Cruel Summer

I squint, frustration moving through me. “Nothing.”

A muscle jumps in his jaw and he turns around to look at Giovanni, who’s watching me closely.

“You don’t remember anything at all from the warehouse?” Giovanni asks, his gaze dark.

The warehouse.

Faint recollections of being tied to a chair move through my mind, a minute before my whole body goes cold.

Sheffield.

The monitor next to me starts beeping wildly.

“Maybe now isn’t the time-” The doctor’s concerns are cut off when Maximo glares at her. She takes a step back, looking like she’s ready to bolt.

“Winter?” Vito prompts.

“He tried to make me give him a blow job and I bit him.”

Maximo lets out a snort that has my attention switching to him. “Bit him? You nearly took his dick right on off, Mouse.” He chuckles because only he would find such a thing entertaining. “There was blood everywhere and not just from the hole in his head.”

My fingers come up to my lips, the foul taste of bitterness and something metallic gracing my taste buds all over again.

“We had the doctor run some tests, she doesn’t think you actually swallowed enough of his blood to pick up any sort of illness from him, but we want to be safe.” Vito informs me.

I blankly nod before pulling the cover back as another memory hits me. My stomach curls as I look down at my leg. I’m wearing some kind of purple gown, but the white gauze wrapped around my thigh lets me know that being stabbed wasn’t a figure of my imagination.

“No major blood vessels or arteries were hit,” the doctor says, her gaze moving from my face to my leg as well. “We don’t think any nerves were hit either and you should be able to walk normally soon, but we’ll have to get you to walk before we can actually confirm that.”

She’s trying to be reassuring but I can only feel grief as I look down at my thigh.

“You also have a cut in the back of your head from Sheffield falling onto you after Lucia took him out,” Vito says and when I look back at him, his eyes are full of concern. “The doctor doesn’t think you have any damage from the fall, but again, it’s going to be a waiting game to verify everything.”

Of course it is.

“How did you find me?” I ask, thinking of the way Sheffield had gloated about being knowledgeable of my tracker. “He took my shoes.”

Giovanni moves closer to the bed. “We fed him the information about the trackers in your shoes via Sienna.”

“Sienna?”

His former fiancé?

Vito nods.

I guess confusion must still show on my face because Maximo explains. “Anyone can be flipped for a little money and Sienna was the same. Her dad was making her marry Giovanni and she went along with it since it meant she’d marry into Giovanni’s money. With her dad being killed though, she’d inherit her own money and still have her freedom. It didn’t take a lot of convincing to get her on our side.”

That’s crazy.

“But still, how did you…” my voice trails off as Giovanni’s finger trails along my wrist. I look down to find him touching the spot just below my IV where I have a permanent bruise from where I was stuck the last time the doctor treated me. Giovanni taps the spot. “We didn’t need the tracker in your shoes when we had this one.”

The admission makes me feel sick to my stomach and if it didn’t only have water in it, I’d already be throwing up.

I knew that the spot hadn’t healed the way a plain injection mark should have, but I figured I’d just had a bad reaction to the shot and it’d left behind a bruise.

They’d implanted a tracker into me while I was passed out.

Giovanni’s eyes meet mine and he’s practically daring me to say something.

I turn my head, looking away from him. The doctor sends me a sympathetic look, even though I’m almost positive she’s the one who actually did the inserting of the tracker.

“I know your memory seems to be a little fuzzy but since you’re already starting to remember things that’s a good sign.” The doctor moves up to the bed, patting my hand. “You’ll go through some physical therapy and we’ll have to keep an eye on you for a while, but I promise everything is going to be okay.”

Despite her words, I have the distinct feeling that nothing is going to be okay.