Trey - Shandi Boyes Page 0,87
kill is already skating through my veins. He’s all but dead. The only reason he’s still breathing is because it was the air in his lungs that resuscitated mine long after I was freed. He also killed Achim for me without giving me the slightest bit of grief that I was choosing K over revenge because even someone as once heartless as him knows I made the right choice putting K first.
She will always be first.
The fury bubbling in my veins reduces to a simmer when Nikolai says, “That’s what I thought. You want your queen, and you’ll take down any fucker stupid enough to say otherwise, so why are you still standing here? Why aren’t you bringing her back from the madness like only you can. If you want to save her from the blackness, Trey, show her how hell is darker than death, and it’s one hell of a playground if you play your cards right.”
After pushing me away from him without making a move for his beloved knife he’s never without, he returns to the middle section of the jet. “Let’s get this wrapped up. My Ahren is waiting for me.”
He tells the two emergency whores the men always pack for long trips to piss off to the front of the jet before he lays on a three-seater couch as if it’s a bed. After tossing an arm over his eyes, he instructs for Mikhail to wake him once we land. His admission that he’s planning to sleep the entire trip lowers the bottom lips of the whores hoping to entertain him, unaware the opportunity ended the instant his eyes locked with Justine’s.
It was the same for K and me—and it will be again.
I’ll make sure of it.
Twenty-Five
Trey
“Can I borrow that?” I ask Dok, freezing him partway out the door.
He just finalized his third check-up on K the past fifteen hours. I stayed for the last two, too worked up by Nikolai’s comment to let anyone alone with K. Dok is one of the good ones, but I don’t care if he’s a saint. No one will ever touch K without my permission, and even then, it’ll be a rarity and never in the manner she’s been touched previously.
Dok spins around to face me with his brows pinched. He thinks I want to borrow his thermometer or blood pressure machine. It couldn’t be further from the truth.
“Your iPod. Can I borrow it?” Dok would be lucky to be thirty, but he’s as old-school as they come. He still has his iPod from his college days, and his medical bag looks like it belongs on a British sitcom. “You have weather noises on there, right?”
His lips curl before he lifts his chin, shocked I’ve watched him close enough to know one of his quirks. He shouldn’t be surprised. It’s the quiet ones you need to watch the closest.
“They help me sleep.”
After placing down his bag at the end of the bed K and I are resting on, he pulls out a set of wired pods from his pocket, rolls them around his ancient iPod, then passes them my way.
Just as I’m about to snatch them up, he yanks them back. “Can I take a look at your hand first?”
“Dok…”I growl out, pissed he’s attempting to negotiate with me. I told him hours ago my hand is fine, and I’d appreciate it if he’d fucking listen to me.
“The wound looks deep. If we don’t flush it out with some saline and clean it, it could become infected.” When I fail to budge on my glare, he huffs. “Fine. Lose your entire fucking hand instead of a finger like Eight.” His facial expression turns mocking when he spots the shock on mine. “Let me guess, you all think Eight lost two fingers in turf wars?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer him with a hell-to-the-fucking-yes grunt. He just pushes out, “He would have been called nine if he had listened to me.”
Taking my silence as approval to be an A-grade moron, Dok fishes a stainless steel kidney dish from a cabinet in the bathroom before he pulls some medical equipment from his bag. Once he has my wound clean, he searches the open cut for tiny shards of glass. I’m surprised when he finds three micro pieces in the lower half of the slash mark. “Your palm is designed the way it is for a reason.” After dumping the glass into the kidney dish and giving my wound another