Page 69 of Madness & Mercy

Blood.

Lots of it.

“Shit,”I hiss, pressing my hand to the hole in my upper arm. Clean shot, maybe. Hurts like hell. Everything goes tight around the edges, like the world’s zooming out.

“Cross!”Nico’s voice, sharp and lethal, cuts through the chaos. Then I feel him, an iron grip on my jacket, hauling me up and back.

We retreat fast, through the side corridor we entered, bullets sparking off walls behind us. The whole fucking building is a trap. A kill box.

We make it to the car.

Barely.

Nico throws the passenger door open, shoves me inside, and floors it before I even shut it. Tires screech. The engine roars.

I grit my teeth, blood soaking into my shirt and dripping down my fingers. “I’m fine,” I mutter, trying to breathe through it. “This is nothing.”

His hands are like stone on the wheel, jaw clenched so tight, I swear I can hear it crack.

“You’re bleeding all over my seats,” he growls.

“Not like you don’t have ten more of these fuckin’ cars.”

He says nothing. Just drives faster. The silence between us buzzes with fury.

But it’s not at me.

It’s worse.

He’s angryon my behalf.

When we finally screech into the estate, he kills the engine, slams his door, and yanks mine open like he’s one second from dragging me inside. His hand is iron on my good arm, guiding me through the front door, down the hall, into Nico’s bedroom like I’m breakable. Like I’mhis.

The second we’re in the room, he kicks the door shut and points to the bed.

“Sit,” he barks.

“I told you, I’m fine.”

“Sit. The fuck. Down.”

I don’t argue this time.

He disappears into the adjoining bathroom, comes back with a kit I didn’t know he kept stocked here. Gloves. Gauze. Scissors. The works.

“This is unnecessary,” I mutter as he peels my jacket off with surprisingly careful hands. “I’ve had worse.”

“I don’t give a fuck what you’ve had.”

I wince as he pulls the ruined shirt off next, blood sticky and dried against my skin. His jaw tightens when he sees the wound, a clean exit, right through the shoulder.

“You’re lucky,” he mutters, swabbing around the hole. “Could’ve hit your lung. Could’ve been your head.”

“But it wasn’t,” I snap, his proximity making my skin feel too tight. “So stop acting like I’m dying.”

He ignores me, working in silence, cleaning, wrapping, securing. He’s being gentle in a way that pisses me off.

His hands pause, then his voice cuts low and lethal: