“Simple,” Roman mutters, leaning in and grabbing the painkillers for me. “Make them think it was intentional. We came out with six clean kills that night, stripping an opposition of some of their biggest players. Besides,” he adds with a wink that has me gasping for breath. “It was fun.”
“Fun?” I sputter, trying to swallow the small pills and choking on the water as it goes down the wrong hole and makes a mess of my black tank, instantly making my body ache with my movement. “That’s what you call fun?”
Roman shrugs as a wicked grin stretches over Marcus’ face. “Nah,” he says, amusement swirling deep in his dark eyes. “That’s what I call a Saturday night.”
“Fucking hell,” I mutter under my breath, trying to adjust myself to see them all better.
“Don’t move,” Marcus says, gripping on to my feet a little tighter to hold me down, as if I haven’t already been traumatized enough by men pinning me down. “You can’t risk tearing your stitches. Trust me, that’s not something you want to go through a second time if you can avoid it.”
I roll my eyes and kick his hand off my feet. The guy has a point, but I’m not about to go and tell him that. “Then help me sit up. I’ve been laying here for hours.”
“You sure?” Levi questions, getting up and slowly creeping toward me. “Moving you is going to hurt.”
“Just do it,” I tell him. “I can handle it.”
“Can you?” he questions, moving in behind me and gripping me under my arms to help drag me up the couch. “From what I remember in the back of the Escalade, you weren’t handling it too well then.”
“I was tortured in a bathtub and sliced open like a fucking Thanksgiving turkey,” I mutter darkly, the reminder weighing heavily on my chest. “It fucking hurt. So if I wanted to scream and bitch at you assholes while you shoved needles deep into my already burning flesh, then I had every damn right. Not to mention, you didn’t even give me anything to numb the pain, you just went for it like I was supposed to be enjoying myself. And for the record, I didn’t.”
“Wait,” Roman cuts in, stepping right into my line of sight. “You’re pissed at us for saving your life?”
I huff and cross my arms over my chest, groaning with the movement. “No,” I mutter with a heavy sigh. “Seeing your Escalade pulling up in front of me was the happiest moment of my life. I’ve never felt such an overwhelming rush of relief and gratefulness before. What I’m pissed about is being in that situation in the first place. If you guys hadn’t felt the need to castrate his brother, then none of this would have happened.”
“Woahhhhh,” Roman says, holding up his hands to cut me off. “You’re the one who started shit with him during our party. You’re the one who shoved a fucking knife into his gut. This is your war, Empress. You’re just lucky that we were there to finish it.”
“LUCKY?” I shriek, shoving my hands under me to try and force myself up a little higher. “What about last night would you call lucky? Look at me,” I demand, waving my hand over the multiple shallow cuts covering my body. “I look like I’ve just been sliced and diced by a fucking maniac. Oh wait. I WAS!”
Marcus watches me, his lingering gaze full of curiosity as he slowly narrows his eyes. “What’s this really about?” he questions. “There’s something more. You knew that we moved against Draven to protect you, and you even looked fucking thrilled when I ended his life. You were okay with it, so what else is going on?”
I glance away, my jaw clenched as my chest constricts with a dull ache that I don’t fully understand. “Can’t a girl just be angry that she spent a night bleeding out in a tub?”
Roman shakes his head and moves in closer. “You have every right to be fucked up over that, but Marcus is right. Something else is on your mind.”
I can’t help but meet his haunted stare, and as I see the real concern deep within his dark eyes, a lump begins forming in my throat. I let out a sigh and drop my gaze to the glass of water on the coffee table, watching as the condensation slowly trails down the slim glass and leaves a ring on the expensive wood. “You said that you would teach me how to protect myself,” I murmur, my voice so low that I don’t even know if they can hear me properly.
Marcus’ hands flinch on my ankle and he holds on a little tighter as Roman lets out a heavy breath. “We did say that,” he admits. “But that was only a few days ago. Whether we had started training you or not, you wouldn’t have been strong enough yet to fend him off.”