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We grew silent as we watched Doc stitch Shark up. Despite the banter me and Vienna had shared, I could feel his heart beneath my head, and knew he was just as panicked as I was.

“You get it, don't you, hair buddy?” He said softly, so softly only I could hear. My heart clenched at the raw emotion in his voice.

“I get it, Ven,” I said, pulling back to smile up at him. “Sometimes humour is all we've got.”

“I always did like you.” he placed a kiss atop my head, and we both took a brief moment of comfort in each other's arms. A split second of vulnerability before we pulled apart and went back to mocking Shark.

Jenna came back into the room with enough beers for everyone, and the three of us stood at the end of the bed, each staring down at the patient.

“I feel like I'm in a zoo,” he muttered to Doc.

“This is gonna leave a nasty scar. You might have a touch of the zebra markings about you.”

“Doc, man, don't you join in, too.”

“You leave the Doc man alone,” Vienna said, shaking his head.

“After all he's done for you, and you're going to tell him he can't join the fun? That’s shocking, that is,” I said.

“I raised you to be a better man than that,” Jenna said after me. We all grinned at each other and clinked our glasses together.

“Dante wouldn't have let you behave this way,” Shark hissed through the pain as the needle went through his skin.

“Only because he would have been too busy taking the piss, we wouldn't have got a word in edgeways,” Vienna laughed.

I smiled back, but my heart leapt into my throat.

Vienna was right. Sometimes humour was all we had. But hearing Dante's name was a stark reminder of why we were even able to mock Shark in the first place. And it was also a reminder that after Doc was done, we were all going to have to sit down and come up with a serious plan about how we were going to fix this.

Chapter 3

Dante

Left.

Right.

Left.

Left.

Five minutes.

Left.

Right.

Another left.

As we drove, I closed my eyes and mentally pictured the road. I knew this place like the back of my hand. All I had to do was remember these turnings, and I could get my bearings.

I had been bundled out of the back of the house and shoved into the boot of a car with my hands tied behind my back and a bag over my head.

As if I’d be able to see anything in the boot anyway, the stupid fucks.

I might not have been able to see, but what I could do was feel the way my body moved. Feel the rhythm I was pulled in as the car rounded corners or took sharp turns.

Doing this was second nature to me. I had been on a motorbike since I was old enough to walk. First on the back of my dad’s or grandads’, and then my own before I even grew fucking pubes. My body was finetuned to turn with the bends, to let the road guide me, rather than me guiding the bike.

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