Cruz (Dark and Dirty Sinners' MC #5) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,94

lip. "I didn't mean to waste your time."

"You haven't," I denied, because I'd totally have had to go to the patch-in party at the compound if Laura hadn't called in an appointment.

She wrinkled her nose. "You're a good liar, but not that good. I'm sorry." She glowered down at her chest. "I don't understand why this is so hard."

I had a hypothesis that her pain wasn't just physical but emotional, but I wasn't about to burden her with that. Not when I wasn't a shrink.

I'd often found that people responded to the needle in different ways, ways that depended on their reason for actually getting the tattoo.

Someone who came in for a vanity tat would probably moan about the pain. Someone who came in to commemorate a family member who'd passed over, would often just hiss through it and then find a kind of calm that I believed was their way of further commemorating their lost loved one.

When it was for scar tissue, there was often a lot of repressed emotions going on inside someone. Sometimes it was survivor's guilt or fear or just plain worry.

With Laura, I knew she was scared about the cancer coming back, and with good reason. This was her second time in remission. The mastectomy was the end result.

She was only twenty-fucking-eight. No age at all. No goddamn age at all.

Why was it this mother of four, who'd lived a simple life, who'd probably never hurt anyone, was dealing with this shit when my uncle had done what he had, tortured children the way he had, and had made it to middle age?

Even then, he hadn't died because it was his time to go. No, my brother had decided that our good uncle needed putting down. Maybe Kevin would still be alive, still be polluting the earth, if Nyx hadn’t put a stop to him…

Life, I registered, and not for the first time, wasn’t fair.

"You ready to start up again?" I asked softly, pressing my hand to hers.

The last touch of the tattoo gun to her skin had seen her jerking up like Dracula out of his coffin come dusk. She was still sitting up, her shoulders shaking, skin flushed with gooseflesh.

She shook her head. "I don't think I can, Indy. I'm sorry."

"Please, don't apologize. But next time, come when I ask you to, okay? Trust in my experience?"

She winced. "I will."

I eyed her, looking at the tat then at her, and murmuring, "I get it though. We're so damn close." My smile was kind as I continued, "But hey, when it's done, it's done. No more pain."

"No more pain," she repeated, like it was a vow. Like she really needed to believe I was speaking the truth.

I prayed, for her sake, I was.

Twenty or so minutes later, we hugged after she carefully wrapped herself into a thin jacket and darted outside like a frightened rabbit.

I watched her go before I went to the desk and picked up my phone.

My brows rose when I saw the number of missed calls and messages I had on there, and I wasn't sure whether to be concerned or not when not a single one of them was from Cruz.

I had at least a dozen from Stone, then three messages, each of them a demand for me to call her back. Giulia and Nyx had messaged and called too, as had Sin and Lily.

Unsure what the hell was happening, unease began to spread through me as I decided to call Nyx first.

As I hit the connect button, however, my phone buzzed with an incoming call.

"Indy? You need to get your ass to West Orange Hospital."

"What the hell's going on, Giulia? I have a shit ton of messages and calls from you guys at the compound."

A hiccup sounded down the line, prompting me to pull back from my phone and check the Caller ID, because this was Giulia, right? My tough-as-nails sister-in-law? Only, she didn’t sound so hardcore right this minute…

"You're scaring me," I said softly, meaning it. Inside my head, my skull felt like it was starting to throb, just waiting for the explosion to come as she blew my frickin' mind.

"There's been a bombing."

A bombing?

I'd expected a shooting. Some kind of drive by or... Fuck, I didn't know for sure. We'd had that in the past, some dumb fuck gangs had tried to overtake the compound when I was seven or so, but they'd broached the gates like they were a useless battalion of soldiers. Some of the