Chapter
27

The machines beeped in the silence, irritating me. Those beeps meant Ash still needed to be on a monitor. It meant I’d saved her from dying—barely. Doctor Himazdi checked her chart over, but I knew the words by heart. I’d translated them into a language I understood and tried hard to believe that didn’t spell a five-letter word I wasn’t prepared to see associated with Ash: death. She had plenty of shit wrong with her—bilateral pneumonia, five proximal and distal breaks in the fingers of each hand, and the same with her toes. Twenty broken fucking bones. She also had five rib fractures, two anal fissures—one severe—and fifteen lacerations to her face, concentrated on her cheeks. He’d also carved “whore” under her breasts.

Lorcan had done so much more than he’d shown me on those short video clips. Most of the lacerations were infected; if I’d been just a few days later, there would have been no saving her. She had antibiotics and steroids pushed into her veins through IV, oxygen in her nose, and she hadn’t woken up since the first day. They’d had to put a tube down her throat just to feed her. I raked my fingers through my hair, pulling at the strands until my scalp ached. The pain reminded me I was alive, that I hadn’t lost everything. But when I looked at her frail, limp hand on top of her blanket, I wasn’t so sure.

The body count to get her back totaled thirty, all gone and washed away where no one would find them. Dahlia’s girls now belonged to me, and I gave them to Franco to control. I didn’t want to see another pet. Lorcan’s business had been dismantled and shut down. He no longer proved to be the middle man between me and resistance forces needing my weapons. I did it all. I’d have more money than I ever wanted, and yet I stayed in one place. The cabin where I’d taken my old pets had been converted. While I’d searched and found Ash, I’d had builders turning my escape into a fucking fortress. Until she was safe, I kept us there. I turned the basement into a fully-functional emergency space, complete with sections for X-rays, MRI scans, and surgery. At least there had been no pregnancy from her ordeal, and the birth control in her arm would keep that from happening from here on out.

To ensure she had around-the-clock care, Dr. H and his nurses stayed on-site in newly-renovated cabins. And I stayed by her side. None of it mattered to the sleeping beauty. Her heart beat and her lungs filled with air, but she didn’t hear me. A week came and went, then another, and even another, and she never opened her eyes.

“Fuck, Ash.”

I fingered my beard. It was time to cut it, but I hated to leave her. If I weren’t here when she woke up, she’d be afraid and wouldn’t realize where she was. Fresh white paint on the walls and ceiling wouldn’t tell her a thing.

“C?”

I turned to find Franco hovering at the door. Out of respect, none of my men came down here, except Franco. “What is it?”

“How is she?” he asked.

I sighed. My new second in command had a wife and kid. He saw things differently than Sean ever had. Hell, differently than I had. “She is stable. The pneumonia is just about gone, but they are keeping her on the meds to strengthen her lungs.”

Franco nodded. He wore jeans most of the time, like me, but tended toward button-up shirts and open vests. He tamed his long, dark hair into a ponytail at the nape of his neck, and though his eyes were kind now as he looked at Ash, I’d seen him go psycho. Fucker was as wild and crazy as me.

“Samantha is here to see you,” Franco said.

“Your wife? Why?”

“There were some discrepancies she saw in Sean’s filing system. She didn’t tell me what it was, said it was only for you.”

I sighed. If she said it, she probably meant it. She’d been working hard as the new lawyer for my criminal empire. I thought it wouldn’t be easy to jump ship from corporate America, but the good ‘ol boys apparently liked to play in the dirty pool, too.

“Stay with her,” I told Franco.

“Of course.”

We switched places, and I headed up the stairs as he sat down in my vacated chair. Samantha, in a sharp slate skirt suit and white blouse, met me in the living room.

“I wouldn’t have interrupted you, C, if I didn’t think it were urgent,” she said before she tucked some blonde strands behind her ears. She put her briefcase on the coffee table and sat down across from it. Following her lead, I took a seat.

“How bad is it?” I asked.

“That depends on what you want me to do with it. Sean kept detailed notes, records, and evidence of every criminal action you have ever done. As your lawyer, he was privy to it all, but I didn’t expect him to have so much.”

“Fucking bastard. He planned to fuck me over from the beginning.”

Familiar rage filled me as she nodded. Most, if not all of this, should have been destroyed so it never came back to me. I wondered when he planned to use it against me. “Did you find any trail to copies or securities in the event of is death?” I asked.

“None. It seemed these were precautionary, in the event you ever turned on him or cut him out.”

“I’m happy I killed him.”

Samantha cleared her throat. “As your lawyer, you understand I cannot break privilege and share anything that you tell me. However, I would further safeguard you and state you should bring Franco into the fold.” She lifted her hand to stop me before I could speak. Cheeky broad. “Hear me out. He is my lawful husband, which means we are further protected by spousal privilege. Law enforcement cannot compel me to break that. I’m not telling you this because I want him to have more power. To be honest, I hate what he does. But you have a woman, while never reported missing, who you kidnapped and assaulted. She was then taken from you and further damaged. The things she’s suffered can all be placed at your feet, per the law. If Franco is in direct contact, or present at all meetings, we are doubly protected.”

“Then why didn’t you ask him to be here while you explained this to me?”

“Because it is your choice. I will not do anything without going through you first, husband or not.”

I stared at her. My radar for bullshit and trust was obviously out the window, but in my line of work I couldn’t afford to not have an ironclad team surrounding me.

“Fine. His position would make that necessary anyway. Is there anything else?”

She nodded. “Sean signed over the funds from Ashlyn to himself. He also locked much of your financial wealth into offshore accounts only he had access to. Because of his untimely demise, he was unable to move any of his funds or change his security before his death. I have moved all monies into new accounts, including the feeds from his business pursuits. There is also a proxy wire for any monies that directly deposit into his account to come to you.”

“Hold on. Are you telling me he had control over all of my fucking shit?”

“He did. Here are the new accounts. Please contact the banker now and reset your security codes. He is aware of the changes. I’ll be outside until you are done.”

She stood, but my voice stopped her. “Samantha?”

“Yes, C?”

“Your family, no matter what, will be taken care of. Your daughter will go to whatever college she chooses, with five million dollars in a trust for her upon her graduation. She will want for nothing if I’m alive. But if you fuck me—”

“I am a mother before anything. You take care of my child, I’ll take care of you.”

“I’m telling you this is crazy, Caesar. You shouldn’t tattoo a patient who is unconscious, cannot consent, and has a compromised immune system,” Dr. H said.

I ignored the fucker. Ash belonged to me, and I’d get this done now while I could. The tattoo would only show up under a black light anyway, and it was for her own safety. I continued to watch the artist before he cleaned the fresh work and applied some ointment before he wrapped it up.

“You know about the aftercare. No scented soaps and lotions until it’s healed, and try to keep it out of water for the first day or two.”

“I remember. Can you hide the scarring?” I asked the tattoo artist.

Tone looked up to her chest, hidden under her gown and covers, but I’d already shown him Lorcan’s work. He scratched his tattooed cheek and sighed.

“It will depend on how she scars. The cuts are thin. If treated right, she may have nothing more than white lines. That’s easy to cover. But if they thicken or stretch, the ink will have a hard time sinking into the skin properly, or it may not even cover them. But you know I’ll do what I can. Call me when she’s ready. The more personal her custom piece, the less she’ll see what he did to her when she looks at it.”

I nodded, and Tone cleaned his gun, tossed away the used needles. I watched him methodically put away his gun, the colors, products, and tracing equipment before he left the room as silently as he’d come. Tone had done every piece of work on my body. We had a long-standing relationship with ink and blood. By the time he hit the door, I’d wired a hundred thousand bucks to his account. He was paid well for his secrecy.

“This could just make her sicker, Caesar,” Dr. H said.

I glared at him. “Then I suppose you will do your fucking job and keep her healthy, won’t you?”

He swallowed and nodded, but the pinched way he held his mouth told me he wanted to argue. Who gave a shit? What I did with Ash was my business, and I wouldn’t take shit from anyone about it. Not a single one of them understood what I went through for her, they never would. I sank down on the hospital bed at her side and rested her hand in my lap. Thin, blue veins stood out against her skin and her pulse jumped. I pressed my fingers against her heartbeat, marking each throb by the seconds on the wall clock. She lived, my Ash, but she didn’t wake up. Her eyes fluttered under weak lids, but they didn’t look at me.

Where was she?

She didn’t fight or curse. She didn’t call me a lunatic and fuck with me. I’d brought her home, forced that bastard through pain worse than she could imagine and made him bow to her. I turned her into the fucking empress of my destruction, and she rested here, away from this world, hiding from pain and life. Hiding from me. It was time to wake up.

“No more hiding, Ash. Dr. H, you’re dismissed for the day.”

“Caesar?”

My gaze swung to his, my jaw locked and teeth clenched. “I said you’re fucking dismissed for the day. What part of that did you not understand? Do I need to replace it with a different, more permanent d-word?”

“No, Caesar. I’ll have the nurse check over her vitals and status later.”

“Don’t bother,” I told him as I pulled my jacket off and tossed it aside. “You will come when I call you, and not before. Take this tube out of her throat.”

He stopped at the door and hesitated. I thought about punching him in his shit when his worried eyes scanned me and Ash. Yeah, fucker, it’s exactly what it looks like, I thought as I pulled off my shirt. Dr. H did as I asked and stumbled from the room as I released a dark, angry chuckle.

“You belong to me, Ashy Lashy. You don’t run and fucking hide because hiding is for pussies, and pussies get dead.”