Page 52 of Brutal Knight

Once I get her into the ER, everything starts to move fast. Several people rush toward me, and one of my mother’s old doctors is suddenly in front of me, her hair pushed back from her face. She looks serious, and I snap back to reality just as she starts talking.

“Mr. O’Reilly? What are we dealing with?”

Dr. Weathers wasn’t around much after my mother lapsed into a coma. She had no way of helping at that point, although she regularly checked in with us.

No one could save my mother, but maybe they can save Willow.

“Overdose. Demerol, I think,” I say, glancing behind her. Willow is gone, wheeled away somewhere I can’t see. “She was clean. Almost a week.”

“All right. We’ll take care of her. You know where to wait. Don’t worry.”

I nod and watch her walk away, but I can’t help feeling like there’s a good chance this will end badly. I don’t even know how long Willow was on the floor before I found her. I don’t know if she was unconscious or worse.

With nothing but the white walls to keep me company, I can feel anger start to burn its way through me. It boils over into fury too quickly, unchecked by anything else. I’m alone with nothing but the frustration of reality, of knowing that it was too simple to think Willow was perfectly fine.

She spent years as an addict. One week with me wasn’t going to change that.

And her father. That bastard showed up at just the wrong time, probably driving her over the edge. What he did to her was unforgivable, and I can’t even fully blame her for being so desperate she needed to get away.

I hate that she’s an addict, but it’s easy to see why she used drugs to escape. First her father, then Dmitri—all she’s known are useless men who let her down. They never deserved her.

And now, I’m not sure I’ll have a chance to prove I could do so much better.

I’m sitting on one of the hard plastic chairs in the hallway when Lachlan rounds the corner, the others right behind him. I almost don’t want to look at them. I know what this is like. It means a lot that they even came.

Aiden crosses his arms, glancing toward the double doors to one side. “They took her in?”

“Yeah. I don’t know—I want to say it’ll be fine, but...”

But we know better.

Lachlan runs a hand through his hair. “We need to figure out what we’re going to do.”

“What we’ll do?” I echo. I can hear an edge in my voice, but I can’t take the words back.

I’m defensive, I know. I bite my tongue when Finn and Aiden exchange a look. I don’t need them thinking I’ve somehow gone crazy, bending over backward for someone who isn’t worth it.

Willow is worth it. I know it.

“You know just as well as we do that she’s betrayed us before,” Lachlan says.

Aiden nods sharply. “She’s betrayed us once. After she supposedly wanted to help.”

“That’s not fair,” I reply. “You know why. You know Dmitri—”

“There’s only so many excuses we can make,” Lachlan says shortly. “You realize that. She’s a liability.”

“She’s connected to our family by marriage now,” Aiden points out. “And she’s making bad choices.”

I can’t believe them. I know what they’re saying is true in part, but it’s also ignorant of everything else. Dmitri was the problem. We all know that. His abuse drove Willow to do things she wouldn’t have done otherwise, and we’re in no position to judge her.

“I would have thought you’d understand,” I tell Aiden. “And we’re not exactly on moral high ground. We went after an innocent man before, remember?”

Lachlan levels a hard stare at me. I can feel just how much I’m toeing the line.

They would never cut me out of the family just for an argument. One of our strengths is how we were all allowed to fight as kids, allowed to work out our problems all together. We know how to hurt one another, but we’ve never done permanent damage.

We grew up learning to respect each other. We grew up learning to fight for what we believed, and to know that bruises heal.

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