I’m allergic to opioids, but I didn’t get a chance to tell the nursing staff at the hospital, so when I came out of surgery on my shoulder and got my first dose of their standard pain meds I came awake puking.

Fun times.

I’d made it almost all the way back to Toledo, but I had lost a lot of blood and I was having a really hard time staying on the road. That’s why I’ll always be grateful to Gabe for answering the phone on the first ring like he did. He and Angel did me a real solid. My hands had been shaking and covered with the blood that had run down my arm from the bullet wound. I had to wipe them on my jeans three times just so my touchscreen would let me push the fucking button for Gabe’s number.

“Gabe, I need help.”

“Where is Jeanette?” Bonus points to him for thinking about her first.

“She’s at the apartment, but David’s on his way. Gabe – everyone’s dead. He blew away Chaz Malone, Eddie, Gordon, he’s crazy – get her out of there. I won’t make it in time, he shot me too, and I’m living but I’m not one hundred percent. Call the cops, call everyone, and make a lot of fucking noise, man.”

The wooziness was a real problem, and I swerved hard on the highway to miss going off the side of the road. The sound of my tires grinding over the rumble strip permeated the vehicle and I heard Gabe throw his phone to Angel.

“Give me your phone, Angel, talk to Dino.” I heard him in the background of the call and then he was gone. He was a good guy, Gabe was. I would have never told him that to his face before, but after how he came through for Jeanette, no questions asked, I might have to rethink that policy.

Angel too. She proved herself to be a “ride or die” kind of woman yesterday for sure.

“Is the phone on speaker, Dino?” she asked, and her breath came out in puffs, like she was running. I heard a car door slam a few seconds later and the rumble of what I assumed was her Jeep starting.

“Yeah, I only have one good arm right now and I am trying to use it to drive.”

“Pull off the highway the first chance you get and tell me where you are. I’m coming to get you.”

And she did. Pulled right up to the gross hotel parking lot on Buck Road. It was as far as I could go, and I barely made it. That place was such a dump I was surprised it was still standing, but I guess I could only be grateful it was, because the lot was mostly empty and it didn’t take Angel as long as it could have to find me, slumped over the wheel in the Lincoln with the tinted windows.

I thought it would take her longer to figure out, considering she was looking for my BMW, but she probably also recognized the Town Car, having already been in it once.

She had a hard time wrestling me into the Jeep. I was conscious, and I tried to help her, but the blood loss was making me weak and I stumbled a few times. We probably should have called an ambulance but fuck me if either of us thought about it. Getting to a hospital was the first thing on both of our minds. I bled all over the inside of that Jeep. Poor Angel, she never said a word about it, just drove like a bat out of hell until the Jeep came careening up to the front of the emergency department and she got out of the car at a run. The double doors opened automatically, and I heard her screaming, “I need help! He’s been shot!” There were a lot of footsteps after that, but I didn’t hear much after as I was passing out completely.

Then I woke up to my body violently rejecting the pain meds, and an anxious looking Gabe standing over my bed.

“You look like shit, how are you feeling?”

“Awful, your face is killing me,” I could barely croak out the words, my throat was so dry and raw. That earned me a grin and a middle finger in response, so I assumed that it wasn’t just my pain that was putting him in such a good mood.

“Jeannette,” that was all I could get out, all I could say and I swallowed thickly, hoping for his response but afraid of it at the same time.

“Oh she’s here, Dino. Angel dragged her downstairs to the cafeteria for food.” Gabe’s face turned serious for a moment. “Hey man, I didn’t know what I was going to find but I sent the cops up to that warehouse in Detroit. Four bodies for fuck’s sake. What the hell happened up there?” He held his hands out and shook his head, “Wait, never mind. Don’t tell me right now, tell the police. They have been chomping at the bit to get to you. They put Jeanette through the ringer, and she was a champion, but there is just shit that cannot get answered without your testimony.”

“I want to see her.” The cops could wait. If they came in here it would be hours, maybe days before they let me loose. I didn’t want to wait for another second to see her face, to know she was alive and unharmed.

“Sorry, Dino,” Gabe said sadly as he waved his hand to the doorway, where two suits and a uniformed deputy stood waiting. One had a recording device and two had big fat briefcases and they pulled a Red Sea, like Moses had waved them apart to let Gabe slide back out of the room.

Fuck me.

They hounded me through four damn hours of questioning, until the nurse came in to give me more meds and had to shoo them from the room. They weren’t done though, they were coming back tomorrow. It was all kinds of a messed-up investigation, but considering all the bodies and evidence that was pretty much everywhere, it wasn’t like they didn’t believe me. It was just so complex – hell if I hadn’t lived it I wouldn’t believe it myself, but since my story matched up with Gabe and Jeanette’s in all the places it needed to, there really weren’t any criminal charges being pressed against myself or Jeanette. As a matter of fact, the officers I talked to were more pissed than anything. Good cops hate dirty cops, and after they heard about what happened to Jeanette – well, let’s just say David Ashley was lucky he was dead.

My mind couldn’t even really process the previous events either. I’d been working Chaz Malone for months, and it took a completely unrelated psycho to crack the mystery behind why he was dicking my family over. It was going to break Nonna’s heart, hearing there was another grandchild out there that she never knew about, that she could have brought into her home and loved. I don’t know that he would have turned out any differently though, breaking the news to her was going to be difficult. But at least I could see my Nonna again. Could sit at the family table on a Sunday and eat her homemade gnocchi and not have to worry about another fucking thing. Maybe Jeanette would want to go with me…

Jeanette. My eyes were getting so heavy from whatever new pain reliever they decided to give me that wouldn’t make me sick. I’d waited so long to see her but now I was fighting to stay awake. The bed was swallowing me up and the blankets were weighing me down and I couldn’t keep my eyelids open for another second. I vaguely heard the nurses in the hallway, saying, “He’s exhausted. We just gave him another dose of pain medication and he’s just now getting some rest. I’ll need you to go sit with the rest of the family in the waiting room, or you could come back tomorrow.”

The rest of the family?

Yawn.

Who was that nurse talking to?

Slow blink.

Who else was here in the waiting room?

Fuck I’m tired.

I really just want…to see…Jeanette…