“Oh shit.” Colt knelt down at Brock’s side and confirmed what I already knew. “He fell on his knife.”
I’d seen it too many times before. Knife fights got real, quick. Men could bleed out before you even had time to try and stop it. I ran to the kitchen, grabbed the first towels I saw and ran back.
“Here.” I handed one to Colt who looked at me, confused. He had so much adrenaline flowing through him he didn’t realize he’d been hurt, too. I pointed to his shoulder. He saw and he pressed the towel to the cut. His cut didn’t look deep. He’d be OK. Maybe not Brock, though.
“Help me tilt him,” I asked Colt. Together we shifted him and saw what I’d suspected. He’d been holding the knife in his right hand, and when he’d fallen he’d brought it to his chest where it now stuck into the left side, right by his heart. Brock’s head listed back, blood coming out of his mouth and he didn’t open his eyes. It was probably already too late, but I brought the towels to his chest wound and tried to staunch the bleeding. I didn’t even try to remove the knife. I’d seen that make it worse and the blood was already spurting out. He’d hit an artery.
“Call 911,” I yelled to Colt. But he didn’t move.
“He’s dying.” He sounded oddly calm, and he was right.
“He is,” I agreed. “But we need to try—”
“Who are you?” Colt looked at me as if just realizing it was strange I was there, too.
“I work security at the country club. I’ve been watching Brock. He’s violent. I saw his car parked outside and came to see if everything was all right.”
“She tried to tell me.” He sounded upset with himself. “I went out tonight, but I should have kept an eye on her.”
Brock coughed and sputtered more blood, losing so much I knew there was no hope. Another life on my bloodstained hands.
“I’ll make the call.” I shifted Brock’s weight back onto the floor. He was so far gone he didn’t even make a sound in response to being moved.
Then Gigi screamed like something out of my nightmares. I didn’t know when she’d walked down the stairs and seen us, but she had and her face looked white as a sheet as she stared at the pool of blood surrounding Brock’s chest wound.
I told her to turn away but she stared in shock. It took her brother walking her up the stairs to get her to head back up. I hated that she’d seen it. I knew from experience, you couldn’t unsee something like that.
When Colt came back down again, he looked at Brock. “He’s dead.”
Damn it. He was right. I stood up, too. We needed to call 911.
“Don’t make the call yet,” he cautioned me.
“Why?” This wasn’t a shootout between two rival MCs. This was a clear-cut break-in and we’d already waited too long.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Dom.”
“Dom, I need to talk to you. Come with me into the kitchen.” Under the bright light, I helped him unbutton his dress shirt and remove his T-shirt to take a look at his shoulder wound. The knife had glanced him on the surface. The damage was minor. He’d have a scar but that was about it. I helped him clean it up and got a fresh towel for him to press against it.
“Do I need to head to the ER?” he asked me, like I knew about wounds. He was right.
“You’ll heal more pretty if you do. But you’ll still heal if you don’t.”
“Good.”
“Keep it clean and covered,” I told him, and he nodded. “So, how about that dead body in the hallway?” I still didn’t know what he was up to, not wanting to head to the ER, delaying the emergency call.
“Dom, you just saved my life. He went for my jugular with a six-inch knife and you stopped him. And you saved my sister from God knows what that monster had planned.”
I looked down, darkness filling my mind. I couldn’t go there, couldn’t let myself imagine what had almost happened to Gigi.
“I don’t think you should go to prison for it.”
“What?” He had my attention now. Why would I go to prison?
He laid it out for me. Brock came from one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in New York. The way his family would spin it, Brock died because I’d punched him. His father would hire every hard-hitting lawyer in the tri-state area to avenge his son’s death.
Unless he didn’t know I’d been there.
“Let me handle this, Dom,” Colt asked me. “I’ll keep your name out of it. I can take this on. We’ll have security camera footage—”
“He disabled the system.”
“Not all the cameras are on the same system. I’m sure we have something. I’ve got a knife wound to prove he attacked. They won’t go up against me the way they would you.”
“I can’t let you do that.” But I could hear the reason in his words. I knew how the world worked. Colt pulled the kinds of strings that could make even a huge mess like this go away. I did not.
“You saved my life and my sister’s. I’m the one getting off easy. Dom, listen to me.” He stepped closer, urgency in his voice. “I am in your debt for the rest of my life. You have just done a brave and heroic thing. Now you need to get out of here so you don’t get punished for it.”
I considered his words. He knew what he was talking about. And he didn’t even know that I had a criminal record in my past, a violent, deceased father and a former stripper of a mother as a character witness. I hadn’t even been in town for a year. I’d be a sitting duck.
“Go now,” Colt urged me. “No one will ever know you were here.”
I nodded. He was right. Gigi was safe. I’d done what I needed to do. Colt walked me to the door, shook my hand in gratitude, and I left the scene of the crime.
* * *
§
* * *
The day after the attack I kept waiting to hear about it. I half expected the cops to beat down my door. But I didn’t hear a damn thing. No headline news about a local young man who died under violent circumstances, not even any rumors. I paced the floor of my apartment, went to the gym to work out my extra energy then worked my shift at the 2am Club. Everything was as it was. I called Gigi twice, in the morning and the evening. She got back to me while I was working, telling me she was OK, thanking me. I wanted to hold her, feel that she was all right instead of just listen to her voice. But I knew I had to stay away. At least for now.
The next day the news hit, but it wasn’t the true story. Brock had died in an unspecified fatal accident at his home, alone. He’d been a varsity athlete, a scholar and a true gentleman. It was a tragic loss. I guessed that was what money could buy you. It hadn’t turned Brock into a good person, but it could give him a decent burial.
I never got the full story from Colt, but I could guess. He’d probably had a sit down with Brock’s father. I’d seen it before, powerful men struggling with rage, grief and the desire for vengeance. But reality was a strong force, too. At first he’d probably wanted Colt’s blood, old–testament-style, but then he’d considered all the evidence: Colt’s wound fro
m Brock’s knife, the security camera footage, Brock’s history of a violent temper. In the end, he’d chosen to keep the Kavanaugh family out of it so he could remake history, giving his son a good name in death.
Colt called and checked in with me every day, asking how I was doing, expressing his gratitude. Each time I heard from him it surprised me. He didn’t need to keep thanking me. But he clearly felt guilty about having dismissed Gigi’s concerns and he seemed deeply impressed by what I’d done.
“I owe you my life,” he kept saying. “I’ll never forget what you did for our family.” I almost felt like I’d done a favor for a mafia boss. “I need people around me I can trust,” he confessed. “I don’t always know who’s got my back.” I guessed being the son of a billionaire sometimes left you wondering who your real friends were.
But maybe there was more to it? I’d always wondered how his father had amassed his wealth. In the world that I’d grown up in, money flowed to the ruthless. I’d been on the Kavanaugh Investors website and read a couple of headlines. It looked like they mostly invested in real estate but also branched out into other opportunities. I wondered about some of those branches. I’d just seen wealth, power and expensive attorneys rewrite history, covering up the circumstances surrounding a death. Who knew what Gigi’s dad was really doing? It could be all kinds of shady. He’d have everything he needed to keep it out of the public eye.
“My father travels with bodyguards and I’m not sure any of them would have acted that fast,” Colt admitted.
I didn’t ask why his father traveled with bodyguards, but it did compound my suspicions. Personal security might be a standard precaution of all the uber-wealthy, but instinct and experience told me otherwise. Though it didn’t all add up—if Gigi’s dad went to lengths to keep himself safe, why had he let his teenage daughter spend the summer living practically by herself in a house with a Swiss cheese security system?