Page 75 of Chaos Crown

Chapter Seven

Cairo

I slammed into my father’s house, leaving the rest of them to haul an unconscious piece of uniformed trash.

“De Souza? Dad?”

Thud.

My head snapped up. Taking off, I bounded up the steps two at a time. My father’s door banged into the opposite wall with a splintering crack that assured I broke something.

Ivy leaned over my father, holding a pair of scissors to his throat.

“Get the fuck off him!” I raced across the room and heaved her up, smothering her soft cry in my chest. Quickly I pulled her back and away from him.

“Son?” The thin rasp came from the broken wreck on the bed who I assumed was my father.

He looked terrible. His face was a mottle of bruises in various stages of healing. His left arm was in a sling while the right wrist was encased in the bandage, and that was just the parts of him that was visible. Dad was covered in blankets, but they weren’t covering the hefty, sturdy lump they should be. My father was starved. Beaten. Broken.

“Let... her go...”

“Let her go? She was trying to slit your fucking throat.”

“I had plenty of time to do that before you got here,” said a dry voice. Ivy tried to untangle from me. “I’m the one doing the fixing.”

“She’s... telling the truth,” he rasped. “She’s helping me, Cairo. Let her go.”

What he said made no sense, but then, neither did another, closer look at him. My father was bandaged and in bed with a glass of water and painkillers next to him. Dante sure as hell didn’t do all of that, so—

Ivy’s caring for the man she wants dead as badly as anyone in the Black Letter Crew.

As if to drive that thought home, Ivy got free of me and rescued the scissors from where she dropped it. She bent over my father and I bent over her, watching her closely.

Dad had a nasty, shallow cut on his neck. Looked like Ivy sewed it closed and was now snipping off the extra thread. She was gentle applying clean gauze and wound tape.

“Where did you learn to do this?” I asked as footsteps sounded on the landing.

“Once again, I must credit my farm education. When the animals get hurt, you can either keep shelling out for an expensive vet bill, or pay attention when they fix them up the first time.”

“Well, I have been... called an old goat,” Dad croaked.

They both laughed. Though my father’s was more a rattling wheeze. I narrowed on the both of them.

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