Why He FIGHTS: A Dark Billionaire Romance Series (Why He Sins Book 5) Read online

  Why He FIGHTS: A Dark Billionaire Romance

  Book 5

  Mary Madison

  Contents

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  1. Chapter One—Chelsea

  2. Chapter Two—Desmond

  3. Chapter Three—Chelsea

  4. Chapter Four—Desmond

  5. Epilogue—Chelsea

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  Chapter One

  Chapter One—Chelsea

  I kept trying to arrange my thoughts, to stack them neatly on top of each other like building blocks until they formed some clear pattern or a plan of action, but then my eyes would be drawn right back to the pool of blood steadily spreading under Desmond's prone body. The blocks would be knocked apart, hopelessly tumbling and scattering into a senseless pile of raw dread and paralyzed helplessness.

  I had to think. I had to act. I had to do something, anything before it was too late for the man I loved.

  Everything that had brought us to this surreal moment had happened so rapidly that it was almost hard to believe it hadn't all been just a bizarre dream.

  A little over a week ago, Desmond Biros had been nothing but a dim memory I'd treasured from childhood, a dear friend I'd been forced to leave behind at age twelve when my father had had to flee the authorities who wanted to prosecute him for fraud and embezzlement. I'd thought of Desmond now and then in the years since—usually whenever I noticed that his gangster father or brothers had been mentioned in headlines—but I'd never expected to see him in person again. I wasn't even sure that I wanted to, given how humiliated I'd been by my dad's crimes and the suddenness with which I'd had to abandon our friendship.

  Then without warning, the senior partners at Ellis, Ennis, Morrison & Millar—the only law firm I'd been lucky enough to find employment with after passing the bar, given my family's sordid history—assigned me to act as a broker in their most important case: a multi-billion-dollar merger between Stavros Shipping and the Biros clan's business interests... with Desmond as my contact on the Biros side.

  We'd been wary and uncomfortable around each other at first, probably because we were both so afraid to admit that we still had strong feelings for one another—feelings which, upon seeing the adult forms we'd both grown into during the intervening years, instantly and unexpectedly evolved. They’d gone from simple childhood friendship to something more complex and passionate. But once we had gotten over the initial awkwardness, we'd managed to find comfort and joy in each other's bodies later that night.

  Then the dominoes had started to fall with alarming momentum.

  The assassination attempt on Desmond's father, Crazy Joe, by an unknown assailant, was first. A mysterious, masked intruder who had tried to murder me in my hotel room came next. Then the death of Crazy Joe when his would-be killers managed to finish the job. Followed by the all-out gang war that erupted in the aftermath when Desmond's brothers, Junior and Peter, decided to blame the rival Azzarello syndicate and exterminate them down to the last man.

  And now this.

  These thoughts were a grim reminder that even though Desmond was by far my top priority, his wasn't the only body bleeding steadily onto the floor of the apartment.

  I glanced over at the lifeless form of Whitey, the Biros family enforcer, who was roughly the size of a beluga whale. When he'd shown up outside Desmond's place—God, was it only a few minutes ago? It felt like it had been hours!—Desmond and I had naturally assumed he was there to guard us against potential attacks from Azzarello soldiers.

  Instead, Whitey had waited for Desmond to invite him in and then callously shot Desmond in the back, putting a hole in him that looked large enough for a Hummer to drive through.

  By the time Desmond and I had been able to put the hulking triggerman down for good, Desmond had lost so much blood that he'd only been able to cling to consciousness for a few precious moments. Long enough to make me promise not to take him to a hospital, where Desmond's bullet wound—not to mention Whitey's gargantuan corpse—would have led to a call to the police. They, in turn, would probably have immediately relayed that information to Junior and Peter, then turned a blind eye while they sent someone to finish the job.

  But to not call an ambulance—to just stand over Desmond, frozen, with my phone in my hand—felt like the height of lunacy.

  All those years apart from Desmond. Had I really found my way back to him again only to watch him die? Could the universe really be so deliberately cruel to people like us, dangling true happiness in front of our faces only to snatch it away when we dared to reach for it?

  No. I refused to believe that. There had to be something I could do.

  There's nothing you can do, a voice in my head spoke up mockingly. Don't you see that bullet hole? Hell, how could you not? That crater's so massive that satellites can probably see it from space. People don't survive wounds like that one under the best of circumstances, let alone ones where the only person who could possibly help them stands stock-still like a statue while the seconds tick by and the blood keeps pouring out by the gallon. The cops are going to ask you why you let that happen. Fuck, Chelsea, they're probably going to ask you lots of questions—the kind you probably shouldn't answer, or Junior and Peter will shut you up for good for tattling about Biros family business. So you're screwed, babe, and so is Des. That's all there is to it. He needs medical attention in the next few minutes, or he's going to die. And if you can't bring him to an emergency room, then what other options do you have? Zero. Zip. None. It's not like you know some doctor you can just bring him to off the books...

  Sudden clarity pierced my brain like a crystal dagger, and my eyes widened.

  No, I didn't know a doctor in Chicago.

  But it just so happened that I knew a nurse.

  I lunged for my purse and rummaged through it desperately, hoping to find the scrap of paper that had the phone number on it. After the first thirty seconds stretched by and I still didn't have it, I turned the bag upside down. I dumped its contents out onto the kitchen counter, pawing the loose items, lint-fuzzed business cards, and long-forgotten crumpled relics until my fingers closed around it.

  Then I said a silent prayer, dialing the number and squeezing my eyes shut.

  There was no reason he'd answer his phone so late. There was no reason he'd answer a call from a number he didn't recognize. There was no reason he'd remember me. There was no reason he'd agree to do the insane favor I was about to ask of him.

  Just by calling him, I was wasting additional seconds, which could have been spent dialing 9-1-1 instead. They would come, and quickly, and everything else could get worked out later, once the gaping hole in Desmond's torso had been patched up and his life had been saved.

  No, I told myself, the phone still pressed to my ear, this was crazy, idiotic, the worst decision I could possibly make given the situation.

  The ringing stopped, and a bleary voice answered. “Hello? Who is this?”

  “Ernesto, hi.” The words raced out of my mouth, elbowing and jostling each other in a confusing jumble. “It's, um, you might not remember me.
It's Chelsea, from the plane. We were– I was sitting next to you...”

  “Oh! Yeah, hey there.” He was starting to sound more awake, if no less puzzled. “Are you okay? What's going on? You sound weird.”

  “Yeah, sorry, I'm... sorry,” I blurted, trying to get myself under control. This wouldn't work if he couldn't understand what I was trying to tell him. “Sorry, it's just, there's an emergency, my– my friend, the one I, you know...”

  “I remember you talking about him, sure. Is he in some kind of trouble?”

  “He's been hurt.” I took a deep breath, then added, “Shot. He's been shot. He's bleeding. Oh my God, Ernesto, I think he's dying!”

  “Okay,” he replied instantly, his tone clicking into the calm precision of a trained professional. “Then here's what you need to do, all right? Are you listening? You need to hang up the phone with me and call 9-1-1...”

  “I can't!” I wailed. “He made me swear not to! If they report it, the people who did this are going to finish him off! They'll kill him, you understand?”

  Silence.

  “Please,” I sobbed, “please, you have to help him! You can't let him die like this!”

  There was another moment, and when Ernesto's voice came through the phone again. It was aloof and icy with disapproval. “Give me the address. I'll come right over.”

  I did, and he hung up before I could say anything else.

  I started pacing the room in tight circles, waiting for Ernesto's headlights to shine through the front windows so I could open the door for him. It was still unlocked from when Whitey came in behind Desmond, and I hurried over to it, securing it with numb and trembling fingers. I'd been gripping the phone so tightly that my hand had practically locked up in a series of spasms.

  For all I knew, Whitey had been told to call Junior and Peter when he finished with Desmond and me. If so, Desmond's brothers would probably get spooked when they didn't get the call—they'd almost certainly send more men, a lot more, to investigate what had gone wrong and set it right as fast as possible.

  In which case, I was foolish to think a few locks would hold them off. And meanwhile, I had invited Ernesto—an innocent nurse—into the middle of what could quickly become a shooting gallery.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  But what else was I supposed to do? I had never found myself trapped in a nightmare like this one before, where danger was closing in on all sides and every choice seemed to lead to darkness and death.

  I walked over to Whitey, prying the gun out of his dead hand and tucking it into my waistband. If anyone else was coming to assault us, I had no intention of being unarmed again, flailing around for makeshift weapons while bullets were coming at me.

  Then I crouched next to Desmond, taking his head in my lap and stroking his hair softly. His eyelids twitched, and my heart jumped with relief. For a terrible moment, I'd begun to think that it might have been too late, that he was already beyond help. His skin was like wax, white and drawn and glistening with a sheen of cold sweat. His lips were turning blue, and his body jerked and spasmed like a marionette in the hands of a fitful puppeteer.

  “No cops,” he whispered through chattering teeth. He was going into deep shock. “No... hospital. Promise, Chels.”

  “I promise,” I reassured him, wiping his brow with my sleeve and cradling him more tightly. “Someone's coming to help you. We won't take you to a hospital, okay? We're going to keep you safe. You'll be better in no time. You just have to hang on for a little bit longer. Can you do that for me?”

  His head moved, but I wasn't sure whether it was a genuine nod or just another tremor from the chills rippling through him. I took his hand in mine, letting him squeeze it as hard as he could so I would know he was still with me.

  I don't know how many minutes passed while we stayed like that, but as soon as I heard a car pull up out front, I ran to the window—bracing myself, knowing that a hail of bullets could just as easily greet me as a slender Asian man. But thankfully, it was Ernesto, wearing dark clothes and carrying a duffel bag under his skinny arm. He gave me a perfunctory wave, and I ran to the door, unlocking it and throwing it open.

  “He's in here!” I said breathlessly. “Please, hurry!”

  Ernesto nodded without a word of greeting, hustling past me and into the apartment. His eyes briefly flicked over to Whitey's huge body before focusing entirely on Desmond, and he got down on one knee, unzipping his bag.

  Ernesto pulled out the bloody towels that had been staunching the wound and grimaced, hissing air in through his gritted teeth. “You wasted time calling me. He needs to be in an intensive care unit, or he's going to die. Whatever else you're worried about, they'll have security personnel at the hospital. They can assign additional police officers to guard him—”

  “Listen,” I begged, “his father was in an ICU, surrounded by armed guards just last week, and these same people were still able to kill him. He can't go to a hospital. That's why I called you. I'm sorry, but I really didn't have any other choice. If you can't help him, he'll die for sure.”

  Ernesto shrugged, putting on a surgical mask and latex gloves. “Then, I guess I have to help him. And if he dies and I lose my license because I tried to operate on him here instead of in the properly sterilized surroundings, I sure hope you know a veterinarian who's hiring because that's the only job holding a scalpel I'll be able to get from that point on.”

  I could tell he was talking to himself more than me—steeling himself for a risk that could cost him everything, and all for someone who was essentially a total stranger. Would I have done the same if I were in his position?

  No. I knew with a sinking certainty that I would not. I wouldn't have even considered it.

  Ernesto looked over at Whitey's body again, glanced around at some of the fresh bullet holes in the walls, and let out a frustrated sigh. “Damn. There was a gunfight in here, right? So the neighbors probably heard.”

  I'd been so wound up about Desmond's immediate safety that I hadn't even thought about that. For all I knew, the cops were already on their way following reports of gunshots and other noises. They could be there any moment!

  “We need to get him out of here!” I babbled. “We need to take him to your place!”

  “Yeah, I was afraid of that. Come on, help me lift him, and let's get him out to the car.”

  “Thank you.” I threw Desmond's left arm over my shoulder while Ernesto took his right. “Thank you so much.”

  “Don't thank me yet,” Ernesto shot back. “Because once we're done with all this and you and your boyfriend are out of my house, I'll be calling the cops and telling them exactly how this went down. I'll save your friend for you, but I won't lie about a dead body.” His eyes alighted on the gun in my waistband, then rose to meet mine again. “Unless you're planning to shut me up once I'm done helping you?”

  I shook my head quickly. “No, of course not!”

  “Good.”

  We loaded Desmond into the back of Ernesto's car. His limp body flopped to one side, and his blood started to soak into the upholstery.

  “Swell,” Ernesto mumbled. “That'll cost so much for me to have cleaned, you should probably go ahead and shoot me when this is over after all.”

  Poor guy, I thought, throwing myself into the passenger's side seat and slamming the car door. He's probably relying on gallows humor to keep him sane during all this. Can't say I blame him.

  The door to Desmond's apartment was still wide open. Why not? It would just save the cops the hassle of breaking it down to get inside and discover the towering slab of a man quietly rotting inside.

  During the car ride, my mind tried to create a flow chart of the events branching out from what we were doing here—leaving a dead body for the police to find, removing an injured man from a crime scene, trying to flee the wrath of the older Biros brothers. By just about any calculation I could come up with, Desmond and I would either end up murdered or in prison. And in the worst of those calculations
, the same fate awaited Ernesto.

  Still, it was too late to do anything to slow things down or stop them. They'd play out as they played out, and we'd have no choice but to deal with the outcome.

  We pulled up in front of a three-story, gray-stone building with a basement entrance. “Thank God I live on the bottom,” Ernesto said, “or we'd have some serious questions to answer. As it is, maybe anyone who sees us will think he's a friend who's too drunk to walk and we're helping him inside.”

  I nodded and helped him pull Desmond out of the back of the car. Des was groaning faintly, slurring out words that didn't make any sense. Blood was collecting at the corners of his lips. We rushed him down the short flight of cement steps, and Ernesto's keys rattled in his shaking hand as he unlocked his door, allowing us to tumble in as one.

  “Get him to the couch,” Ernesto snapped.

  We unloaded Desmond onto the cushions. “How can I help?” I asked.

  “Say every prayer you can think of,” he answered, pushing up his sleeves, “and stay out of my way.” Ernesto grunted and muttered to himself faintly as he did his best with Desmond—cutting, injecting, taping, stitching, flushing, applying pads and gauze and clamps. His movements were tight and methodical, his shoulders and back as rigid as the trunk of a palm tree.

  As I watched him work from a safe distance, my gaze kept resting on Desmond's face. I wasn't sure what kind of anesthetic Ernesto had pumped into him, but whatever it was, it didn't look like it had knocked him out completely. The muscles in his face and neck were clenching and slithering beneath his pale skin, as though he was in agony.

  But even if he pulled through—and he had to, I couldn't let myself think of the alternative—how much more agonizing would it be for him to come to the realization that his own brothers had tried to kill him? That they had succeeded in killing his father?