Page 4 of Enzo

When the fabric came free, the full extent of his injuries hit me like a gut punch. Blood-smeared scars mapped his thighs and hips, carved into him jagged and uneven. Some were old, their edges faded to silvery lines, while others were fresh angry welts still crusted with dried blood. The flesh stretched tight across each scar, puckered and rigid, a painful map of violence. Whoever had done this hadn’t just hurt him—they’d claimed him, marked him with pain as if he were nothing more than property. Old cuts had been reopened, their surfaces raw and ragged. And then there was a cock cage—filthy metal, rusted in places, and cruelly tight. Parts of his body had swollen around the device, angry and infected.

“Jesus…” I whispered. “How long do you think...”

“Too fucking long,” Doc said, grimly. “Are you sure you wanna?—”

“Fix it!” I snarled.

“Your dime.”

“What about his head, he hit it when he fell back?—”

“Head is the last of his worries,” Doc said.

The hours dragged on, each minute feeling stretched thin as Doc worked—examining, injecting, poking, and cutting away damaged tissue. Crimson smears of blood marked the towels, and the scent of antiseptic mingled with a coppery tang. Doc’s fingers were sure and precise; his gruff curses muttered as he stitched and bandaged with grim focus. I didn’t know his backstory—no one did—he came, fixed, charged us, and went. That was all I cared about right now.

The rest of his body had taken the brunt of whatever nightmare he’d escaped from, and Doc worked to clean and repair what he could. By the end, his arms shook with exhaustion, but the patient was still breathing—weak and shallow but alive.

“By morning, he’s gonna be dead.” Doc wiped his blood-streaked hands on a rag. His voice was flat, emotionless—a man who’d seen too many close calls to sugarcoat the truth. “You have a cleaner you can use? Someone who can handle the body quietly?”

“He won’t die,” I said, my voice low and fierce. The words felt like a vow, something I had to will into existence. “Not after everything he’s been through. Not here.”

Doc looked skeptical, but he didn’t argue. “I want twenty for this,” he said.

I winced inside. Twenty would wipe me out and leave me scrambling to pay for anything else, but I nodded anyway. I had no choice but didn’t hesitate for a moment.

He wiped his hands on a towel, pulled out his phone, tapped in something, and a moment later, my screen buzzed with a message—encrypted account details. “We’re doing this, now? Here?” I asked, eyeing the scalpel he’d flicked into his hand as if it were an extension of his fingers.

“Yep,” Doc said, his tone grim and final.

“Jesus…” I muttered, but I took the towel from him, and tried to dry my fingers, then opened my phone and started a transfer from the emergency fund—god knows what Logan would say to that, but I was good for it. Logan might well manage the business side of Redcars, but he was here every day, and he was one of us—an ex-con with a second chance thrown at him. There was no turning back now. I swallowed the rising panic. The man was too fragile to survive the night, and I wasn’t sure I’d know what to do if things started to go south.

Doc’s nose wrinkled as he stepped back from the bed, pulling off his gloves and tossing them into the overflowing trash. “Get the bits you can reach clean,” he said, voice low and grim. “Keep the wounds dry and burn every bit of medical waste.” He picked up what remained of the cock cage—a twisted piece of corroded metal crusted with dried blood—and turned it over in his hands. “Trafficking, maybe? Kept for sex? There’s fucking scarring around his cock and ass,” His face hardened, and for the first time that night, there was something in his expression resembling compassion.

He glanced at his watch. “It’s six a.m.,” he said.

I felt my shoulders sag under the exhaustion. It had been hours since we’d dragged the victim inside, and the adrenaline that had kept me moving was starting to crash. My arms ached from holding him, and my eyes burned from strain. But sleep wasn’t an option—not with him still clinging to life.

“Call me if he’s still breathing by mid-afternoon, and I’ll come back. Five for each visit—cash only for those.”

Cash? Fucks sake, I was already cleared out. “Sure,” I agreed. He tossed boxes onto the bed, snapping instructions as he worked. “Take this—it’s for infection. Give him this every four hours for the pain. That one goes up on the drip when the first bag runs out,” he said, pointing to a clear IV pouch filled with something that looked more like cloudy broth than medicine. “Extra pain meds in that one,” he added, shoving a smaller vial into my hand. “Don’t give him more than one dose every six hours, or you’ll tank his breathing.”

I panicked. “Can you write it down?”

He rolled his eyes, “No fucking point. He’ll be dead in an hour.”

I lost my shit then, crowding him against the wall, both of our shirts slick with the patient’s blood. “Write. It. The. Fuck. Down.”

He confronted me, asshole, and if we didn’t need him, I’d have had my hands around his throat, and I’d have fucking choked him out in an instant, and snapped his neck even quicker.

No, I didn’t know a cleaner, but I could find one if I needed to, but he didn’t need to know that.

He shoved me away, took his phone out, tapped some instructions and messaged me with them.

When he left, Rio and Jamie returned to the door, lingering inside. Rio’s gaze flicked between me and the man on the bed, concern etched into the lines on his face. “How much?” Rio asked quietly.

“Twenty,” I said, my voice hoarse because my throat ached.

“And?” Rio pressed.

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