With great reluctance, he looked over at Blake and me and sighed. “Let’s get over to Mayhem, bro,” he instructed, hands reaching for his elbow to help him to his feet. I got up and tried my best to help Blake too, my eyes darting over to Slim.
“Are you calling the cops?”
Slim’s eyes went wide as he pressed a wad of napkins he kept at his station to Blake’s head. “No.”
“You want me to call?” I asked him as we cautiously made our way across the street with Blake between us.
He shook his head. “We don’t need the cops, Iris.”
Blake didn’t look over at either one of us during this time, focusing solely on holding the napkins to the cut right above his eyebrow.
“We don’t need the cops?” Jesus. This was mafia stuff. Stuff that happened on television, not in my friggin’ life.
“You really want to call the cops when there's a Croatian gang threatening to kill you?” he asked in a matter-of-fact voice.
I looked over at Blake who was still completely tuned out of the conversation, and I swallowed. If they had the balls to come into the shop with guns... I didn't want to know what else they were capable of.
“All right.” It wasn’t all right though. My face hurt a whole friggin' lot and my heart was going to burst out of my chest from how scared I still was. But Slim's observation got to me. "They were Croatian?"
He nodded wearily. "I recognized the tattoo on their hands. I had an old customer that had me cover up that gang symbol a while back."
Jesus. This was a friggin' nightmare.
And this was exactly what Sonny had said he didn't want to know—who our father owed money to besides the Reapers.
The moment we crossed the second block over to get to Mayhem, three men were already waiting for us outside. One was the guy a little older than Dex that was really attractive, and the other two I’d never seen before. One of the guys went directly for Blake, only casting me a sidelong look before he pulled bloody Blake inside the building.
“Oh, fuck,” the good-looking man named Wheels muttered when he stopped right in front of me. His eyes went on a search. “They did this?”
Slim had the grace to repeat what the men had told me in a voice much more balanced than mine could have been at that moment.
Wheels groaned in response, shaking his head. “I’m so sorry, doll.”
I was too. “It’s all right. It could’ve been worse,” I tried to tell him but my voice was wobbly and unpaved. Weak, weak, weak. I was fine. Totally fine. I needed to get myself together when Blake was bleeding all over the place and I ran the risk of peeing my pants in fear. When I lowered my eyes to the ground, I caught a flat black piece of metal tucked into the waistband of Wheels's jeans.
A gun. Holy shit. He had a gun. Why was I even surprised?
“Let’s get you some ice,” he somehow managed to suggest through gritted teeth.
The three of us headed up the stairs while Blake had gone off with the other men toward the kitchen on the first floor. Wheels and Slim seemed to be having a telepathic conversation over my head. I didn’t have it in me to care enough to pay attention to what was being communicated. The throbbing of my face multiplied tenfold with any muscle twitch.
With a Ziplock bag pressed to my cheek and a bottle of water between my thighs on the couch, Wheels planted himself next to me with Slim on my other side. None of us said anything. What was there to say? Wheels didn’t ask what happened or ask if I was okay. He simply sat there breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth.
“Is Blake okay?” I finally asked after grabbing another wad of paper towels to cover the bag of ice.
“Jesse’ll be stitching him up now. He’s fine,” Wheels answered.
I sucked in a ragged breath, looking around the dimly lit room with its pool tables and bar. This mess was eating at me little by little. They didn’t want to get cops involved. My dad owed those assholes enough money that they drove all the way to Austin to make a point, and I'd gotten dragged into the middle of a mess by a man that didn't love me. And they’d just held a gun to my friggin’ face after hurting Blake. It was one thing to deal with Liam but a completely different one to get held up by gangsters.
Gangsters. Jesus. Two months ago my biggest worries had been paying my cell phone bill.
“Is this normal?” I asked the man weakly.
Wheels glanced at me out of the corner of his eyes, sighing. “It ain't totally uncommon.”
I didn’t know how I felt about his answer.