Bloodied Hands (Bellandi Crime Syndicate 1)

"I didn't want to get your hopes up until I knew for sure." I slid out of Matteo's hold, moving to his body and staring down at his bare torso as I counted the bullet holes in his body.

Six.

He'd taken six bullets to protect me.

It was a miracle none of them aimed for his head. "When will he wake up?" I asked, turning wide eyes to the doctor who stood over him and looked exhausted.

"When he's ready," he breathed. His eyes examined me from head to toe. "Any of that blood yours?"

"Yes," I whispered.

"Go shower. Be quick about it. I'll look you over as soon as you're out." Matteo took my uninjured hand and started to guide me away, but I gave him pleading eyes.

"I don't want to leave him."

"We'll hurry back, Angel." Pressing a kiss to Scar's forehead briefly, I let Matteo take me upstairs to shower.

???

My eyes never left Scar's chest, watching the rhythmic rise and fall as the doctor stitched up my hand. "It will scar," he warned, and I shrugged. It wasn't the first time I'd cut my hand with a knife, and it wouldn't be the last. If I walked away from being taken by a crazed human trafficker who wanted me to be hi

s wife with nothing but a scar, then I'd consider myself lucky. "Let me have a look at that head."

"It's nothing," I sighed.

"Doesn't look like nothing." I relented, turning in my seat so the doctor could poke and prod the wound. "Any loss of consciousness?"

"Yes. I don't know how long I was out, but I woke up in Adrian's bed." The room filled with Matteo's fury almost instantly, even from where he stood coordinating with his men regarding the cleanup at my house and Adrian's.

"Do we need to do an exam?" the doctor asked carefully.

"No." I shook my head. "He didn't touch me like that."

"You're certain? Maybe when you were unconscious?" I stilled, not having thought of the possibility.

"I don't—wouldn't I feel it? If he raped me?"

The doctor nodded. "Most likely, but there are no guarantees with these things. I'd like to do an exam—"

Matteo's bellow echoed through the room, and then he was punching numbers into his phone. "Ask the fucker if anybody touched Ivory while she was unconscious." He put the phone on speaker, and another man's screams of agony filled the room.

"Who is that?" I asked.

Matteo replied briskly. "Adrian's second in command. We took him alive."

Another man's cold, deadly quiet voice came over the phone as the screams died down. "Did anybody touch her? Was she raped or touched in any way when she was unconscious?" he asked, presumably to the man he tortured. I paled, and the doctor patted the back of my head to get my attention. Shining a light in my eyes, he sought to distract me while he checked for a concussion.

"No! We dropped her in the bedroom and left her to sleep it off! I swear! Normally, I'd have thought for sure Adrian would rape her, but he was different about this chick. Obsessed, man."

"You believe him?" Matteo asked the phone.

"Yeah, I do. He's singing like a canary, and so far everything checks out." I sighed in relief, and the doctor sat down next to me, patting my hand.

"You've got a nasty concussion, not surprising. I want you to take it easy for a few days, no cooking, nothing that strains your concentration like reading or long hours of television. Tylenol for the pain."

"Okay," I whispered.

As soon as he stepped away to deal with some other minor injuries, I turned back to Scar. Gripping his hand in mine, I finally allowed myself to break.