Page 2 of Hell of a Mess

One

Luther

I had seen death a lot in my life. I knew the signs.

The woman in my arms wasn’t in danger of kicking it, but damn if I wasn’t watching her chest rise and fall with each breath like a psycho.

Either her pain tolerance was low or she had more than a cracked rib or two because the moment I had picked her up, she’d let out a strangled cry, then passed the fuck out.

It was normal. Pain could do that to someone.

But panic had set in, and I couldn’t seem to get it under control.

“She still breathing?” Locke Bowen asked me as he glanced over at her before turning his eyes back on the road. He sounded nervous.

At least I wasn’t alone in my unfound worry, but then it was Locke. He was more sensitive than me. He was younger, and while he’d seen shit, he hadn’t lived it for almost half a century.

“Yeah,” I replied.

“How bad do you think it is?”

I cut my eyes over at him as he sat behind the wheel of my truck.

He was awfully curious. We didn’t know who the hell this woman was.

If we’d been at a regular strip club, then it wouldn’t have been so surprising.

But Sovereign House was an elite gentlemen’s club with nothing but one percenters inside.

They were mostly wealthy men who sought their pleasures somewhere that wouldn’t get back to their wives.

And this female in her high-neck blouse, cardigan, straight pencil skirt, and dainty fucking boots was not one of the women inside the place.

There were no rooms at the Sovereign for a Sunday school kink.

“She’ll live,” I replied finally as she did a stuttering breath that had me tensing up and lifting her head as if that was going to help her inhale.

“Do we need to call Linc and let him know we’re bringing her?” he asked.

His questions were starting to annoy me.

Linc’s house was my fucking house too. I owned the west wing of the six-thousand-square-foot estate we had purchased.

When the day came that Bane Cash took over the Mississippi branch, I knew Linc, his wife, and his daughter would move back to Ocala.

This had never really been Linc’s home, but it had become mine. I wouldn’t be leaving.

“No, but hit Doc’s number,” I told him.

Doc Burl was the family’s on-call doctor in Mississippi. He knew what we were, and he had the equipment in our basement to handle anything from emergency surgery to a simple stitch-up from a knife wound.

The phone rang over the truck’s speakers but only once.

“Luther.” He said my name over the line in greeting.

“We’re bringing in a female. We found her beaten behind a fucking dumpster. Her left wrist is messed up. It’s bent back and discoloring. She took some force to her right side. Ribs are cracked or broken.”

He blew out a breath. “How far out are you?”

“About twenty minutes.”

“I’ll meet you there,” he replied.

“Thanks,” I told him before Locke ended the call.

With a heavy sigh, I lifted my chin to the screen on the dash. “Call Linc,” I told him.

If Burl got there before us, then Linc would be pissed he wasn’t made aware of the woman I was bringing into our gates.

Normally, anyone allowed inside went through a background check.

Most didn’t know that we ran everything on them—from the hospital they had been born in to their checking account number.

We didn’t have a name to run shit on this woman.

I was breaking a rule, but I wasn’t about to take her to the damn ER and drop her there.

Someone had done this. Someone would be looking for her, and she didn’t want to be found. She’d said she couldn’t go home.

Was it a husband? Had she tracked him to the club, and he got angry with her? I dropped my gaze to her swollen left hand, but there was no ring on it. But then, if there had been, it wouldn’t fit right now. She could have taken it off.

“Are you with Oz?” Linc asked when he answered the phone.

“No. Send someone else. Locke is with me, and we’re headed to the house. Burl will most likely arrive before us,” I began, but in Linc fashion, he didn’t let me finish.

“Who’s hurt?” he barked.

“I was getting to that,” I drawled with a roll of my eyes. “We’re fine. But when we were leaving, there was a female near the dumpster behind the building, beaten so badly that she couldn’t move.”

Silence. It was a motherfucking miracle. Linc wasn’t yacking.

I continued, “She blacked out when I picked her up. I’m guessing she’s got some internal damage, cracked ribs, and her wrist is fucked up. It’s too purple and swollen to tell exactly, but I think it was snapped.”

More silence. Okay, that wasn’t like him. Had the call been dropped?

The woman in my arms started moaning as she tried to move, then let out a pained cry as her eyes flew open. She was back with us. That was a relief.

“I’ll send Bane,” Linc said.

With Oz? I was confused. I hadn’t asked who the fuck was going with Oz. Why couldn’t he stay on topic?

“I can go, too, once I drop them off at the house,” Locke said.

“All right,” Linc replied. “I don’t suppose you got a name for the woman?”

I’d expected that question. “No,” I clipped. “She’s struggling to breathe, so speaking is an issue for her.”

“Fuck,” he muttered. “Fine. I’ll meet you in the basement. My girls are in bed, and I don’t want them disturbed.”

His girls were in the east wing of the house. They couldn’t hear shit that went on in the damn basement. We’d had more than one injury treated down there since they’d arrived in Linc’s life.

“Wasn’t planning on walking her in the front door,” I replied sarcastically.

The call ended, and I dropped my gaze back to the woman in my arms. She was staring up at me.

Her eyes wide as she studied my face. The bruising that was already forming on her swollen right cheek didn’t mask her delicate features.

She wasn’t hard on the eyes. Truth was, if it wasn’t for the clothes she was wearing, I’d have thought she was one of the women inside the club.

“Not much longer,” I told her.

She blinked, and her long, dark lashes that framed blue or green eyes—I couldn’t tell in the darkness—brushed her high cheekbones.

“Need another drink?” I asked.

She swallowed so hard that I could see her throat bob, but she said nothing.

“Probably don’t need to give her any more,” Locke said. “Doc will have the pain drip ready when we get there.”

Morphine, to be exact.

“We’ve all had a drip after several drinks,” I replied, not caring for his opinion.

“We aren’t that tiny either.”

She wasn’t tiny. She might not weigh much, but she wasn’t petite. I’d guess she was about five-six, maybe five-seven. However, he had a point. Even if I didn’t want to listen to him. She was in pain.

“What’s your name?” Locke asked her.

I shot him a warning glare. It hurt her to talk.

When she said nothing, I looked back down at her. The tip of her tongue darted out and wet her dry lips. The side she’d been hit on was slightly cracked, although she didn’t show any sign of it bothering her, but then I doubted that a split lip ranked compared to the way her ribs and wrist felt.

“I…” she replied, but then her eyes fluttered closed.

“What did she say?” Locke asked.

I shook my head. “She didn’t.”

“Ask her.”

“She’s out again. Jesus, stop with the interrogation. You sound like Linc,” I snarled at him.

He shrugged. “Just doing our job. She’s going into your house, you know. Might want to have some idea who’s gonna be looking for her.”

I didn’t care. Whoever it was needed to stay hidden if they wanted to live. Whatever fucker had done this was going to pay. Once I figured out who it was. Any man who would hurt a woman wasn’t worth the oxygen he used.

“Let ’em come looking. They’ll find me,” I replied, wishing like hell I could have a cigarette right now. Something to take the edge off.

“We don’t know what she did,” Locke said hesitantly.

I glared at him. “Does it fucking matter? She’s dressed like a Sunday school teacher. Probably the boring wife of one of the fuckers at Sovereign, who found him getting his kicks at a sex club. That doesn’t give him any right to beat her ass.”

Locke sighed heavily. “Yeah, that was my guess too.”

This was a prime example of why marriage was a mistake.

A fucking death sentence for any man. I didn’t care how damn hot a woman was; no man needed to be locked to one of them for the rest of his life.

It was why I’d been so damn relieved when Chloe, the mother of my only child, didn’t want to marry me when I knocked her up.

She was smart. We’d raised Kye separately just fine.

Although, he’d somehow ended up married with a kid, even after I’d told him all his life that men weren’t meant to be locked down to one cunt. But he was happy, so what the fuck ever.