“How bad?” I whispered into Maya’s shoulder.
“Bad,” Kael said, his voice tight and strained. “Shoulder, side, thigh. He lost a lot of blood, Indigo. They’re still working to patch him up.”
I pulled away from Maya, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. “Who did it? He has so many enemies—”
“Hehadmany enemies,” Caine corrected, his voice flat and dangerously sharp. He stepped toward me, his eyes searching mine with a terrifying intensity. “He cleaned house completely while you were gone. The only person still breathing who wants him dead right now... is Cooly.”
My stomach dropped through the floor. “No. Cooly was with me. He’s been at the studio the whole time. We were—”
The elevator dinged.
Cooly stepped into the waiting room, calm as a summer pond, his hands tucked casually into his pockets.
Kael moved like lightning.
One second Cooly was standing there—the next, Kael’s fist cracked squarely across his jaw with a sickening, heavy thud. He didn't even give him a chance to speak. Cooly staggered back against the wall, crimson blood immediately blooming on his lip.
“What the fuck, man?” Cooly yelled, his eyes flashing with sudden darkness. He swung back hard, catching Kael square in the ribs.
They crashed violently into a row of plastic waiting room chairs, the sound of metal hitting linoleum echoing through the hallway as they traded feral, desperate punches.
“Stop!” I screamed, the sound ripping raw from my chest. I threw myself directly between them, shoving at their chests. “Get the fuck off each other! This is a hospital!”
I pushed Kael back with both hands, my strength fueled by pure, unadulterated panic, while Raziel stepped in and grabbed Cooly from behind, pinning his arms to his sides.
“My husband is in the fucking operating room and y’all are fighting?” My voice cracked, a heavy sob finally breaking through. I looked at Cooly, and for a second, all I saw was the complication he represented. The guilt. The mess. “Bye, Cooly. Just... go. Please.”
Cooly wiped the smear of blood from his split lip, his dark eyes locked onto mine. He looked at me like I’d just betrayed him, like the three years we shared in New York were being erased by the blood on Malachai’s shirt. He gave me a single, stiff nod.
“I’ll be outside if you need me, Midnight.”
Then he turned and walked out, his stride as steady and unbothered as it had been when he first walked in.
The waiting room fell into a heavy, suffocating silence, broken only by the distant, rhythmic beep of a heart monitor from somewhere down the hall. Maya came back to my side, rubbing my back as I stood there shaking, my vision blurred by a fresh wave of tears.
“You okay?” she whispered.
I shook my head, staring at the double doors Cooly had just disappeared through, then toward the ominous red light of the operating room.
No. I was not okay.
Chapter 37
Indigo
The machines around Malachai beeped in a steady, maddening rhythm.
Four days.
Four fucking days.
The doctors said one of the bullets had collapsed his lung. They called it a pneumothorax. I hated the word. Hated the clinical sterility of it. The Hand of God had been reduced to a web of wires, plastic tubes, and flashing monitors.
I sat beside his bed, swallowed up in one of his oversized black hoodies that still smelled faintly of his cologne, my legs pulled up under me in the stiff hospital chair. His hand was warm beneath mine, the skin rough and familiar. That warmth was the only thing keeping me grounded, the only proof I had that he’d be okay eventually. But eventually wasn’t coming fast enough.
I rubbed my thumb gently over his bruised knuckles.
“You’re being fucking dramatic with this coma,” I whispered, my voice rough and cracked from days of crying and a complete lack of sleep. “You know that, right?”