Broken Songbird (Vicious Games #2)

2. Chapter 2

I ncessant vibrating on my bedside table pulls me out of my dream. I throw out an arm, answering it without looking at the screen.

“This better be fucking important.”

“Scar,” Del croaks into my ear.

I shoot up in bed. “What’s wrong?”

“M…” She sobs. “Teo.”

“Del.”

“He’s not breathing.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s not breathing, Scar,” she repeats, another sob cracking her words.

White noise fills my head.

“What do you mean ?” I repeat.

I barely hear the rustling on the other end of the phone. “He’s in an ambulance. We’ll meet you at the hospital,” Enzo says in a low, clipped tone.

This can’t be happening.

“What happened?”

“Gun shot. I’ll text you the hospital details.” Enzo hangs up the phone and I stumble out of bed, pull on the first pieces of clothing I touch, and haul ass out of my house with nothing but my phone in hand.

I get to the bottom of the stairs when the realisation hits me—I’m home alone, and I don’t have my driver’s license.

I find the keys to one of the cars and run out of the house. I get behind the wheel of the sleek sedan and push aside the panic, pull at the limited driving knowledge in the recesses of my mind and race down the driveway.

My heart pounds as I run through the emergency doors and up to the triage nurse station.

“Herrington,” I rasp.

The nurse narrows her eyes. “I’m sorry, there’s no one—”

“I’m his girlfriend.” I read the message Enzo had texted me during my drive just before I came into the building, telling me to say I was family or a girlfriend because the Herringtons are high profile so the hospital would deny they were even here.

Her eyes immediately soften as she holds out a visitor sticker and instructs me to wait for a doctor to take me through. A young doctor in scrubs waves me past the doors into the emergency department, leading me through the halls and into an elevator.

“How is he?” I ask as he hits the button for the intensive care unit.

“Your boyfriend is being taken care of.”

“But how is he?”

He looks at me with a practised blank stare, but I can see the pinching at the corner of his eyes. “It’s touch and go.”

The elevator doors slide open, and the doctor ushers me out into a quiet white hall. A nurse in a glass office buzzes us through a door into an antechamber and slips me an ICU visitor badge through a small gap under another window. Once I’ve pinned it to Del’s crewneck that I’m wearing and peel off the emergency visitor sticker, he opens the door at the other end.

It’s eerily quiet as I approach a spacious waiting room. The room is pretty full, but I see Enzo first. His tall, wide frame commands the room even as he paces a short circuit in the back in front of a stoic Lucas, as they have a tense conversation I can’t hear.

There are quite a few people in here—suited henchman and road-worn bikers taking up a lot of the seats or standing up against the walls.

I spot a familiar tattooed biker sitting in a far corner, staring at the floor, holding blood-stained gauze to his bicep. I rush toward him as he looks up, those honey-brown eyes consuming me.

“Were you shot?” I whisper, reaching toward the gauze.

Creed pulls away before I touch him. “I’m fine.”

“What if there’s a bullet still—”

“It just nicked me; it didn’t go through.”

“You probably need stitches.”

“I’ve been trying to tell him that since we got here,” a deep, unfamiliar voice says next to me. I twist and look up at another biker. He’s devastatingly beautiful, with steel-grey eyes that see everything, sharp features, short black hair, and like Creed, he’s tattooed from jaw to fingertips. The patch on his leather cut says ‘Vice President’.

“I said I’m fine, Ink,” Creed grits out, drawing my attention. “I can get patched up later.”

If the bullet nicked an artery, he’d be dead or passed out from blood loss already, but the laceration is probably deep enough to need stitches. He doesn’t look pale at the moment, so for now, I let it go. “Where’s Del?”

“Green and black hair?” Ink asks and I nod. “In the bathroom.”

I frown. “For how long?”

Ink looks at Creed, but he just shrugs, then winces at the movement.

“Shit,” I whisper, launching towards the short hallway where there’s a sign for the bathrooms. I slam into the female bathroom and find my best friend. Standing only in a bra, she’s sobbing as she frantically scrubs at her hands and arms with her wet wadded-up T-shirt.

“Del,” I say softly, approaching her slowly.

“I can’t…get it… off ,” she chokes between sobs, scrubbing at her red-raw forearms.

I step up to her side, making sure she can see me. “Delphine, look at me.”

“No!” she shouts. “I need to get it off.”

“What is it?”

“Blood.” She cries harder, still scrubbing.

I take a grounding breath and hold out my hand in her view. “Let me help you.”

Del’s movements finally slow, her cries turning into hiccups as she drops the wet fabric in my hand. I wring out the shirt, the water clear, but go through the motions of soaking it in fresh water, wringing it out again, and then turning to Del.

She’s staring at her red forearms, her green eyes bloodshot, the slight remnants of her mascara flaked down her cheeks.

I start there, cleaning up her face gently, then her sweaty chest, and then down her arms. As I get to her hands, I slide off her engagement ring and pocket it in my sweatpants, then make sure to wipe every finger.

I pull some paper towel from the holder on the wall, and pat Del dry, then fold up the wet shirt and place it on the side of the sink. I pull off the crewneck, leaving me in just a camisole, and dress Del, pulling the badge off, then turn her gently so I can tie her hair into a ponytail.

Heavy footsteps in the hall outside sound a second before the bathroom door opens and Enzo steps in. His striking blue eyes find Del immediately, and he rushes over, folding her into his arms.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Enzo says softly as Del buries her face in his chest.

I pull Del’s ring out and slip it into Enzo’s suit jacket pocket, before stepping out of the bathroom and giving them a moment alone.

Goosebumps break out over my whole body as the air conditioning of the hall makes me shiver. I just remember I’m not wearing a bra, so I cross my arms over my chest as I re-enter the waiting room. Creed’s still sitting in the same spot, staring at the ground, hand pressed against his wound.

I veer back to the nurse’s station and ask him for supplies, then return to Creed. Ink sees the stuff in my hands and vacates the seat on Creed’s injured side immediately.

“Let me look at it,” I murmur as I sit down and pull on the gloves.

Creed blinks a couple of times and turns to me, confused. “What?”

“Your injury. Let me see it.”

“I’m—”

“Do not say you’re fine, Creed,” I warn, breaking open the sterile water and pouring it into the pail, then unwrapping the sterilised tweezers and fresh gauze.

He sighs and shifts back in his seat, resting his head on the wall. He moves his hand when I reach for the bloody gauze and barely winces when I peel it away slowly.

“At least it’s not bleeding anymore,” I say, more to myself than him, as I clean the blood from his skin around the laceration. “It’s deep enough for stitches, though.”

“How do you know about this stuff?” another male voice I don’t recognise asks next to me.

“My dad’s a doctor,” I say, cracking another distilled water pack and pouring it directly into the wound, catching it with fresh gauze. I spent about a year in hospital when the Sakuras first found me, and my fixation on medicine began there. I was fascinated that there was a way to heal hurts and even ‘fix’ people to an extent, and it’s the only thing I’ve wanted to do since.

I check over the wound again; it’s as clean as I can get it, so I cover it loosely with gauze and tape it down.

I collect all the soiled gauze in the pail and pull off the gloves before looking up at a mammoth biker. He’s all bulging muscles—surprisingly free of tattoos—with a menacing stance and dark clothing, the patch on his leather cut saying ‘Enforcer’, but he has soft brown eyes and an easy smile.

He reaches out and takes the pail from my lap. “I’m Hawk.”

“Scarlett.”

“Thanks for patching up the Pres.”

“He needs stitches,” I say again.

Hawk nods, a knowing look on his face as he walks off toward the nurse’s station. I look around at the other men in the room. No one else looks injured, and Del and Enzo are still in the bathroom. Everyone’s taken care of.

Having nothing left to do, the worry for Teo comes crawling back. Surely, he’s hanging in there if they’re still working on him. They wouldn’t bother with someone that’s beyond saving.

A warm hand clamps on my thigh, and I realise I was bouncing it. I look at the ringed, tattooed hand gripping me and follow the arm to Creed’s honey-brown gaze.

“He’s still got a chance,” Creed says softly.

I must have said all of that out loud. I clamp my jaw shut and nod at Creed.

His hand retracts from my thigh slowly, the slide of his fingers making me shiver for a completely different reason than the air conditioning.

Of all times, my dream, the memory, of those callused fingers on my skin, around my neck, flash through my mind. I cross my arms over my chest again, covering my traitorous, hard nipples.

I see movement in my periphery, which grabs my attention, ignoring the fact I was staring at Creed this whole time. Lucas steps up to me and holds out his suit jacket.

“Thanks, Lucas,” I say, accepting the jacket and wrapping myself in its warmth.

He nods once and steps back, but I jerk forward, grabbing his wrist. “The car. I think it’s in an ambulance bay.”

He nods, turning his palm up. “I’ll have someone sort it out.”

I pull the keys out of my sweatpants pocket and drop them in his hand as ‘Herrington’ is called by a female doctor near the entrance of the waiting area.

I bound up and cross over. “How is he?”

Enzo and Del appear at my side a second later.

“Is he alive?” Del asks the doctor, her voice hoarse.

The doctor’s amber eyes regard me with an open expression. “We’ve managed to stabilise him enough to get him into a CT scan as we can’t find an exit wound. We’re concerned the bullet has fragmented and lodged in multiple places, or it’s in or near his spine, which could mean paralysis.” The doctor turns to look at Enzo. “He’s still in a critical condition, and I can’t guarantee you anything.”

“Can we see him?” I ask.

The doctor shakes her head and then turns her attention back to Enzo. “After the scan, we’ll make a plan, and then go into surgery. We will keep you updated as much as we can.” Her eyes scan behind us. “It’ll be a long night. I would recommend going home and getting some sleep, but we understand if you want to stay.”

“Thank you, doctor,” Enzo says as she nods and leaves. He turns to Del and before he can say anything, she shakes her head. He sighs and then turns to me.

“I’m staying,” I say immediately.

“I thought you might,” Enzo mutters and then steers both of us to the rest of the group. He tells everyone to clear out, and all his men, except Lucas, leave on their boss’ order. The bikers look to Creed—he nods, and they all leave except for Ink, Hawk and a guy sitting in the back of the room by the window reading a book. I didn’t notice him before with so many people, which is surprising since he’d be someone you’d never forget.

He’s lithe, nowhere near as bulked up as his biker brothers, and I can tell he’s tall, even though he’s sitting down, from the length of his outstretched legs.

His sandy blonde hair falls in thick wild curls over his forehead, brushing the gold wire frame of his glasses, shielding his eyes. But there’s nothing that would hide the scar cutting across his cheek, diagonally over his lips and down his chin.

If he wasn’t sporting a leather cut, and sitting too still for anyone not trained to cause lethal harm, I wouldn’t pick him as a guy who would be part of a dangerous biker gang.

“That’s Phantom,” Hawk’s low voice says close to me, making me jump.

I was caught staring. Great.

“Why’s he named that?” I ask, turning to Hawk.

Hawk shrugs. “Our old Pres gave him the name because of...” he gestures at his own face.

I nod in understanding. “The president before Creed?”

“Nah, me, Ink, and Phantom moved here from Brisbane about five months ago.”

“Oh,” I say, not wanting to pry on the life of a biker I met ten minutes ago.

“Ink, Hawk,” Creed says from behind us, and we all turn. “They need help with clean-up at the warehouse.”

Ink nods and they both leave. Phantom doesn’t even look up from his book.

Creed returns to staring at the floor.

I take the seat next to him, bring my knees up to my chest, wrapping Lucas’ jacket around me tighter.

It’s going to be a long night.