Page 12 of Secret Vendettay
“You sure?” Rinaldi waited a beat after I nodded, then quietly left the room.
Rolling up the too-long sleeves of Hunter’s shirt, I stared at myself in the mirror. Crimson clumped the strands of hair together near my shoulder. The EMTs had already cleaned the sticky blood off my right hand when they’d dressed my wound, but only my hand—blood remained on my forearms and had somehow gotten onto my neck of all places.
Dominic’s blood. My childhood protector and friend.
I dashed over to the paper towel dispenser and yanked six sheets from it, walking back to the sink and dousing them in water. Scrubbing away the blood on my skin so hard that the paper shredded into pieces.
I bit my lip to keep myself from crying. I was not going to cry, not in front of Hunter Lockwood. Later, I could sob all the tears that I was swallowing right now.
I tossed the blood-soaked paper towels into the trash can and retrieved fresh ones, wetting them, and began working at the back of my neck, where the haunting stickiness of Dominic’s dried blood tugged at strands of my hair.
“Here.” Hunter’s voice was low, full of compassion now rather than anger. “You’re missing some spots.”
He walked up behind me and took the paper towels from my hand, his fingers grazing mine. I twisted my hair up into a ball on top of my head and looked down so Hunter would have better access to my neck.
“Get it off,” I pleaded through a shaky voice. “All of it.”
I didn’t realize my hand was trembling until Hunter placed his on top of mine.
“You’re safe now.” The comforting baritone of his voice calmed my tremors, and when I lifted my gaze to the mirror, we locked eyes—quietly existing in the silent space of the aftermath, where past courtroom drama collapsed in the aftershock of violence.
I inhaled shakily, trying to mask the vulnerability in my voice. “Why are you helping me?”
He stroked the skin that met my hairline as gently as he’d spoken, the paper towels’ damp coolness soothing my neck.
“You were part of a violent crime, Luna. If there’s something I can do to help, I will.” There was an undercurrent to his voice, though, some deeper meaning than simply being a Good Samaritan. “Can I ask what happened?” His tone was velvet, as if crafted from the finest dark chocolate, melted to the perfect temperature to caress my senses.
With every stroke of the napkin, I felt one inch closer to myself.
“It was the Windy City Vigilante. He slashed my client’s throat. I tried to save Dominic. I grabbed a piece of glass and was going to stab the Vigilante if it came to it, but it didn’t help. Dominic still died.”
Hunter stilled.
“You were going tofighthim?” I couldn’t tell if his voice was full of shock that it would have put me in more danger or if it was full of judgment at how stupid that would have been. In our line of work, we knew what often happened when a victim tried to fight back in a robbery, for example.
But as Hunter stared at me in the mirror, something else passed over his face—a profound emotion, based on the tightening of his eyebrows.
“It didn’t work.” I had to swallow the lump in my throat. “Thanks to the Vigilante, Dominic’s cousin thinks I have some sort of…evidence against him.”
His eyes sharpened. “Evidence?”
“Maybe not evidence. I don’t know. He thought I took something from Dominic, and whatever it was, it mattered more to him than giving Dominic CPR.”
The door creaked open, revealing Detective Rinaldi, her phone pressed to her ear. She ended the call, her expression unreadable as she faced us.
“Okay. It sounds like there was a fight at the prison. Your father was hurt, but not critically. They’re not transporting him to a hospital. They’re just treating him in the infirmary, so that’s a good sign it’s not serious.”
“What are his injuries?”
“They wouldn’t release that information to me.”
“Did someone attack him?” Or was he collateral damage to another fight that broke out?
“I’m not sure. But they said that you can try to call later and that you may be able to visit him tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I choked. “I need to see him today.”
“It sounds like they’re not allowing any visitors right now. But they assured me he’s going to be okay.”