Page 17 of Cruel Debts (Killers of Port Wylde #4)

FOURTEEN

ASHER

“What the hell were you thinking?”

Liam sat in the kitchen with me as I threaded the needle to stitch him up. He said nothing as I stabbed him quite pointedly, refusing to waste any numbing supplies on this thick-skulled motherfucker.

He should have known better.

He was a trained ex-SpecOps soldier.

Maybe he was slipping.

No. That wasn’t like Liam. He was controlled. Strict, especially with himself.

“I was thinking we had a contract,” he muttered as I threaded the needle through his skin a second time, hissing at the tiny prick like he hadn’t sat here like this a million times before, getting stitched for one wound or another.

“I was thinking their security would be a little more of a help than it was.”

“They were worthless, and you knew that going in,” Hawke snapped, tapping his fingers against the counter as he popped the cap on a bottle of water and downed it in one go. “You should have called one of us.”

“Hey, I did my job,” he fired back, and I had to still my hand as he jerked in the chair, practically snarling at Hawke over his shoulder. “You’re the one who was supposed to have her tonight, and you bailed.”

“It’s not my job to babysit a flighty girl,” he growled, “especially a naked one. In a sex club. I go there to have fun.” A hand snapped out, finger pointed directly at me as I made a third stitch, hands steady, attitude calm. “Why not ask Asher to do it? He’s already participated.”

“I was otherwise occupied,” I pointed out, nodding to my doctor bag, which had been damn near emptied of supplies when St. Clair called me to work on one of the other crews, who’d taken a dozen bullets between the three of them, some to places that should have killed them.

“This is a serious situation.” Another poke into Liam’s skin, and he’d stopped being dramatic about it, at least. “She’s our responsibility, and we have to take that seriously. ”

Hawke rolled his eyes and tossed the empty bottle into the trash, missing by a mile. Instead of picking it up, like a normal person would, he just walked off with a grunt of disgust, kicking it across the room along the way.

He had an attitude problem that seriously needed fixing.

“Maybe I should have let her smack him with the pan earlier,” Liam grumbled, and I had to bite my tongue so hard I tasted blood to keep from bursting out in a very inappropriate laugh.

“He probably wouldn’t have even felt it,” I pointed out, rolling my eyes. “Where’s Trinity?”

I sealed up the last stitch and started on the knot as his eyes pivoted and directed themselves to the guest room. “Her room.”

“The guest room, you mean.”

He shrugged. “Not like we’re getting rid of her anytime soon, right?”

He had a point. “Not unless we leave her to Hawke for a few days.”

The idea had merit, but I wouldn’t subject her to that. Not now. She was strong, but nobody deserved to deal with Hawke unfiltered and uninterrupted for days on end with no buffer. It was akin to torture.

Then again ? —

No. I didn’t hate Trinity. In fact, I had a soft spot for her.

She’d always been so annoying when she was younger, but you could tell it was intentional.

After all, her brother was the only person who paid her any attention.

And if someone tried to steal the time and affection of the only person that loved me, I might be a little jealous of them, too.

I might even have tried to run them off.

Instead, we all just tolerated her. We let her tag along literally everywhere. After all, her brother was freshly returned from service, and she missed him.

And when Keehn said he needed to deal with something for her, we all pitched in.

Like the time we scared off some piece of shit high school boy who was known for sleeping around, when he decided he was interested in making Trinity his next conquest. Or when she got into a fight in school with two girls whose brothers then got their asses beat and were left with a warning—control your sisters, or we would.

She had no idea she had not one, but four big, strong brothers looking out for her.

But Trinity McCoy was all grown up now, and the girl who had put up with our stupidity and asshole bullying and the constant flow of girls we talked about, usually without realizing she was within earshot, well, she was all grown up. And she was . . . different.

In good ways now.

She was feistier, more headstrong. She’d also developed some really annoying habits, but those habits could always be broken. I’d done it with Hawke and Liam. Surely it would be a breeze with her, as well.

“You gonna sit there with that needle in my arm all day, or are you done?”

I yanked it out of his skin and tossed it in the sink, ignoring his yelp of shock. “Try not to hurt yourself anymore, you asshole,” I said, washing my hands before sterilizing the supplies and returning them to my bag. “Did she get hurt in the scuffle?”

Liam shook his head, his shaggy hair in desperate need of a trim as it danced around his face. “She stayed out of the way, and I intercepted the assailant.”

“You know the procedure, Liam: go boot up the database and assemble a profile, then see if it matches anyone we know.”

I didn’t wait around for him to say more. My mind was on ensuring the girl in the room was still safe and sound and in one piece. Liam might’ve gotten us into this situation, but we all signed the contract with Minnie. Therefore, we were all responsible for the girl in our care.

That included me.

My knock on the door went unanswered, so I knocked again, leaning my ear against the door in the hopes that I could hear her moving around.

Silence.

Not good. I tried again, but the results didn’t change.

So this time, I tried the doorknob.

Locked.

Things were starting to seem a bit more serious by the second.

“Trinity?” I knocked again—still nothing. But I did hear a little whimper, which meant she was at least still in the room. “Trin? It’s me, Asher. Open the door.”

“No.” That single word was so faint, I could barely hear it. If my ear hadn’t been plastered to the door, I might not have. But it was laced with so much pain, so much fear, that I knew to leave her to her own devices probably wasn’t the smartest idea.

I knew personally what happened when one was left to deal with their demons on their own.

“Trinity, if you don’t open this door, I’m opening it myself, whether you like it or not.”

I heard footsteps on the other side—slow but moving. A few seconds felt like an eternity as I waited for her to open the door. When she finally did, my heart sank.

Her makeup was a mess—eye shadow smeared, eyeliner and mascara running down her face as it mingled with tears, lipstick faded and smudged. Her hair was a mess, like she’d taken down her ponytail and just tossed and turned on the bed until it knotted into an unrecognizable mess.

She had only been alone for an hour at most. How had she dissolved so quickly?

“We need to talk,” I whispered, tapping into some of my own PTSD therapy sessions to help her, in whatever way I could. “I’m coming in.”

“No,” she protested, but I shoved past her, refusing to let her ignore me.

I sat on the edge of the bed and patted the spot beside me, taking in the changes she’d made over the past few days as I waited for her to cave in.

The walls were still bare, but she’d done her best to make the room more lived-in, starting with the pile of clothes in the far corner.

She hung some strange tapestry on the far wall, the colors faded, but still striking in comparison to the flat primer that adorned the walls of the room meant for her brother.

It had been left unfinished, in the hopes that he could decorate it when he finally joined us.

But he never did.

And we never had the heart to touch it.

The bed sank under her weight as she flung herself down beside me with a heavy sigh. “What do you want, Asher? Here to tell me that staying is too dangerous? That I can’t go back to work? That I might as well just pack up and go home?”

Yes. Yes to all of that. “Well, not exactly.” Shit.

She didn’t look like she believed me. Fair, considering I didn’t believe myself.

“What do you want, then?”

“I want to make sure you’re okay.” I held my hands open, offering her a gentle smile. “Did you get injured in the scuffle today?”

Her left brow climbed to her hairline. “You want to make sure I’m okay?” She glanced down at herself, and I spotted the smudges from where she’d clearly tried to dry her eyes and pulled away her makeup instead. “Do I look okay? I’m not injured physically, if that’s what you mean.”

“What about up here?” I tapped a finger against her temple knowingly. “Sometimes we’re okay on the outside, and broken on the inside.”

“How would you know about something like that?”

My lips twitched, but I refused to let her turn me sour. “Let’s just say I still have demons of my own I deal with every day.”

Her eyes looked heavy, and against my better judgment, I pulled her into my lap, tugging her against my chest like I would a child who’d lost their mother. She squirmed, but I held firm. I might not be as toned as Liam, but I was stronger, bigger, and more determined than this waif of a girl.

She wasn’t getting away.

“You can cry if it helps, Pretty Bird. Sometimes we all need to let it out.” The nickname just slipped out, and even as I cursed myself for using it, I wondered how it’d feel on my tongue if I said it again.

“I’m not scared about today,” she sniffled, and then it was like the dam holding back her emotions burst, letting loose all the emotions her tiny body contained.

That’s it. Cry. It’s better than bottling it all up.

I just didn’t know how she’d feel when the tears dried up and the reality set in, and that scared me more than anything.

This was, after all, a girl I’d sworn to protect.

But who would protect her from us?