Page 36 of Rider Daddies (Venom Vultures MC #6)

SAINT

“She’s unresponsive.”

My chest explodes with pain.

I look at Ryder, who still has two fingers pressed to Lucia’s pulse. “But she’s alive?”

“Yeah.” I’ve never heard his voice shake this much before. “Unconscious, though.”

Willow takes her phone from her jacket, frantically tapping at the screen. Bits of snot are stringing down from both of her nostrils, almost reaching her phone. She’s given up on the sniffling and has resorted to compulsive crying.

I thought the sobbing was bad before.

But this is something else.

“What are you doing?” That’s the first thing that has come out of Ash’s mouth since the crash. The question is directed at Willow, but he’s not even looking at her. “Willow?”

“What do you fucking think?” She presses the phone to her ear but her hands are shaking so much that she’s bound to drop the device. “Calling for an ambulance.”

I hate how much blood is trickling down Lucia’s face. Her eyes are wide open, vacant, staring at the sky like she wants to be up there.

A lump forms in my throat, my jaw aching. I lose control and let the tears fall as I stare at her gorgeous face. Even unconscious, dripping in blood, she’s a sight.

Ryder presses his hand to Lucia’s side of the vehicle as if to keep himself upright. He stares at our sleeping beauty like he, too, is in a world of his own.

Right now would be a damn good time for the Kiss of Life to be real.

Ash is standing yards away from the car. It’s dark and his face is in shadow, but I can almost feel the weight that his gaze is carrying, like the past is happening all over again.

I tighten my jaw and silently plead for my mind to not remind me of that night.

But I hear that foreign knock at the door again—three loud booms at the door that made it known a stranger was on the other side.

“Don’t answer the door to strangers when you’re home alone,” my parents used to say.

But do police count as strangers?

I was thirteen and alone in the family home. That was the first and only time I have ever seen police officers show emotion.

“Your parents were in a car collision and they didn’t make it. We’re very sorry.”

They started to list out protocols after that, what comes next.

It was all noise. Just echoes and sound that wasn’t going to bring them back.

Ash was turning eighteen in the next month, so we stalled the care system enough to avoid having to move out.

I turn and see Ash like a great, silent figure in the night. Even the strongest of men crumble.

I sigh, trying to gain some composure.

I think it’s safe to say that I have none.

Even when you recognize that somebody plays a significant role in your life, it still fucking hurts.

The sound of my own hammering heart is replaced by Willow’s shaking voice as she demands over the phone for emergency services to get over here this instant.

“What about Tristan?” I say.

“Who gives a fuck about Tristan?” shouts Ryder, walking away from the car. “He caused all of this mess in the fucking first place. I hope he got crushed by his own car and is getting rejected from the gates of Heaven as we speak.”

I survey the crashed car and grimace. I don’t think Ryder needs to hope.

The passenger side of the vehicle is wrecked past the point of return.

“We need to get her out of there.”

“No.” Ash’s voice booms like thunder through the night. “We can’t. It’s too dangerous. We don’t want to?—”

Kill her?

“Ryder, check her pulse again,” Ash demands.

Ryder approaches the car.

Then, a set of sirens ring through the atmosphere.

I step out into the road to see the faint flashing of red lights.

They draw closer, the sirens becoming louder until I have no other option but to cover my ears from the screaming sound of emergency vehicles.

There’s a fire truck, an ambulance, and a fucking cop car.

Jesus.

Why must the cops involve themselves in everything?

I shield my eyes, my vision turned blue and red.

Two firemen hop out of the truck in fluorescent gear carrying equipment big enough to kill a person.

They waste no time cutting through crushed metal. With paramedic help, they lower Tristan and Lucia’s bodies onto stretchers.

It’s one of those moments where you don’t want to look, but your eyes can’t help it. Everything unfolding is one incoherent, blurry episode. It’s like a nightmare. A fever dream. The only thing reminding me that all of this is real is the loud thumping of my heart.

I’ve seen enough corpses in my time to know that Tristan is dead. His body is eerily still. And if that’s not enough of a reason, his face is crushed. It looks like a ruined dessert topped with strawberry sauce, more than it does a face.

Lucia is still in one piece. I stare as the medics lift her onto the stretcher. They fit a mask over her airways and hurry her over to the ambulance.

And thank God she’s not being zipped up into a body bag like her ex.

Ryder, Ash and I all share a glance. It’s not a cause for celebration.

Not yet.

The party doesn’t start without Lucia.

The ambulance is back on the road, speeding away before I can even register that the doors have closed.

I watch the truck cruise down the road until it disappears.

“Sir.”

Lucia is unconscious and being rushed to the hospital. Can’t it wait?

“Sir!”

“What?!” My voice is snappy.

I work on calming it down for the police officer gawping at me.

I should be grateful that these cops aren’t the same ones who kindly paid us a visit the other night.

But what’s there to be grateful about when the past is happening all over again?

Tell me why this cuts a thousand times deeper.

Ryder and Ash catch up, dragging hopeless Willow over too.

Pen at the ready, one of the officers flips his pad and gets ready to write. “Did you witness the crash?”

“It was terrible.”

I’m glad Ryder has assigned himself as spokesperson.

Ash looks too tensed up to speak, and I’m afraid I’ll make a mess of everything if I do.

“She must’ve lost control of the vehicle for some reason.”

The officer scribbles everything down in shorthand, clicking the pen in between each question.

“When did it happen?”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know?”

The officer notes Ryder’s aggression and asks another question. “Do you know the two people involved?”

“No,” he spits back. “But I want to know that she… they are okay. Who cares about the time? Two people’s lives are on the line.”

The officer extends his gaze over to the body bag. “As you can see, the gentleman in the passenger seat is no longer with us.”

No shit.

What the cops say next doesn’t faze me.

There’s a high chance that we lose Lucia the same way we lost our parents.