Page 133 of Power

“Strong as a horse,” Blake announced with a wink at Scarlett.

Her smile lit up the entire room. Every time someone came to check my vitals, I could see her tense with fear that this might be the moment they found something bad. But they wouldn’t.

“These bedsheets are uncomfortable,” I grumbled.

Blake tossed his stethoscope around his neck. “You know, for a patient who made a miraculous recovery, you sure find a lot of things to gripe about.”

“What’d you expect? A billionaire probably never endured anything less than thousand-thread-count Egyptian cotton,” Axel said, popping. Another. Fucking. Chip. Into his mouth.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

I swore he was amplifying the sound just for me.

“I’ve spent more nights in this hospital bed than I care to. I would like to go home to sheets that don’t feel like they were woven from the hopes and dreams of sandpaper.”

“We’re working on it,” Blake assured me.

“Dakota will be here shortly with your car,” Scarlett chirped.

From across the room, Axel looked up from his chips while I snapped my attention to her.

“You let her drive my Mercedes?” My prized Mercedes. The one I had custom-ordered? The one with hand-stitched seats made from leather so fine, it probably released oxytocin?

“Er … I didn’t want to leave your side.” Scarlett shrugged with asheepish smile that somehow made it impossible to be genuinely angry.

“Why didn’t you call my driver?” I asked.

“Why would I?” Scarlett replied.

“It’s his job.”

Her mouth fell open. “It … didn’t cross my mind.”

God. Fucking. Dammit. Scarlett wasn’t used to this lifestyle, I realized. In her world, if you needed a ride, you called a friend, not one of the several employees I kept on payroll. I’d have to train her how to call my staff—correction: our staff—for help. But for now, Jesus fucking Christ, her friend was driving my prized car.

As if reading the horror on my face, she assured, “Dakota’s a really good driver.”

“Has she ever been in a car crash?” I asked, sitting up straighter, ignoring the twinge in my side from where Marcus had landed a good blow. “Even a fender bender? A parking lot incident? A near miss that made her gasp?”

“Dakota?” Axel stepped forward, thankfully halting his next round of chip terrorism. His voice had changed, carrying an edge.

“She probably lives downtown,” I realized in horror. “Does she even have a car of her own? Because if she doesn’t, she probably doesn’t drive that often, which means she could be out of practice with how bad people can drive downtown.” The thought of my baby in inexperienced hands made my heart monitor beep a little faster.

“What’s her last name?” Axel’s tone was borderline panicked.

But Scarlett was too busy patting my hand to notice. “Relax. She’s a really good driver. She’s doing me a favor so that I can stay by your side and help you downstairs.”

Bloody hell. It was impossible to get mad at Scarlett when she was being this damn thoughtful, but so help me, if Dakota so much as scratched my car … oh, who was I kidding? I wouldn’t do anything. But I would be annoyed. In capital letters. With exclamation points. ANNOYED!!!

That car was my baby. My chrome-and-leather firstborn.

“Dude, tell me Scarlett’s friend isn’t DakotaBlackwood.” Axel’s voice had dropped an octave, like he was invoking the name of a demon.

Blackwood. That was why Dakota looked familiar to me when I’d met her and Scarlett that night at the bar. It had been years since I’d seen Knox’s sister, and she’d only seen me in court back then.

Recognition swept through the room. I could feel it in the sudden stillness, see it in the way Blake and Ryker stilled.

How had I missed this? With everything spiraling around us, I should have connected the dots the moment I saw her. That nagging sense of familiarity, the way something about her face wouldn’t let go. I’d brushed it off instead of digging deeper.