A Dirty Business (Kings of New York #1)(25)

I took it, pressed it to her foot. She started to balk, but she was so drunk that a second later, she was passed out.

I hated dealing with drunk people, but it was always worse when it was your parent.

We worked in silence as I cleaned all of her cuts, disinfected them, and then bandaged each one. I wrapped both her feet and her hand, and as one unit, we both bent to pick her up and placed her on the bed.

I stepped back.

Her breathing was deep but ragged at the same time, and her bathrobe fell open. She was still in her pajamas. “She needs stitches.”

Leo nodded, his phone in hand. “I know. I’ll make a call.”

A call.

Right.

Easier to handle this having them come here, then taking her in.

Leo was saying, “Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Ben. She’s passed out, so the sooner the better.”

He’d called one of the medics that he played poker with, which made sense. Ben could do the stitches, no problem, and Ben wouldn’t say anything. He never did. We were a community in that way, but for a moment, I wished he would say something because this was not the first time Leo had called Ben over for something like this.

I knew it wouldn’t be the last either.

He hung up and moved to the bed. “We need to put her in clothes. He can’t see her like this.” Meaning he didn’t want Ben to see the vomit.

I put a hand on his arm, stopping him. “He can see her like this.”

“Your mom would be horrified.”

I nodded at her. “Obviously not because she’s in this state. He’s seen worse.” I gave him a look, moving for the door. “We’ve all seen worse.”

I went downstairs because while I couldn’t do anything more to fix that mess, not unless I wanted to finance another trip to rehab, I went to find the mess that I could clean up. Rounding the corner for the dining room, I saw all the smashed plates on the ground.

My mom had been ambitious in her drunken fit. She’d cleaned out all the expensive dining sets she got from her mother-in-law. I started cleaning.

There might’ve been a joke there somewhere. I was too tired to find it.



Ben had come and gone.

My mom was sleeping it off. Her clothes had been changed and she was snuggled into her bed. Leo found me in the living room, a beer in hand and the game on the television.

He sighed, taking the second beer that I handed to him, and bypassed me for the lounge chair that my dad used to sit in. He sank down and put up his feet. “Score?”

“Twenty to seven.”

“Fourth quarter. They need to get going, don’t they?”

I ignored that because we were pretending we were both rooting for our city’s team, but Leo was really a Rams fan and I was actually a Bengals fan. Neither team was playing today. “This was really all because I watered down one of her bottles?”

He shrugged, gripping his beer and taking a long drink. “Who knows. She mentioned a call from her sister.”

“What?” My attention snapped to him. The game was forgotten. “My aunt?”

He looked up, dragging his gaze from the television before clueing in that this was a big deal. A real big deal. His eyes widened a little. “Yeah. She’s got two sisters, right?”

“Which one was it?” She didn’t care for the older one. My mom always griped she was spoiled, but the younger one was a whole different ordeal. They’d been close growing up until my aunt met her current husband and conversation had come to a halt. It wasn’t a good situation. “She live up north or the one who lives in Alabama?”

“The one up north.”

The younger one.

I sat up straighter. “Did she say anything? How’d the call go? What’d my aunt say?”

He was frowning at me, and I was clueing in here, too, because I was realizing it was the aunt that we didn’t talk about. Leo was family, but I was guessing he didn’t know about her.

“She didn’t, just said she called and that was it. She started in about you right away, and I took my cues from there.”

Fuck.

That’d been it?

Damn.

I’d have to come back and talk to my mom when she was sober and not wanting to hate me.

I reached up, fixing my hair before I sighed, needing to let it go. I couldn’t do anything about it right now. “You staying?”

He was quiet before a long, “Yeah. I’ll stay.”

I stood, grabbing my coat.

“That’s it? You’re leaving?”

I turned back in the doorway and shrugged. “We both know how this goes. I don’t know why you’re choosing to stick around, but if you are, then I’m leaving. I have to work tonight anyways.”

His whole face flinched, and he took a drag from his beer. “You shouldn’t be working at that place. You need extra money, there’s other places.”

“What do you know about where I work?”

He’d brought this up before, but I never pushed. I always assumed it was because it was a nightclub and thought he wanted me to work at the local pub where he spent time, where others in our industry hung out. Now knowing what I knew, did he know too?

“Nothing, just . . . there’s rumors about that place.”

“About Tristian West?”