Chapter Two
Nico woke up with a jerk, catapulted into awareness, and tapped out with his hands for his gun. Gone.
He was on a fluffy surface that smelled clean and nice.
He tried to sit up, but pain tore through his side.
"Gun is over there," he heard someone say. "But if you shove it in my face a second time, I might get offended."
A brunette with pink stripes in her long hair, dressed in an oversize black T-shirt and a spiked choke collar, approached and sat beside him. He stared at her beautiful face. Those big hazel eyes. That pouty mouth, with a silver hoop at each side of her lower lip. All those piercings on her nose, brows, and ears. He knew her. This was Paige, the Goth waitress slash bartender from the restaurant run by Copeland's woman. Nico had seen her only once, but he never forgot a face, especially not if he'd worked it for information.
Stifling a groan, he attempted to rise again, but she stopped him. "Careful." She reached for the bandage on his side. "I stitched you up when you were unconscious, but I don't know if it will hold."
He tried talking, but his mouth was so dry that only a small croak came out.
"Here, drink a little," she said, grabbing a bottle of what looked like water from the table and tipping it to his mouth. Under normal circumstances, and especially after his recent ordeal, he wouldn't ingest anything given to him by a stranger, but these were far from normal circumstances.
He took a sip and looked around. "Where are we?"
And what the fuck was he doing with Paige?
He remembered being ambushed after a business meeting in Boston. Wanting to assess the situation first, and unwilling to show any kind of weakness to his people-who might well have been behind the hit-he'd sent a message to his lieutenant that he was taking off for the weekend. Then he'd gone dark.
"Safe," she said.
"How did we cross paths?"
"You were parked in front of Rosita's. Ring a bell?"
Rosita's? He only recalled trying to get his ass to safety and thinking he wasn't going to make it, half-unconscious and bleeding like a stuck pig as he'd been. He racked his brain, hoping to jog his memory. Had he taken that exit to suburbia, to Rosita's? Yes, he had. Then nothing. At least nothing that made any sense.
"You were bleeding in the car and I brought you here."
He had a vague recollection of being dragged into some house, but not by Paige. "I must have been hallucinating. I thought the Grim Reaper had dressed up like the bride of Dracula to come for me."
She pointed toward a corner, where a wedding gown covered with red splotches was bunched. "No hallucination. The bride of Dracula was me. Coming from a bachelorette party, actually."
People wore shit like that for bachelorette parties? What had happened to sexy bunnies and such? Never mind.
"I have to go," he said, clenching his teeth and jacking his torso up, almost blacking out from the pain.
Paige pushed him down. "You are in no condition to go anywhere. You're safe here. Trust me. Now let me take a look at the wound."
The fact that this little girl could keep him down with one hand told him the battle was lost, so he gave up. Hands trembling slightly, Paige uncovered the wound. Nico watched as she dabbed it with disinfectant. "You did a good job."
Her smile was rueful. "Thanks. You were my first ever. In all honesty, I checked a video on YouTube to see how to do it. I'm very much hoping I haven't stitched together something I shouldn't have. What about the gash over your eyebrow? Can you smile, or have I Botoxed you into one expression for life?"
He reached over the eye where he'd been hit. Those kinds of wounds were small potatoes but bled like motherfuckers. "I'll live."
"That's good news. For a second there I wasn't sure. You seemed extremely disoriented. Granted, I've never treated a man with a gun injury. Or any other injury, for that matter."
"I was drugged." Had he been poisoned, he would be dead already. Nico had been alone in his favorite restaurant, after a business meeting, when he'd begun to feel dizzy and extremely sleepy. Something was very wrong. As he'd staggered toward the exit, he'd felt the hard jab of the gun's muzzle. Nico had fought his way out, barely escaping with his life and a hole in his side. Better than the hole in the head that had been in store for him.
Damn, he'd gotten complacent. Or maybe he hadn't been tough enough. If he was going to keep the cartel under control, he was going to have to up his game. A ruthless boss was a live one.
She looked at him with questioning eyes but remained silent. Good. He should never have mentioned being drugged. The less the chick knew, the better for her.
He inspected his surroundings. He was on a sofa, stripped down to his boxers, the space around him an improvised operating room in what looked like a small house. "Where exactly are we?"