Fracture

28. Levi

CHAPTER 28

LEVI

I can’t stop pacing the hallway. Dylan is pale as he stares straight ahead, Zee clutching his hand as they sit beside him. But my restless feet won’t let me sit down.

“This is my fault,” I say, running a hand through my hair. “My fucking phone died, I forgot my goddamn charger.” I pound a fist into the wall, the shitty fucking beige walls of the hospital corridor. “I was so close, if I’d made it…”

“Levi, you couldn’t have known,” Zee says gently, gazing up at me with bloodshot eyes. They’ve been crying quietly, trying to stay strong for the two of us. “No one could have seen this coming.”

“Where were you?” I look down at Dylan, who won’t meet my gaze.

“I was… I was dealing with something. I… I should have been…”

“You told me you were at the club!” I lean over him, and his gaze flashes up to me. “You told me you were at a meeting! Where the fuck were you?”

“Levi, enough,” Zee says gently, rising to their feet. “This isn’t going to help.”

“I’m sorry.” Dylan murmurs, his head dropping to his chest. “I… She called me, and all I could do was listen…” His shoulders start to shake. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

I exhale heavily and drop to my knees, wrapping my arms around him. He slumps against me as he cries.

“I’m sorry,” I murmur, pressing a kiss to his neck as he grabs me tightly. “I’m sorry, baby. It’s not your fault.”

“I had to listen,” he murmurs, his voice strained. “I heard all of it, heard them beating her and heard her screaming, it was… I’m… I’m so sorry.”

“Hey, it’s not your fault.” I draw back and cup his face in my hands. “It’s not. You couldn’t have known this was going to happen.”

“There was so much blood,” he gasps, fingertips digging into my arms. “I was so fucking scared she was dead. They’d-”

“She’s going to be fine.” I interject, clutching him close again and meeting Zee’s alarmed eyes over his shoulder. I want to believe it. Stella has to be alright. There’s just no other option. I won’t accept anything else other than her walking right on out of this hospital with us.

But I know it was bad.

Zee’s face when they came to find me at the garage - I never want to see that look on someone’s face again. I feel sick just thinking about it. And then that horrific drive here, hearing how Dylan had found our girl on the floor of her bedroom, barely breathing and beaten to within an inch of her life…

“Mr Fenton?”

I spin to face the doctor behind me, a middle-aged man with dark hair and glasses perched on his nose.

“Yes, that’s me.”

“Hi, I’m Dr LeRoy, I’m looking after Stella right now. I understand you’re her brother?” He says, and Zee and Dylan rise to their feet.

“Is she OK?” Dylan asks.

The doctor looks back and forth between us, his brows knitting together lightly. “Are you all family?”

“We all live together,” I snap. “Please, is Stella alright?”

“She’s suffered from internal bleeding, and her spleen did rupture.”

Dylan collapses, resting his hands on his knees, shoulders heaving as Zee rubs his back, their eyes filling with tears.

“She’s going to be fine,” the doctor goes on quickly, raising his hands. “We managed to stop the bleeding, and she’s recovering now. The injuries were focused on the abdomen, so she’s got some fractured ribs, but nothing that she won’t come out of.”

I run a hand over my mouth, fury and anguish pooling in my stomach. “Oh my fucking god.”

“The police are on their way.” Dr LeRoy looks from Dylan back to me. “This is obviously a serious crime, they’re very concerned with what happened here.”

“Yeah, so are we.” Zee helps Dylan back into his chair, shaking their head and glaring at the doctor. “When can we see her?”

“She’s sleeping right now, but I’ll keep you informed.” He gives me a reassuring smile. “Your sister is going to be just fine.”

I don’t even tell him she’s not my sister, I’m too wound up in grief and anger to even reply. I simply nod and watch him retreat down the corridor back to Stella’s room.

“Something’s not right here,” I mutter, shaking my head as I look down at Dylan. “Something is very, very fucking wrong.”

“Oswald had dirt on her,” Dylan says, tipping his head back to rest against the wall behind him. He runs a hand over his tear-streaked face and sighs. “He had a video of her on his phone, he was blackmailing her, I’m sure of it.”

Zee’s eyebrows shoot up, and they look back and forth between us. “What is going on here? What the hell have you two gotten yourselves into?”

I raise my hands. “Zee, you don’t understand.”

“Damn right, I don’t.” They spring to their feet, jabbing a finger in my face. “Whatever the fuck is going on here, my best friend is lying in a hospital bed because of it right now.”

“I fucking love that woman,” I snarl in response. “I wouldn’t do anything to endanger her.”

“Then what is going on here?” They put their hands on their hips, and look back down at Dylan. “Hmm? I’m waiting.”

“We’re not going to tell you that.” Dylan’s tone is soft and measured, and he rises to his feet. He looks down at Zee with brotherly tenderness, and puts a hand on their shoulder. “We can’t involve you in this, Zee. It’s just not going to happen. I care about you too much for this to come crashing down on you, too.”

“Stella could have died .” Zee shoves a hand against Dylan’s chest. “She could be in a fucking morgue right now.”

“I won’t let that happen.” Dylan takes Zee’s hand, the one that just pushed him, and curls both of his around them. “I need you to go home and be safe. We’ll call you if we need you. But you need to leave this to us now.”

“ Dylan -”

“Zee, go home.” Dylan’s eyes are positively black as he gazes at them. “I need you to go home, and if we need you, we’ll tell you. But this is bigger than you can even guess right now, so I need you to be out of it. Please.”

Zee’s face crumples, and they wrap their arms around Dylan’s waist. “What the fuck have you done?” They murmur, dashing a hand over their eye.

“What needs to be done,” Dylan says, planting a kiss on the top of their head. “Now, go on home. I’ll call you when she wakes up.”

Dylan is the picture of calm determination, and Zee finally relents when they realize there’s no point fighting anymore. They hug us both, and hurry down the hospital corridor, arms wrapped around themselves.

“What dirt does Oswald have on Stella?” I ask quietly, and Dylan turns to fix his eyes on me.

“Not here,” he says in a low voice. “I’ll tell you later. But we need to move soon. This is only going to get worse.”

“Is that where you were?”

He nods slowly. “Partly. But I’ll tell you later.” His eyes shift over my shoulder, and his body language changes, squaring up as his jaw sets.

I glance over my shoulder to see two cops moving down the hallway, flanked by two detectives. I turn back to Dylan with a heavy sigh.

“Fucking great.”

“They’re not going to help us,” Dylan growls. “Fucking useless cops.”

“No, they won’t, but we just play along for now, OK? Fuck them. We deal with this ourselves.”

We both face the approaching cops, who eye us warily.

“Levi Fenton?” The female detective looks up at me, showing me her badge. “Detective Hawkins. We spoke to your stepsister when the threat was called into her place of work.”

I cross my arms over my chest and look her up and down. “Good for you. I see you really followed up on that.”

She raises a hand with a small sigh. “Mr Fenton, I understand that you’re upset, but-”

“Upset?” I scoff. “Upset? Upset is when someone scrapes my car and doesn’t leave a fucking note. This?” I gesture in the direction of Stella’s room. “This has me more than a little upset .”

“We understand that,” the male cop says in a patronising tone of voice that makes me want to put his head through the fucking wall. “But your sister refused police protection, otherwise we could have prevented this.”

“Oh, I know you’re not blaming her for what just happened,” Dylan says, moving around me smoothly to get in the male cop’s face.

“He never said that.” Detective Hawkins lifts a hand as though to ward Dylan off, never actually touching him. “Now, you both need to calm down. I know this is hard, and you’re worried. But getting mad at us won’t help Stella.”

Dylan adjusts his gaze to land on Detective Hawkins, rolling his shoulders as he tries to contain his rage. “Help Stella? Hmm? So, what have you done to help Stella? Found out who sent those bullets yet?”

Detective Hawkins sighs, clasping her fist in her hand. “We’re still investigating. We have some leads, but-”

“Just say you got nothing,” I interject, scoffing out a laugh as I run a hand over my mouth. “Man, you all are really great at your jobs.”

“Good enough to catch two punks and have them put in prison for murder,” the male detective counters.

“Cal, enough,” Detective Hawkins snaps, and the smug asshole rolls his shoulders, meeting my eyes with a satisfied smirk.

“Yeah, Cal, how about you shut that mouth of yours?” Dylan snarls, and I put out a hand to pull him back to me.

“Come on, he’s not worth it.” I look back at Detective Hawkins. “So, what do you want? Why are you here?”

“We wanted to take a statement from you about the phone call, what you heard, anything Stella might have told you about her attackers.”

“Two men, six feet tall, wearing masks, I guess? She couldn’t see their faces.” Dylan huffs out a breath and shakes his head. “Nothing useful.”

“The hospital said the attack was brutal, focused on her abdomen?” Detective Hawkins raises her eyebrows as she looks at Dylan. “Mr Kovac, was your girlfriend pregnant?”

My head snaps to look at Dylan, and something like realization seems to dawn over his face. His brow furrows as he stares at the floor, and I can practically hear the cogs turning in his head.

“No, I mean…” He shakes his head, still not meeting her eyes. “No, she’s not.”

My stomach drops, because something isn’t right here. But this isn’t the time or the place. Instead, I pull my cocky rich asshole mask back into place, and stare down the cops.

“Look, we’re both tired, and this has been a hard day. Dylan can come down and give you a statement tomorrow, but for now, we’d appreciate it if you left us alone.” I look from Detective Hawkins to her colleague, both of whom seem to have lost their willingness to fight rather quickly. But they know who I am, who my family is, and just how hard I can make their lives if they push me. “So, if that’s all, we’ll let you get back to work.”

Detective Hawkins plucks a card from her pocket and hands it to me. “Call me if you need to, and come down to the station tomorrow. Someone will help you.”

“Great. Thanks.”

Detective Hawkins sighs, then looks at her partner, jerking her head over her shoulder to indicate they should leave. Wordlessly, they head down the hallway and out of sight around the nurse’s desk.

“What the fuck?” I murmur to Dylan without looking at him. “Pregnant?”

“She… she had a scare,” he replies quietly. “She told me, last week. But it was just a scare.”

“But someone thought she was.” I turn and look up at him, that sick, sneaking feeling of dread washing over me. “Someone thought she was, and they wanted her to lose it.”

“Levi…” Dylan raises his hands and puts them on my shoulders. “Levi, listen to me-”

“Is this my mother?”

“I don’t know.”

“ Where were you ?” I hiss, and his eyes drop from mine. “Dylan, what do you know that you aren’t telling me?”

He puts a hand around the back of my neck, holding me firmly but tenderly. “ Guapo , listen to me. I can’t tell you here.”

“Is it my mother?” I hiss, and his eyes snap back up to meet mine. He nods slowly.

“And your grandfather.”

“Are you asleep?”

Dylan’s voice sounds in the darkness beside me, and he rolls over to move closer to me.

“No.” I haven’t been able to put my mind at rest since the doctors sent us home. I keep waiting for the phone to ring, to tell us that Stella is waking up so we can run back to the hospital and be there when those beautiful amber eyes open up.

But the phone stays quiet, and I’ve been staring at the ceiling for an hour.

“I thought not.” Dylan puts a hand on my chest. “I’m sorry, baby.”

The word baby makes my heart hurt. Because he didn’t want to hurt me when he told me about my family, about the video of Stella my grandfather had on his phone. But he could see it in my face when he told me what that piece of shit rapist had told him.

I’d already known my family was an endless mire of filth, debauched and ruined, beyond anything good. But to hear that, to know my grandfather paid someone to rape my girl, and then paid someone to beat her within an inch of her life to kill the baby they thought she was carrying - I swear to god, it’s like I don’t even have a soul anymore. I just want to kill, and hurt, and make every single last one of them bleed.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Dylan sighs, rolling on to his back and throwing an arm over his head. “I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

Another sigh. “I felt guilty.”

I roll on to my side, barely able to make out his silhouette in the dark. “Guilty?”

“In… In the video. She was calling out for me.” He runs a hand over his face, letting it thud back on to the bed. “She was calling for me, and I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there for her, when she needed me. She was a mess, she was so lost, and it was all my fault.”

“It wasn’t your fault, it was our fault.”

Dylan swings his legs over the side of the bed and sits up, leaning heavily on his knees. “No, you still don’t get it. I left her that night, I left her after she had cried and begged me to never tell anyone what happened. I betrayed her, and I left her, and I pulled you into it, and this whole fucking mess is my fault.” He sucks in a heavy breath, cradling his head in his hands. “I had to fix it, OK? Me. Just me.”

“No, not just you.” I move to put a hand against his back, leaning closer when he doesn’t move away. “Listen to me, this isn’t your fault. This is Harold’s fault, and my mother’s fault, and fucking Oswald’s fault. All of it. We’re just the pawns, stuck in their sick and twisted little games.”

Dylan’s shoulders slump further, as though the hopelessness within him has taken a physical form and is weighing down on him. “I left her alone again, to go and kill some nothing asshole. She could have died because of me.”

“Stop!” I grip his shoulders and force him to look at me, cupping his jaw in my hand when he refuses. My eyes have adjusted enough in the darkness to see his face, heavy and sad, brows drawn together. “Listen to me, this was not you. You did what you had to do, and now we know, we fucking know what they all did, and how far they went. They deserve everything they’re about to get, and none of that is your fault. None of it, do you understand?”

“Levi-”

“Do you understand?” I grip his face harder, pulling him closer so our foreheads rest against each other. “I love you, and I love her, and we’re going to get through this, and we’re going to be happy. I am not letting you bring this guilt with you.”

“I’m the one who kills Oswald.”

I nod, and he lets out a sigh. “He’s yours. I’ll watch, gladly.”

“Thank you.” He lifts his mouth to meet mine, kissing me slowly at first, the slightest quiver of his lips betraying the emotion coursing through him.

My phone vibrates on the nightstand, and we break the kiss instantly. I snatch the phone up and press it to my ear.

“Hello?”

“Mr Fenton?” A woman’s voice sounds down the line.

“Yes, that’s me.”

“This is Dr Gable, from Mercy General. I’m calling to let you know that your sister’s awake, and she’s asking for you.”