Page 153 of The Carnage We Keep

“Cybercrime is getting scary, Dame. Identify theft is no joke⁠—”

“Bella.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry you thought I ghosted you.”

She shrugs and goes back to picking at her nail polish.

“For the record, the you up? text was ironic. Obviously.”

“Oh, naturally.”

Her mouth twists as she continues to pick at her fingernails. “I was making fun of people who send you up? texts.”

I nod solemnly. “At one forty-six in the morning.”

“Duhh.”

I grin. “So, we’re officially abandoning the whole hacked phone story?”

“Oh, fuck you.”

I chuckle, wincing a little as I pull on my fresh stitches. Bella cracks a very small smile as she looks down at her hands.

“I wasn’t ignoring you,” I say quietly.

“Well, yeah.” She glances at the IV running into my arm. “I get that now.” Her head cants to the side as she looks at me. “What the fuck happened, anyway?”

I give her the short version. Joey Dicheara is already well-known in the New York underworld as a piece of shit. But when I got intel two nights ago that he’d been picked up by Sorel and put in charge of rebuilding and then running Carl Bigsby’s house of horrors, I decided it was time to pay Joey a visit.

Unfortunately, my intel was not entirely accurate.

Joey wasn’t alone in his office in an old warehouse in Brooklyn like he was supposed to be. So what was meant to be an easy trip into the city to take care of one pedo piece of shit turned into two of Joey’s guys surprising me before I could tranq him.

Needless to say, the "clean, controlled" evening abruptly ended there. By the time his guys were down, Joey had a gun in his hand and was out the window and halfway down the fire escape. I managed to tear the old air conditioner unit out of the wall and drop it on him. But unfortunately, right as I did, he got off a lucky shot, winging me in the ribs hard enough to send me over the railing and straight into the fucking Gowanus Canal.

Bella’s eyes go huge.

“Wait-wait-wait.” A look of excited glee spreads over her face. “That’s how you killed him?!”

My brow furrows. “I’m slightly uncomfortable with how quickly you’ve glossed over the part where I got shot and fell into a toxic dump of a canal.”

“Yeah, but…” she shrugs and broadly gestures at me. “I mean, you seem fine?”

She reaches over and pulls my chart off the foot of the bed.

“This says you were grazed. A medical doctor said you were grazed. Not shot.”

My jaw sets as I frown at her. “What is wrong with you?”

“Soooo much,” she grins. “In all seriousness, quit milking it, Mr. Stolen Valor.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Bella,” I mutter. “I’m going to be fine, Bella. No need to worry, Bella,” I growl dryly.

She rolls her eyes. “Dude, you’re in a hospital, not the jungles of Vietnam. Calm your tits.”

She grins impishly at me, knowing damn well that she’s pushing my buttons.