Broken Bonds (Club Imperial Series) (4 page)

Chapter Four

Everything swam in dull, painful grays. Emmy tried to focus her thoughts, but there was so much pain, she gave up and disappeared into the gray again. The fog started to congeal, and she tried to swim through it to the brighter clouds, failing. The dark pain behind her swallowed her again.

Slowly, things began to focus. There was a dull throb somewhere on her right. She followed it down and realized the pain was in her arm. Her upper arm had a dull, deep, aching pain which was spread from her elbow to her shoulder, flowing up and down but not going anywhere.

There was another pain in her side. This one felt like someone sliding an icepick between her ribs, and pulling it back out over and over. She grimaced and groaned and tried to push the pain away. She found she couldn’t move her arm.

And then the pain from her head rushed in. Searing and blinding, it felt like no headache she’d ever had. It burned and froze her at the same time, while someone raked her with a serrated knife through her skull. Tears sprang to her eyes, and a choked cough strained through a different sore dull pain in her throat.

“We’re going to have to up the morphine a touch,” someone said, far away.

The tears fell, but there was a sudden rush of sweet relief and she faded into the soft white clouds still cushioning her away from everything around her. She floated on the clouds comfortably, feeling some dull pain in her side and head after a while. But it came and went, and she drifted pleasantly.

“Emmy, please come back.”

It was so nice here, though. Soft, gentle, no worries, no cares. No pain, or at least not too much. She liked it. No horrific thoughts to deal with. No people hitting her. No obligations.

“Emmy, please.”

A lightly calloused hand slipped into hers, and squeezed ever-so-gently.

She was in a bed. Her head hurt, she felt like she had been kicked in the throat. She couldn’t move her arm, and didn’t want to for the pain in it. There was a strange pulling sensation in her side near a needling prick. Over all of that was an oddly calming sensation floating through her, disconnecting her brain from the sensations.

Emmy could see the light of a room filtering through her eyelids. The hand was not a figment of her imagination; someone was holding on. She carefully started blinking her eyes open. The room was bright and the light brought tears to her eyes. She kept trying. The tears fell and a finger wiped them away.

Emmy finally got them open and found everything fuzzy and distorted. She’d been here before; she knew there was a light fixture up there somewhere and she let her eyes relax until they started focusing on the edge of the lights. She briefly thought about how messed up it was that she knew how to wake up from being sedated.

“Emmy?”

She slowly turned her head, and if she could have jumped in shock, she would have. It was not the face her mind was telling her would be there. She was expecting Franz, or worse, Sean.

Nathaniel looked down at her and she could feel him squeeze her hand. “There you are.”

“Conscious?” came a voice she didn’t know.

“Seems like.” Nathaniel held her gaze, a light smile dancing on his lips.

The other voice appeared behind him at his shoulder looking at her. “Well. Ms. Westerly. Welcome back. I’m Doctor Fisckar. I don’t want you to try to talk just yet. You were intubated for twenty-four hours and you had some throat trauma. Mr. Walsh here, will explain what’s gone on, but I want to know what you’re feeling right now. I’ll go through some questions. No shaking your head. Squeeze Mr. Walsh’s hand for me instead. One for yes, two for no.”

Emmy squeezed his hand once, and Nathaniel gave her blinding grin. “She says yes.”

Fisckar nodded and started in on his exam with the yes-no directions in place. The questions he was asking ‘can you feel this’, ‘do you know what happened to you’, made her nervous. She couldn’t remember what happened. Her memory was gone somewhere around the first cosmo, who knew how many days ago.

“Well, I like what I hear, Emmy.” The doctor tried to assure her. “I like it very much. You were lucky Nathaniel was there. He knows the deal, so I’ll let him explain what happened to you. Nathaniel, you can crank the bed up so she can rest at an angle. I’ll send in some drinks, and you can have some Emmy, but slowly.” He looked at her pointedly. “I know you’re going to try talking, but the less you use your voice for a while, the better off you’re going to be.”

She nodded slowly and carefully. The doctor nodded, then shook his head. He turned and walked out of the room, leaving her there with Nathaniel.

“Emmy, what do you remember?”

“How did I get here?” she asked, carrying the words on a breath instead of using her voice.

“I can’t even tell you that until I know what the last thing you remember is,” he said.

“VIP room,” she said. “Robert.”

“Your first client?” He gasped. “That was at seven.” She got very nervous and the tears that welled up this time weren’t from the light. “Oh, no. No, Emmy. Don’t cry. We were just hoping you could tell us who the other person in the room was.”

—
-and brought the bat down on her back. She gasped
—

She shook her head, a little too vigorously.

“Careful,” he said, putting his hand on her cheek. “Less enthusiasm, please.”

“What happened?” she breathed.

Nathaniel clearly hesitated for just a moment. “You got beaten up. Best we can figure, they managed to sneak in and hide in your room in the back. When you went in to…entertain your last client, they jumped you. They had a bat. We caught one and the other one got away.”

“Who?”

“Greg Cortez.”

“Good,” she snapped.

Nathaniel paused again and Emmy didn’t like that. She heard him clear his throat. “He made bail, Emmy.” Emmy could feel her anger rising, which probably wasn’t good because she still didn’t know how badly she’d been hurt. Nathaniel squeezed her hand. “We don’t know exactly what went on in there, and since Greg is gone, we never got his version of the story. Not that we’d believe it anyway.”

She couldn’t stop the tears falling as he told her about how they’d found her already unconscious with both kidneys bruised, broken ribs, a broken arm, a bruised throat and the head injury. It explained all the pain crawling through her body. When he got to the head injury, she reached up with her good arm and touched where they had stitched, and her whole body went limp.

Shaved.

She started shaking and sobbing. Everything hurt then, but she didn’t care. Someone had beaten her up, and hurt her so badly they had to shave part of her hair to stitch her back up. Nathaniel reached for her hand near the shaved hair and she slapped him away angrily. She couldn’t even talk to tell him to leave. She couldn’t do this—this was too many times in the hospital with too many injuries.

He grabbed her one hand with his to stop her flailing around. “Stop. You’re going to hurt something. You’re healing well, stop trying to screw it up.”

“Go away,” she hissed at him. “I’m bad news.”

“Oh, don’t fucking start this, Emmy.” He grimaced.

“Leave.” She tried to pull her hand back.

He leaned in close to her, his breath gentle and warm on her face. “I’m not leaving you. Get that through your head right now, sweetheart. I am
not
leaving.”

She sobbed. “I’m no good for you.”

“You’re right, you’re not good for me. You’re great for me. You’re perfect for me, in all of your fubar-ness. Get over it. I’m not leaving.” He smoothed her hair on the side of her head, and smiled at her. It was a gorgeous smile. “I am glad you’re just as feisty as ever.”

She gave him the finger. “You should go.”

“Nope.” The tone of his voice said the conversation was over. Who exactly was the Dominant here? “I am going to warn you, Detective Garabaldi will be in to talk to you about what happened. I let them into your apartment so they could do a search—”

Emmy grabbed his arm as her throat threatened to close. “What?”

“We couldn’t impede the investigation.”

“Nathaniel.” She felt herself breaking into a cold sweat.

He leaned in close. “We took the room down before they went in.” It was a whisper. “Eight in the morning, we were all there unbolting and disassembling that room. Everything got moved out and replaced with a very cute little second bedroom, suitable for say...a fourteen year old sister to stay in when she came to visit.”

She stared at him. Her brain might still be fuzzy, but she was amazed. He had cleaned out that room, taken everything down and replaced it before the police even got there to check it out. “How?”

“Franz, Albright, Durham, someone named Darien, Victor and another guy from the club. We were in, done and out in about an hour. Everything is in a storage bin that Chantal had Tyrone rent.”

She couldn’t cover her astonishment. “Really?”

“Of course,” he said. “You were beaten bloody, Emmy. I didn’t want your…
our
bedroom habits to cloud what the real issue is. Someone got into that club and beat you up. I want to know who else it was, because no one has seen Greg.” He stood from her bedside.

She gasped and pointed to his arm. “What?!” The cast went from above his elbow down to his fingers and the whole thing sat in a sling.

“The other person nailed me in the arm to get away.” He held up the arm.

Oh, Nathaniel.
She wanted to melt into the sheets and disappear forever from his life. He had kicked the door open, had his arm broken and still managed to save her ass, rearrange her room to keep things private, and now he was here, waiting for her to wake up.
I don’t deserve this.
She started crying again. It seemed like she couldn’t stop the tears lately.

He pressed a kiss to her forehead and it did nothing to help her. “I’m not going anywhere, Emmy. I told you I love you, and I’m not lying. That means I want to stick with you through thick and thin. And we are going to find out who did this.”

Oh, my God. Someone snuck into the club and waited for me.
The thought hit her like a brick. Eric knew the place like the back of his hand. But who was this other person who had been there with him—the person who’d broken Nathaniel’s arm? She truly didn’t remember any of the night past sipping the cosmo in the VIP room. So not only had they beat her up, but they had beaten the memory out of her.

Emmy gasped. “Mom,” she whispered. She was supposed to leave for Boston…soon, she thought.

“I talked to her,” Nathaniel said. “I canceled your flight tomorrow and I’m trying to fly them out to see you next week.”

Them?
Oh. No.

~*~*~

The door popped open and an enormous bouquet of flowers-on-legs walked in. Emmy started giggling at the ridiculousness of the scene and Victor peeked out from behind the flowers. “I like the sound of that, Ms. Westerly.” He ambled over to the window ledge, and plunked down the vase. The flowers bounced a bit, then settled. “There. Did I out-do my brother?”

She laughed. “The other one is his.”

Victor looked over at it. “Well, shit. Those are gorgeous.” He studied the delicate sunrise hybrid roses sitting there. “At least mine’s bigger.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she answered. Victor looked at her astonished, then cracked up laughing. Emmy giggled again. “You know, you two don’t have to compete for my affection.”

“We’re not.” He shrugged, and grinned. “We all know you love me most. We’re just trying to out-do each other. It’s a brother thing. Completely harmless.”

“Not if you keep buying me these ridiculous bouquets,” Emmy said. “People might start to think you’re straight if you keep this up.”

“Oh, dear.” He looked very concerned. “Can’t have that. I’ll have to make sure the next bouquet looks gay.”

“Looks gay?” Emmy gave him a confused look. Victor turned and raised an eyebrow—and then they both burst into laughter.

“Well, then.” Victor took a moment to catch his breath. “I’ll slip back into the role of boss for a moment. I brought you some stuff you can help me with while you’re all laid up here.” He pulled a brief case off his shoulder. “Here’s your remote workstation, and the reports are all in the second pocket.”

“You bought me a laptop?”

“Yes,” he answered, looking around, freezing mid-motion. “Um. That’s what you would need to do the work, right?”

“Victor, you’re as bad as your brother,” she chided. “I can use a loaner laptop.”

“Nope.” He swung the bag up on the bed. “You’re my admin, you get a laptop.”

Emmy pinched the bridge of her nose. The brothers really had become overly generous with her. Flowers, outside food every night, a new smartphone, and now a laptop. They were pushing her patience; she just couldn’t turn off the Domme and accept it like they wanted her to. But still she did appreciate the gifts. It was kind of fun to be spoiled by the two of them.

She had been horribly fuzzy and confused when she first woke up with Nathaniel standing there. She couldn’t think straight, she wasn’t sure what was going on. Emmy heard the story he told, but because she didn’t remember any of it, it was hard to believe. Once they started to dial back the morphine for real, she started to believe it. She had a few flashes of a bat and shoe, but nothing more.

Doctor Fisckar was in twice a day to check on her. He was impressed with how everything was healing. He’d said the drain was probably going to be coming out in a day or so. The huge cast for her arm was temporary to make sure the pins set. It would be coming off the day she left, and replaced with smaller, waterproof cast that would give her some use of her lower arm. The stitches were dissolvable and the cut had already scabbed over.

Emmy had carefully re-combed her hair with the help of Chantal. Chantal was brilliant with hair, as it turned out, and was able to hide the shaved area even if she couldn’t quite get the stitches hidden. She didn’t care about people seeing the stitches; they’d be gone in about ten days. It was the bald patch that bothered her.

First world problems. She and Chantal had laughed about that.

Emmy was grateful for such a problem.

Chantal had suggested putting vitamin E directly on it to minimize the scarring. Emmy cringed at the word scar. More scars she didn’t want to think about. At least it would mostly be hidden. Chantal had told her the version of the story she knew, and it was clear what had happened was really as bad as everyone was telling her. The woman was in tears by the end of her story as they carted Emmy away in the ambulance.

Emmy and Nathaniel had it out a few times already about him staying and helping too much. She kept telling him she was bad for him, but he didn’t seem to see it. He had a broken arm because of her, and it didn’t bother him in the least. She didn’t want to see him hurt again. He was stubborn though, and there was something enjoyable about always butting heads with him.

Franz had come in and given her his side as well. The story was just getting worse and worse as more people told her what had happened. Franz, however, had a secondary level of pissed about the situation because someone on his staff had not only let them in, but showed them where she was, and opened her door so they could hide inside. He had locked down and canceled all back room appointments that weekend to accommodate the cops who were being very discreet about the whole thing. But that, Emmy knew, was a huge chunk of revenue.