Feathers and Thorne Series Books 1 - 3: The Complete Collection

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Carter

I manage to track down my little dove, seeing her name on a roster in the emergency room. At least she took my advice to get her hand looked at. I know I’ve been on edge since we had sex, and it didn’t help to earn her trust any, but I think she’s finally starting to come around to my demands.

Pushing the door open, I spy a tall, familiar man leaning back in the recliner near Isabella, who seems to be passed out in bed. Donovan Phillips is the son of a boss in Jersey, and we used to do business with them for my gun racket, but I found cheaper sources to help me.

That doesn’t explain why he’s here with Isabella, though, or why he casually flashes his pistol for me to spot.

“Donovan,” I breathe, exasperated already from identifying my uncle’s body, and now I have this to deal with. “It’s been a long time since we’ve crossed paths.”

He nods, and to my surprise, he tucks his pistol between the armrest of the recliner and the cushioned seat. The gun on my back weighs heavily, but shooting a man in a hospital seems a little more difficult to cover up than if I were to do it outside on the sidewalk with a quick getaway.

I’ve put my little dove through enough tonight.

I’ll be docile.

I stalk over to Isabella, her eyes rung with purple streaks and her hand so tightly wound in a professional bandage that her fingertips are swollen and red. I sit beside her, brushing her hair back just so I can lightly plant a kiss on her cheek.

“She’s not really your type, Carter,” Donovan mumbles, stretching out in his seat.

“What do you mean?”

“She’s got a brain,” he prods. “And she might just have saved you from being outright killed today.”

I chuckle lightly. “I know you, Donovan Phillips, well enough to know you are a shit-shot and worthless in a gunfight. You’re good at sourcing the parts for them but not so much at using them effectively.”

He bites back an insulted look. “Yeah, well, you might be right about that. But let’s get to business, man. Your girlfriend here told me you have a deal to work with Jacob Lacey. I’m confused because he never mentioned it to me when he asked me to do him a favor and strike down the Blackthorne boss.”

I roll my eyes, holding Isabella’s wounded hand in my lap. “I should have never made that deal with Lacey in the beginning. I needed a solid company to funnel money to sponsor Frances Johnson in his reelection bid, but Jacob has been nothing but trouble.”

Donovan leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Does it matter what business?”

“Not particularly.”

“What if you considered my family?” he hums. “We will take under whatever Jacob Lacey is getting in the cut of laundering. We have a good business front just outside Manhattan.”

“I can’t have a Jersey business giving money to a Manhattan mayoral candidate,” I groan. “It would look bad.”

“Don’t worry, it is in Manhattan—a new project of ours.”

I try to maintain my composure of interest in this deal. It would help solve the Jacob Lacey problem and get him out of the way so I can thoroughly send my money to the mayoral campaign. With Jacob out of the deal, I’d really have nothing keeping me from killing him.

“I like this deal,” I admit. Isabella whimpers in her heavily medicated sleep, and I hold her hand tighter. “Let’s do dinner tonight, Donovan. Talk over the fun details.”

He agrees and tucks the pistol back into his waistband.

“Good plan. I’ll call you later for the time and place.” His eyes shift sideways to my dove, her uncomfortable dreams and wounded hand making her a little restless. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in the daylight with a woman, Carter. It’s interesting.”

My brows knit, but I bite my tongue. “I have a very particular taste.”

“You also have a target on your back with the Lacey family,” Donovan groans. “You know that means they’ll do anything to come after you, even if that means going through her.”

“He’s already tried and failed,” I say sternly. “I’m not worried about protecting her. I’ve done well at it so far.”

“Her palm says otherwise.”

He ducks out of the hospital room before I can growl a noise at him to signal he’s treading on thin ice. At least he wised up before I could correct him. Her hand wasn’t my fault, but the pushy roughness afterward was.

I regret the way I threw her out of my room like a prostitute. She didn’t deserve my cold shoulder, but I couldn’t risk her asking about the photo of Brooke by my bedside.

She turns over in her sleep, blinking slowly to see me on the edge of her hospital bed. She is medicated for sure, her eyes bloodshot and wearily closing and opening again.

“Hey, little dove. Looks like you got stitches,” I mutter through a false grin. “How are you feeling?”

“Hungry,” she pants, her gaze drifting to the empty recliner nearby. She flinches, almost by accident, but I notice it all the same. “He was… he had a gun, and… he was going—”

“He’s harmless, Bella,” I purred, lifting her to sit up so I could snake my arms under her back.

She falls so effortlessly into my arms and against my chest. Then, tucking her head into the juncture of my neck and shoulder, she softly exhales warm and short sighs into my skin that set ablaze the chills on my spine.

I will need to have her again soon, like a drug I can’t stop dipping into, feeling uneasy when I don’t have enough of it right when I need it.

“Sir,” a petite nurse calls, watching me carry their new, drowsy patient out of the medical room. When I turn to face her, I can already tell she is going to ask questions and make this difficult.

The doctor nearby cuts in before I have to, resting his hand on her shoulder and pleading for her to move on, and reluctantly, she does. The doctor tips his head in respect, looking over the beautiful, sleepy woman in my arms.

“Mr. Blackthorne,” the doctor breathes. “She has prescriptions that need to be—”

“Call it into my office,” I hum. “And you should have my information on file already to pay for her care.”

He gives a sure nod and moves on, the security guard even opening the door for me as I carry Isabella toward the car. The sun is starting to come down ever so slowly, and the meeting with Donovan tonight won’t be too far away now.

I need her to wake up soon, so she can attend this meeting with me.

She is my personal assistant, after all.

Ernesto drives up to the valet porch, helping me climb into the backseat while holding Isabella in my arms. She hisses, holding her wounded hand to her chest while Ernesto, my most trusted driver, heads for the penthouse.

I brush her light curls back, pushing them off her pretty, exhausted face. She has an innocent charm that is untouched by stress, or at least it is for now. A little while longer with me, and she very well could start to show signs of tiring and mental strain.

I’ll protect her from that as well. She’s lucky I’m a lenient boss, even though after our shower together, she probably thinks I hate her.

That couldn’t be further from the truth.

“How is she, sir?” Ernesto asks, his voice soft in volume so as to not startle her awake. “I had her car moved back to her apartment, so she can use it for work tomorrow.”

“Thank you for that,” I groan, wondering how the hell I’m going to put her to work tomorrow after being strung with so much pain medication in the hospital. But she does have to work for me eventually, no matter my partial empathy for her. “She will be okay. Tomorrow, while she’s on errands, I’m going to need you to keep an eye on her for me.”

“Yes, sir. Are you expecting trouble?”

I consider that question carefully. She managed to talk Donovan out of something stupid tonight, so she can hold her own there, but when it comes to Jacob Lacey, she falls so easily at his will.

She’s intimidated, and that’s understandable.

“I’m not expecting it after tonight when I seal this deal with the Phillips family. Hopefully, the root of our problem will end sooner too. Jacob Lacey and his stingy father will take the brunt of my anger when this election is over.”

“Oh, about that,” he breathes, pulling us down the main road of the boulevard downtown. “The poll numbers came out after the incident at the mayor’s office.”

“And?”

“Frances Johnson is in the lead after the event,” he adds with a pesky snicker. “Apparently, Manhattan loves a survivor. He had his press team send out that he’s donating money to the funerals of the people who died at the event.”

“It was Luis,” I groan, unsure if my driver and cousin’s brother-in-law is aware of that fact. “He was one of the ones killed out there today.”

Ernesto’s face falls with the news. “Damn. That’s just terrible. Do you know who made the attack?”

I look over the warm, blushing cheeks of the woman in my arms, picturing her in the shower with me again, riding my lap like the obedient assistant she is striving to be. The look on her face when I fill every hole in her body with my cock is so magnificent that any pang of emotion otherwise is ignored.

“I’m sure it was Lacey,” I whisper. “I’ll deal with him later.”

Ernesto raises his brow in the rearview mirror. “Never knew you to not dole out punishment right away, Carter. Is everything alright?”

I pull Isabella closer to my chest and simply shrug off half of that question. “I’m great. Never better, in fact.”

He nods, unconvinced, but I don’t care. I hold her tighter and kiss her temple, waiting for the car to pull up the curb, so I can take her upstairs and wake her up in the best of ways.

We have business to do tonight anyway, so I’m going to need her alert and attentive and most definitely on her best behavior. I think I can wield my belt tonight in a warning, and she will fall in line as usual.

She’s so easy to read.

She’s even easier to pleasure.

We make it upstairs, opening up to the penthouse, and I immediately spy the trail of blood that trickles over my floor, headed straight for my bedroom. I lay Isabella down carefully on the couch, covering her up with a blanket as she purrs in her sleep.

To be cautious, I take my pistol, walking slowly toward my room, where I kick the door open. Tristan is laid out on the bathroom floor with blood soaking his back and his shoulders.

“Dammit!”