Chapter 2
"No..." Alistair choked out, his face buried in the crook of Ronan’s neck. His breathing was shallow, hitched, whistling with an awful, wet strain. His free hand clawed at his own chest, right over his heart, clutching the thick wool of his overcoat as if trying to rip something out from between his ribs. "No... it’s... the shock. Just... the damp."
"The hell it is. You're shaking like a dry leaf."
Ronan hoisted Alistair higher, feeling the unnatural heat radiating off the nobleman's frame. Alistair was always cold to the touch—refined, cool-blooded, composed—but right now, his skin burned with a sudden, spiking fever that Ronan could feel straight through his wool coat.
"I can walk," Alistair whispered harshly, though he made no move to push Ronan away. In fact, for a split second, his forehead pressed harder into Ronan's skin, a sound of muffled, agonizing endurance slipping past his bitten lips. "Get us... to the car. Before their backup arrives."
Ronan didn't argue. He kept his arm clamped around Alistair’s waist, taking eighty percent of the man’s weight, and half-carried him across the rain-slick planks toward the armored black town car idling at the edge of the wharf.
***
The reinforced door clicked shut, sealing out the wailing sirens of the harbor patrol and the relentless hiss of the downpour.
Ronan cranked the heater to maximum, tore off his ruined tactical vest, and threw a heavy cashmere blanket over Alistair’s shoulders. Alistair sat slumped against the leather upholstery of the rear passenger seat, his eyes half-closed, head tilted back against the headrest.
He looked entirely shattered.
Ronan climbed into the driver’s seat, adjusted the rearview mirror, and stared at his master. His chest ached—not from the bullet, which had left nothing behind, but from the terrifying sight of Alistair looking so fragile.
"Drink this," Ronan ordered, twisting the cap off a silver flask of brandy from the console and passing it back.
Alistair didn't open his eyes immediately. When he did, the silver-gray irises were clouded with an exhaustion so profound it made Ronan's throat tighten. Alistair raised a trembling hand, took the flask, and touched it to his bloodless lips. He took a tiny sip, winced, and pressed a hand flat against his sternum.
A harsh, rattling cough seized him.
Alistair doubled over, muffling the fit into a dark silk handkerchief. The spasms wracked his slender frame for nearly half a minute, each hack sounding heavy, congested, and agonizingly deep. Ronan watched him in the mirror, his knuckles white around the leather steering wheel.
"That cough has been getting worse for three months," Ronan said, his tone straddling the line between insubordinate worry and raw anger. "You told me it was bronchitis from the winter drafts. You told me the family physician had it under control."
Alistair carefully folded the handkerchief, concealing the inside fold with deliberate speed before sliding it into his breast pocket.
"Julian has given me a new tonic," Alistair murmured, his voice hoarse, scraping like gravel. "It takes time to settle the lungs. You know my constitution has never been robust, Ronan. I am a scholar and a merchant, not a prize fighter."
"You don't need to be a prize fighter, but you need to see a real hospital. A specialist in the capital." Ronan shifted the town car into gear, tires biting into the wet asphalt as he accelerated away from the docks. "That wasn't just bronchitis back there on the pier. You nearly went down the second the shooting stopped. Your heart was hammering so hard I could hear it against my ribs."
Alistair turned his face toward the rain-streaked window, watching the neon reflections of the city blur into long, bloody streaks across the glass.
"It was the adrenaline," Alistair said softly. "Seeing a caliber .45 aimed at your heart from three paces away is not an experience one digests lightly. Even if you treat your own mortality like a tavern joke."
Ronan let out a low, rueful snort. "It's not a joke. It's an occupational hazard. And as long as I'm breathing, nobody puts a finger on you. That was the bargain."
"A bargain," Alistair echoed, the word tasting bitter on his tongue. "You think our lives are a balance sheet."
"I think you pay me a fortune to be your wall," Ronan said, glancing at him through the mirror. "And I happen to be the best damn wall money can buy. That's three ambushes this month, Alistair. The Morvath Syndicate isn't just sending street thugs anymore. Those three back there had military-grade suppressors and hollow-point ammo. They knew our route from the northern warehouse."
Alistair didn't seem surprised. His expression remained frozen in that pale, aristocratic melancholy that Ronan found both mesmerizing and deeply infuriating.
"The Morvath family wants the municipal shipping charters," Alistair said quietly, his hand still lingering unconsciously over his chest, his fingers lightly tapping against his sternum as if checking for something broken. "My family has held the northern rail and river rights for three generations. If I refuse to sell, they cannot move their contraband through the city without paying astronomical tariffs. They have realized that removing me is cheaper than bribing the city council."
"Then let them try," Ronan snarled, a vicious, protective heat flaring in his gut. He tapped his own chest with a heavy thumb. "They have to get through me first. And as you saw tonight, they don't make lead heavy enough to put me in the dirt."
Alistair didn't smile. He didn't offer a dry, affectionate quip.
Instead, he turned his head slowly back from the window, his gaze locking onto Ronan's reflection in the rearview mirror. The intensity in Alistair's eyes was terrifying—a mixture of agonizing tenderness, helpless rage, and a grief so profound it seemed to pull the oxygen straight out of the car.
"Stop saying that," Alistair whispered.
Ronan blinked, taken aback by the venom in the nobleman's whisper. "What?"
"Stop talking as if your body is made of stone. Stop throwing yourself into the line of fire as if your life belongs to the wind." Alistair's voice rose, cracking at the edges, a desperate, shuddering tremor vibrating through every syllable. "You are flesh and blood, Ronan! You bleed! You break! Do you understand me? You are not immortal!"
Ronan stared at him through the glass. He had never seen Alistair Vance lose his composure like this. In the ballrooms of high society, surrounded by corrupt politicians and venomous rivals, Alistair was an untouchable statue of manners and ice. Even when assassins broke through the study windows two years ago, Alistair hadn't raised his voice.
Yet here he was, shaking with fury, his knuckles pressed so hard into his thighs that the dark fabric strained.
"Alistair..." Ronan began gently, his brash demeanor softening into something careful, almost tender. "I'm careful. I know what I'm doing."
"You took a bullet to the chest tonight!" Alistair snapped, his chest heaving as another wave of shallow, pained breaths overtook him. "You didn't take cover! You stepped between him and me, and you took it point-blank!"
"Because if I took cover, it would have hit you," Ronan said simply, without a shred of hesitation. "And you wouldn't have survived it."
On iPhone, notifications need PulpTale on your Home Screen:
1. Tap the Share button in Safari, then "Add to Home Screen".
2. Open PulpTale from your Home Screen and we'll ask again.
