Page 106 of The Kingpin's Call Girl

Blood wells from the cut as I examine it. A shard of glass is embedded in her heel, not deep enough to need stitches but enough to make walking painful. I grip the tweezers and extract it.

She doesn’t make a sound. She’s done being vulnerable.

“Almost done.” My words come out gentle, which sounds strange to my ears.

I clean the wound thoroughly, my hands steady despite the pounding in my head. The back of my skull throbs where she hit me. Smart move, going for the base of the skull. Another inch lower and I might be unconscious.

“You have good aim,” I say, pressing gauze to her foot.

“Not good enough, apparently.”

“Hold still,” I murmur, wrapping a bandage around her foot and securing it snugly. Not too tight. Just right.

When I finish, I look up to find her staring at me, confusion clouding her eyes.

“You’re still bleeding,” she says suddenly.

I touch the back of my head. My fingers come away sticky.

Before I can react, she reaches for the first aid kit, pulling out an alcohol wipe. “Turn around.”

I hesitate, every instinct screaming not to show my back to someone who just tried to crack my skull open. But I turn anyway.

Her touch is surprisingly gentle as she parts my hair to find the wound. I wince when the alcohol makes contact.

“Not so tough after all,” she says, but there’s no venom in it.

“Everyone bleeds.”

She works in silence for a moment, cleaning the cut. “You’ll live.”

“Disappointed?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

I turn to face her, our bodies close, the air between us charged.

“I didn’t have a choice,” she gusts out. “I didn’t. This cop, he’s got some sort of control over my sister. He can get to her. Horrible things’ll happen to her if I don’t do what he wants. I was so scared.”

I listen, emotion coiling in my gut. I had told myself I didn’t need to hear what she had to say, but it was a lie.

She tells me about Mary sliding into the underworld and her attempts to find this sister of hers she loves so much. Searching everywhere without considering her own safety.

“Mary cared for me. She’s the only reason I’m not dead or in a gutter. And then she went missing, and I had to find her.” She searches my eyes. “So I went out to where she worked, dressing to blend in...”

My blood boils as she tells me how this cop picked her up and exploited the fuck out of her. Then sent her to sit with Dardan, for fuck’s sake.

She must have been so frightened. I can barely grate out the next word, but I slide a gentle hand over her shoulder to show it’s not her I’m angry with. “Name.”

“Bender.” She wrings her hands. “I think it’s fake, though. I looked it up, and I couldn’t find any cop named Bender that matched him. At first he said all I had to do was sit at the table for a few hours and leave. It was all it was supposed to be, and then he would bring her home to me. I didn’t know what to do. But then you showed up...”

“And took you for my own.”

I scrub my face as I see how fucked up I’ve acted. Not letting her explain. This woman is mine. Mine to protect.

“I just need you to know—I was determined not to tell himanything, but then he got all scary and made these threats. So I told him a few things that seemed like common knowledge with you, like the Lazarus rumors. But he kept demanding more from me, and if I reminded him it wasn’t our deal, he’d get so scary. Unhinged. And I’d panic. I swear—I never wanted to tell him anything. And when I heard you planning the meeting, I wasn’t going to tell, but it’s like he knew I was holding something back. Like he could read my mind. And he got angry, and I was so scared and...”

Her gaze points down to her wrist.