Cruz (Dark and Dirty Sinners' MC #5) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,96
the MC, and then the need to protect the Sinners from David… I was getting more and more entangled, and it would only worsen now that Stone was living on the compound, now that she was Steel's Old Lady.
The MC contaminated everything, and I’d been fooling myself by believing I wasn’t already tainted.
I reached up and pinched the bridge of my nose, wondering how I could be so fucking stupid as to get involved in this shit once more, shit that was like poison, that could infect anything and everything within a hundred-mile span.
"Indy?"
Giulia sounded worried, and I realized she'd been talking all while the white noise in my head was taking over everything else.
I'd heard though.
Jaxson, Matty, Kingsley, Jingles, Jojo. They were the five who were dead. But there were twenty with injuries that required, as a minimum, an overnight stay in hospital.
Bear was on the brink. He'd lost limbs, and was in a coma. As for the rest, no one was totally unscraped. Anything from concussions, to perforated ear drums, broken bones and the psychological trauma of being goddamn bombed.
As for my loved ones, Giulia’s shoulder was dislocated, and Nyx had burns on his arms, and his back was covered in wounds from shattered glass.
"I'll be there in seven minutes," I repeated dully, even though the second I cut the call, I didn't storm off to my car. No, I just leaned back against my desk, and tried to figure out what the fuck I was doing.
I'd opened myself up to Cruz, but that meant I was involved in the life.
Like a sticky spider's web, it had entangled me up in it once more, rolling me around in a cocoon that let me forget just how bad things could be.
It was only by circumstance that I wasn't at the compound tonight. If Laura hadn’t called then I'd have been there, and maybe I'd be one of the unlucky ones. I mean, why not? What about my life spoke of good fortune?
I swallowed at the thought, swallowed down the tears and the misery and the goddamn hopes and dreams that were laid to waste by the night's events.
For a second, I could do no more than process what the fuck was happening, what was going down with my family—one brother who’d just been bombed, a sister-in-law who'd dislocated a fucking shoulder, and a baby brother somewhere in a prison cell while still doing jobs for the goddamn Sinners.
My legs felt like mush, but that was nothing in comparison to my head. Brain whirring with thoughts and fears, I staggered to the floor, shoving my back against the desk, trying to find support there, but there was none to be found.
As crazy as it was, as stupid and as insane, I wanted Cruz.
I wanted his arms around me.
But in those arms, there was danger. There was violence. There was the life.
Eyes darting from left to right, I knew what it felt like to be a deer in headlights, because one part of me, the part who'd been raised with those people, was urging me to get my ass in the car and to drive like the devil himself was on my heels to make it to the hospital in those promised seven minutes.
Another part?
Telling me to run.
And not toward the hospital.
I gulped, wondering if I could do it, wondering if I could get away, but...
So many buts.
In the blank void of my mind, a place I hadn't visited since that last time Kevin had visited my bedroom, and what that meant was more terrifying than I could bear, a tinny ringing sound penetrated the vacuum.
I didn't notice it at first, barely registered it. Then, the vibrations of my cell started to hit my hand, I actually started to feel them, so a little dazed, a little like I'd been the one in the bombing, I turned my cell around so I could look at the Caller ID, and I saw Stone's name, and the picture of her where she was blowing me a raspberry.
I remembered that night.
I'd gone into Manhattan so, on the rare night off she'd had back in March, we could party. She'd drunk too many margaritas, eaten way too many soup dumplings, and had barfed her way down sixth and King.
My lips quirked at the memory, which was like an ice pick to the protective walls that were growing around me.
"Indy?"
Her voice had me clenching my eyes closed. So damn hard it hurt.