Savage Mafia Prince: a Dangerous Royals romance Read online

  And Donny sees it. Shit.

  He grins and flicks 34’s cheekbone this time—hard—leaving a mark above the line of his beard.

  I shove Donny away from the bedside. “You’re going to stop that.”

  “Or what, Nurse Ann? Will you arrest me?” He goes to do it again, and I grab his arm. He breaks my hold like it’s child’s play and grabs my wrists, yanking me away from my cart…where my panic alarm is.

  Out of camera range, too.

  The smile widens. It’s here I comprehend the implications of the closed door. The door isn’t supposed to be closed except when complete soundproofing is required. Some of the patients are screamers, and it upsets the other patients.

  Door closed. Complete soundproofing. Fear shoots down to my belly. I was worried about 34. Stupid. I should’ve been worried about myself.

  “Fuck off!” I twist. Totally futile. Donny’s a fucking linebacker, twice my size. His grip is so tight, I think he might crack my bones, and he’s backing me into the bathroom, which will really hide us. From the cameras, from the window.

  “Please,” I say.

  My ass hits the sink. My blood runs cold as he squishes me in with his tree-trunk legs.

  I bring a knee into his groin, but he’s ready for that.

  He gets both my wrists in one hand. His breath is hot and slightly antiseptic, like minty, mediciney mouthwash, and that adds to my panic. He’s going to rape me, and I’ll have to smell that smell the whole time.

  “Don’t,” I say.

  “Don’t what?” He stares at me with those predator eyes.

  An unholy growl sounds from somewhere behind him. There’s a pop.

  Donny twists around just as 34 bounds in through the doorway, huge and brutal and furious, gaze afire. He pulls Donny off me and drives him face first into the wall with wild force. Donny crumples.

  And then 34 comes to me.

  I shrink back as he touches my cheek, gaze afire.

  Donny was dangerous, but 34 seems…wild. Something deep and instinctive inside me prompts me to slide away into the corner of the bathroom. He’s so much bigger now that he’s standing. And free. How did he get free?

  “Are you okay?” he rasps.

  “Yeah.”

  He cups my cheek, then he runs his thumb over my lips. So strangely gentle and sensual after such violence.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  His hard face softens.

  Movement from the corner of my eye. Donny’s coming for him with a Taser.

  Patient 34 seems to sense this. He grabs Donny’s arm and twists. There’s a sickening crack as the Taser clatters to the floor. Patient 34 pulls him right out of the bathroom and smashes him into another wall.

  And then his fist goes, pounding Donny’s face over and over. He’s a blur, destroying Donny’s face. Donny fights back, gets in a few hits, but 34 is fighting with a vicious abandon I’ve never before seen.

  The door bangs open. Did Donny get to his panic alarm?

  A trio of orderlies bursts in. Patient 34 takes them down like three rag dolls, carefully and expertly avoiding the Tasers. I crouch against the wall. More arrive, coming at 34. I crouch in the corner.

  Another orderly comes and shoves me aside so hard I smash my head on a shelf. I cry out.

  That’s when 34 stops fighting. His gaze is fixed on me. The world seems to stop, and for a moment, it’s like we’re the only two people who ever existed. Alone together. Doomed.

  I shake my head. Ignore me, I want to say. Keep fighting. Save yourself.

  Too late. The orderlies are on him—giant guys shooting 34 with enough electricity to light a city. His big body jerks. He collapses. They keep shooting current into him.

  “Fuck!” I go right into the thick of it. I pull one off. I hit another on the back. “Hey!” I kick. “That’s enough! You’re gonna kill him!” I finally get them all off and kneel beside 34. He’s out cold.

  I press my trembling fingers to his throat. His pulse is thready. Weak.

  Donny comes up on the other side of him, lip bleeding down his neck and onto his shirt front. He kicks 34 viciously in the ribs.

  “Enough!” I stand and shove him away. “This patient is out cold. You do not attack an unconscious patient, or I will report that shit to the board. Any of you, I don’t care who it is.” I spin around, address the group of them. “If any of you do anything more to this patient, it’s actionable in a court of law.”

  Donny wipes the blood from the side of his fish lips, hard gaze fixed on me.

  Nurse Zara arrives, demanding to know what happened.

  Donny jerks a thumb at me and tells her that I was stupid enough to go in there without the trio of orderlies standing by. He says it seems to have excited Patient 34, and he went in there just in time to save me from Patient 34.

  “Are you fucking kidding me? You attacked me—you! Patient 34 was protecting me.”

  Nurse Zara purses her lips and gives me a stern, scolding glare. My mouth literally hangs open when I realize she believes Donny. Or worse, maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she just wants me gone that bad.

  My heart pounds. I kneel down next to 34. He’s really out. I check his pupils. I don’t care that much about what happens to me—I’ll be fine. But Patient 34 is screwed. It wouldn’t matter if he was fighting for world peace. He got out of his restraints—that’s the bottom line.

  If he was dosed up enough to put out an elephant before, he’s going to get dosed up enough to put out two elephants. I try to keep my touch clinical.

  One of the orderlies finds a pair of clippers on the floor. “He had this hidden.”

  My head spins. Patient 34 had an escape plan, and he blew it for me.

  To protect me.

  “Heads are going to roll.” Donny turns to Nurse Zara. “And the meds—I don’t care about the guidelines—the guidelines don’t apply to this one. He’s got some kind of hellbeast metabolism. His meds need to be severely adjusted.” He straightens his shirt. “Severely. It’s high gravity pudding time for this guy.”

  I kneel back down at 34’s side, feeling sick. High gravity pudding is what you feed to stroke victims whose muscles are too slack to swallow. One step away from a catheter and a feeding tube. Dosage at that level starts affecting the brain. Like a chemical lobotomy.

  I shouldn’t have gone in there without a trio out there.

  And right then, I wonder whether it was a trap. Like maybe Donny planned it.

  He clearly didn’t count on 34 getting free.

  He’s half on his side, one muscled arm out straight, one arm flung over his chest, legs akimbo, eyes shut. Downy curls dark and a bit too long.

  I’m not here.

  For once I know it’s true.

  Nurse Zara is full of angry questions. I give my defense—I was just following state regs.

  They put Patient 34 back onto his bed, back into restraints. Ignoring protocols about the possibility of spinal injury. Maybe it’s something they’re hoping for.

  “I’m going to have to write this up,” Nurse Zara says. “This is number two.”

  “Number two?” I protest. “What was my first?”

  “Inability to get a correct BP.”

  She wrote me up for that? One more write-up and I’m out. And then what happens to 34?

  Chapter Eleven

  Kiro

  I’m floating for what seems like days. Maybe it is. Then her scent comes to me, like the sun through clouds.

  I open my eyes. Her ponytail flops over her shoulder as she peers down. Eyes the color of grass. Pink lips in a frown.

  “Fuck,” she whispers. “Tell me you’re not as out as all that, dammit.”

  She’s silent after that. It’s a minute, or maybe an hour, before she speaks again.

  “Can you hear me?”

  I say nothing. You never give them anything, or they hurt you. Even her. She hurt me worst of all, but my heart still sings when she lays a hand on my cheek.

  “Fuck.
”

  I fight to open my eyes, or maybe they are open.

  “Fuck, 34.” She strokes my beard. It feels like heaven. “34, 34, 34.” She pats my cheek.

  My heart pounds.

  “Thank you for what you did. I know what you did. I know what you gave up. I’m going to take a look at you now.” She’s unsnapping my shirt. “If he fucking broke anything…” She’s talking, but I’m not hearing words. Only the tone of her voice. I soak in her tone the way the wolves would soak in mine. The way I would soak in theirs.

  I dream of home. The pack. My head on Red’s warm, furry belly rising up and down. The one place I wasn’t a savage beast.

  Something settles onto my chest where the pain is sharpest. Gentle. It’s a cloud. It’s a whisper. No—it’s her hand. She’s whispering fast words. Ann’s upset—it’s in her tone. In the distance, I hear the birds. That’s what she took from me. Any chance at freedom.

  Her hand is gone. She swears again—Fuck it!

  A softness settles back onto my chest. Different from the glove. Warm. Alive. Nourishing, somehow. Her skin on my skin. She’s touching me without her glove!

  Am I dreaming?

  She’s touching me with her bare hand. She’s my enemy, my beautiful enemy, and I drink up her touch. I drink it like sunshine.

  Fuck, 34, fuck. Fuck! And then other things. X-ray. Where’s the doctor. Did he even fucking see you yet?

  More words. Her skin on my skin. My breath shakes with the power of her touch.

  Shhh. Here we go. Suddenly her hand is gone. She’s snapping my shirt back up, quick, furtive movements.

  She takes my hand and holds it open, palm up. She’s crouching over me, as if to hide me. She’s brushing something wet onto my fingers, touching my fingers. She presses my thumb onto something dry. Then she presses my finger onto something, rolling it. She keeps doing it, one after another, a strange caress on each of my fingers.

  “We need this, 34,” she says. “I’m going to help you…get us the truth.”

  Alarm bells go off in my head. We. Us. Help you. That’s the way the professor talked when he pretended to be my friend. The way the medics spoke when they pulled me out of the forest, when I was too weak to run. It’s how my adoptive father would talk when he was trying to trick me.

  I always fell for it. I always wanted to think things would be different. Especially with my father. But as soon as I appeared, he’d grab me and make me sorry out in the woods or in the root cellar, trying to beat the savage out of me.

  I was savage and feral from the first moment I can remember, a creature of blood and violence and hell with a fever inside me. My father told me so.

  He tried very hard to beat the savage out of me, but he never could.

  It was the cries of my adoptive sister Glenda that brought the savage out of me most. Kids down the road would tease her and make her cry because of her deformed lip. Sometimes they’d hurt her. The sound of her crying would take over my mind and turn me wild with rage. I would hurt a lot of kids trying to protect Glenda.

  Things would be calm for a while, but then the boys would gather an even larger group, sometimes even a few older boys, and they’d make Glenda cry again, and I would get angry again and want to hurt them.

  They always thought a bigger group or larger boys would help, but it never did. I’d hurt them all. Then the beatings. The root cellar.

  The very last time I fought the neighborhood boys, the police came. Afterwards I got tied to a tree and beaten with a piano wire.

  My family got the money to fix Glenda’s lip that winter. She was pretty after the operation, and she didn’t want me around anymore. My family adopted kids who had things wrong with them and tried to fix them up, but there’s no operation to fix you when you’re savage inside.

  That spring, my father took me and the other kids camping far, far up north. It was just after my eighth birthday. He took me aside and told me the police were going to lock me up forever when we got back. I hadn’t hurt anybody for weeks, but I knew it was true. People always said I’d be locked up in the end. He said they were afraid I’d get away, deep into the wilderness where they’d never find me.

  My adoptive father never did anything nice for me, so it meant a lot that he told me this secret. I took the canoe when he and Glenda and the other kids went on a hike. I took it deep, deep, deep into the wilderness where they’d never find me.

  The police sent helicopters and crews to look for me, but my father had given me a long head start.

  It was the nicest thing anybody ever did for me.

  The wilderness was good at first. I felt lonely, but I was free, and there were no rules to break, nobody to beat you or confine you. Campers trekked through sometimes, but they rarely saw me. I would steal food from them before I figured out how to get it for myself.

  Years later there were the campers who wanted to party and fuck. They, too, saw me as a savage. They wanted to fuck the savage. Or rather, for the savage to fuck them. That’s how they would say it.

  My fingertips feel funny. I remember I’m in the hospital. Tied to my bed. She’s here. She’s scrubbing my fingertips. Are my fingertips dirty?

  She tucks something cool around my fist. Other voices. Shit. Shit shit shit. A chemical sweet flower smell. Nurse Zara.

  Nurse Zara’s tone is angry. Not your patient anymore…not supposed to be on this wing. Nurse Ann stands—I can tell by the location of her voice. Unconscious…state protocols…needed to see…Hippocratic oath…

  Nurse Ann leaves with Nurse Zara, leaves my fingers wet, my hands covered with something. And this feeling of bliss where she touched me.

  I don’t strain to hear the bird songs now, trying to let them take me back. Instead, I go back to the moment of her touch, skin on skin. I’m drifting, lost.

  Nurse Ann took her glove off and touched me. She wanted her skin to touch mine.

  Everybody who has ever been nice to me has actually wanted to hurt me, and she’s part of this place. I shouldn’t trust her.

  Still, her touch felt like heaven.

  When Donny went after her, I had to stop him. I couldn’t let him hurt her.

  I replay her visit in my mind—the sound of her pulling off the glove. Her hand on my chest. On my heart, rising and falling with my breath. Distant doors. Bells. Buzzers. Fuck fuck fuck, 34, she said.

  Sparkling green eyes. Fingertips the weight of a cloud. Curly hair the color of peanuts. Eyelashes to match.

  Something wet on my fingertips. I wake with a jerk. It’s Nurse Ann. She has my hand. She scrubbing my fingers again …have to get this off…sorry…not supposed to be here…fuck fuck fuck…

  When she’s done with my fingers, she scrubs the sheet around my hand.

  “I’m going to get this story if it’s the last thing I do. You watch, 34. I am going to investigate the shit out of this. I’m going to get answers for you even if I have to rip them right out of somebody.” She scrubs some more, and then she’s gone.

  There’s just the endless ticking of the clock.

  Her touch is what I think about when Donny comes back. He stands where Nurse Ann did, to block the camera, but instead of scrubbing my fingertips he hits me in the ribs. The pain spikes through me, but it’s not enough to erase her touch. Feel good? You like this, motherfucker? He fits his hands around my throat. I can’t move my arms. I gasp for air. You like this? Who’s the big man now?

  I’m spinning. Darkness creeps into my vision, my brain. …need…air.

  You wanna see what I do to her next? You wanna know what I’m gonna give her?

  I jerk at my bonds just as the darkness starts to consume me.

  I wake up gasping and coughing, alone again with the ticking clock.

  Chapter Twelve

  Ann

  I’m careful now. I stop off at a gas station near the institute every day on my way to work and wait for somebody who doesn’t hate me too much to drive by, so that I can pull out and follow them into the parking lo
ts so that I’m always walking in with somebody. Like a buddy system I force on them.

  They’ve got me on the ass-crack-of-dawn shift, but I don’t trust that Donny won’t make a special trip to intercept me.

  The only problem is the supply room. I make sure to head in when Donny’s good and busy.

  They won’t let me in to see 34 anymore. I’m assigned to a different wing. I think about sneaking over, but with that third write-up hanging over my head, I can’t risk it. I ask the doc about 34’s condition when I see him in the hall, and all he says is “rough.”

  My mouth goes dry. “What do you mean, rough? Did you X-ray him? Is it his ribs? His breathing seemed okay when I checked…”

  Suddenly Nurse Zara is there. “Patient 34 isn’t your business anymore,” she says it like I’m way out of bounds for even asking. “Is he?”

  I want to say something smart, but I know where that’ll get me. So I put my head down. I work. I take my meth supplies inventory. With luck, there’ll be some major shake-up here, and everybody will go down.

  Meanwhile, I wait for 34’s fingerprint results. It took every cent I had, an advance on my paycheck, plus borrowing a lot of money from a truly scary guy in Duluth, who I found through one of my reporter colleagues. I don’t know how I’ll pay this guy back. It’s a textbook example of exactly what you should never do.

  The actual process of running the fingerprints will take my FBI contact, Agent Hancock, a half hour, but in addition to taking every cent I have, she’s taking her own sweet time. I steal an uneaten dinner roll off a tray here and there. Swipe yogurts. Stocking up. It’s not pretty. It’ll be worse when rent comes due.

  I could get 34’s fingerprints run more cheaply by a cop, but if there’s a coverup, this woman can actually dig. She can jump into other databases—restricted ones—if she has to. In reporting, you learn to go with the Cadillac when it comes to facts. Shitty facts ruin everything.

  In addition to being utterly expensive, the fingerprints are a gamble. I could’ve done the other option and paid my guy’s guy to chase the paper deeper into the system, but the fingerprints are my best bet for a name. Why conceal his identity? The name is the key.