Chapter 3 - Blood on the Linoleum
Getting Dante—as she would later learn he was called, though he offered no last name—up the two flights of exterior metal stairs felt like hauling an engine block. Between Mave's wiry strength and the dog, whom Mave quickly named Brutus, they managed to drag him across the threshold of apartment 2B.
The apartment was tiny: a microscopic kitchen bleeding into a living room dominated by a sagging floral sofa and towering stacks of library books.
Mave kicked the door shut, locking the deadbolt with a sharp click. "Get him on the couch," she instructed Brutus, who immediately trotted over, bracing his muscular body so Mave could ease Dante down without jarring his torso.
Dante groaned, his eyes snapping open as white-hot pain flared through his body. His hand immediately went to his empty holster before realizing his weapon was long gone.
"Relax, tough guy, nobody's packing heat here except my landlord, and he only has a broom," Mave said, already rushing to the bathroom. She emerged with a rusty metal first-aid kit, a stack of clean dish towels, and a bottle of cheap isopropyl alcohol.
She dropped to her knees beside the couch and unbuttoned the ruined shirt. Brutus sat sentinel right beside her, his amber eyes fixed intently on her hands, watching every move with fierce intelligence.
"This is going to hurt," Mave warned, pouring a generous splash of alcohol over a washcloth.
When the cloth touched the jagged entry wound on his side, Dante didn't flinch, though a muscle in his jaw feathered violently. The bullet had passed clean through, but it had torn through muscle and missed his ribs by a fraction of an inch.
"You've taken a bullet before," she observed, her voice softening slightly as she expertly packed the wound with sterile gauze from her kit, taping it down securely.
"More than once," Dante ground out, his voice barely a whisper. He studied her hands—rough, calloused from years of carrying heavy trays and scrubbing grease traps. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why bring me here? You could have left me by the dumpster. You would have been safe."
Mave taped the final piece of gauze down and sat back on her heels, wiping a stray strand of hair from her forehead with the back of her wrist. "Because living in this city means watching people get chewed up every single day. I'm sick of pretending I don't see it."
Dante stared at her for a long, heavy moment. The harsh fluorescent light of the kitchen revealed the true extent of his features: sharp, aristocratic cheekbones, jet-black hair slicked back with sweat and rain, and an aura of quiet, deadly power that even blood loss couldn't diminish.
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"My name is Dante," he said finally.
"Mave. Now rest, Dante. Because tomorrow morning, you're going to tell me who was trying to kill you, and more importantly, how we keep them from finding us."
