yours, he was very concerned for you. I suppose he was concerned over this girl because she’d lived the way she had for so long, how could she be open to living some way else. Even with all they caused her to suffer, would she still be loyal to them? It’s not a far stretch for Antony to wonder. It’s his job as the Don of our family, and as your father.”
“Infatuation, is that what he called it?”
Paulie shrugged, smirking over his shoulder. “He did. Because you were trying to hide it from him. You like to remind everyone you’re not a boy anymore, yet you still feel the need to cover up things that may hurt or concern your mother and
father. So yes, he called it an infatuation, because that was all he gathered from your behavior.”
“And?” Lucian asked.
“And I reminded him long ago it was he who found himself staring at a woman only once and deciding he wanted her, too, but worrying what his family would think of his high expectations. Well, I think Antony decided he really wanted Cecelia after she threatened to shoot his foot off if he didn’t get out of her bedroom. He took a wrong hallway and ended up there after he tried to find the bathroom, you see.”
Lucian laughed. That was the first time he heard this version of the story. According to Antony and Cecelia, they met by chance, which apparently wasn’t entirely untrue, and a fast-paced relationship, then engagement, and a marriage followed soon after. Although both admitted it was love at first sight, or very close to it.
Lucian wasn’t entirely sure he believed in that sort of thing.
“I haven’t decided anything about Jordyn.”
“But maybe your heart has, Lucian. Have you thought of that?”
“I don’t even know her,” Lucian said, feeling like it was the thousandth time he had.
“Well, you’ll have lots of time for that over the next while. She’s going to be tender and sore, so take a special effort to be careful with her while you learn. Lord knows you, like your brothers, are so damned impatient when it comes to having to wait for what you want.”
Paulie didn’t attempt to hide the suggestive undertone to his comment at all. For the first time in years, Lucian felt his cheeks heat up. The man made him blush, for Christ’s sake.
Lucian needed to change the subject, and fast. “When will she be awake?”
Paulie had, with Lucian’s help and observation, carefully cut the shorts from Jordyn’s body. They took note of all her injuries, cleaning and preparing them for wrappings. An IV had been inserted into her right hand, feeding her veins with a cocktail of antibiotics, fluids, and the occasional drip of morphine for pain. Paulie made the schedule for that particular narcotic very clear.
“If the morphine does its job, and it will, she’ll sleep for a few more hours. Come tomorrow night, I’ll take her off the morphine. She probably won’t need it, then. Just the over the counter pain meds will be enough. Try to make sure she sleeps as much as possible for the next week at least. And takes the antibiotics and pain medication on time. She needs the rest for her body to heal. Lots of fluids. These bandages will need replaced twice a day, and four times or more for the burn. Frankly, that injury would be better cared for in a hospital, but I understand why we can’t.”