Bound to the Mob Alpha's Baby novel · Chapter 8 of 32

Chapter 8: Stitches

The driver got them there in ten minutes.

Mickey was out of the car before it stopped again.

The front window of Corcoran Lock & Key was gone.

Not cracked. Gone.

Glass lay across the sidewalk, and the gold letters of the name were in pieces on the floor inside.

The alarm was still screaming.

Aoife was sitting on the counter with a roll of paper towels pressed into her left palm.

The towels were red all the way through.

A brick sat in the middle of the floor among the key blanks.

Plain red brick. No note.

It didn't need one.

"I'm fine," she said, before Mickey could say anything. "Stop looking at me like that. I'm fine."

"You're bleeding through a whole roll."

"It's a palm. Palms bleed. It's two inches, it's clean, it needs maybe five stitches."

"Then we go to the ER."

"I'm not sitting in an ER until four a.m. and paying two thousand dollars for five stitches."

Vin came in behind Mickey, glass crunching under his shoes.

He reached up and punched a code into the alarm panel by the door without asking Mickey for it.

The screaming stopped.

"How do you know my code?"

"It's your father's birthday. It's on the plaque by the register."

Mickey turned and looked at the little brass plaque. OPEN SINCE 1994. His dad's birthday was the shop's opening day.

He'd never once thought about that.

Vin went back out to the car and came in with a black canvas bag.

He set it on the counter beside Aoife and unzipped it.

Gauze, saline, a suture kit, gloves, a bottle of something brown.

Aoife looked at the bag, then at him.

"Why does the Coat have a trauma kit in his car?"

"Same reason you have a bat at my house."

She thought about that and nodded.

"Can I see it?" he asked her.

She held out her hand.

He peeled the towels back, gentle, and looked at the cut in the light of the key machine lamp.

"Five stitches," he said. "Maybe six."

"I said five."

"You were close."

"I'm a nursing student. I'm always close."

"Then you'll tell me if I do it wrong."

So he did it at the counter, under the lamp, with Aoife coaching him through every one.

"Irrigate first."

"I know."

"More than that."

He used more than that.

"Lidocaine's in the side pocket," he said.

"Why do you have lidocaine?"

"Hold still."

She held still.

Mickey stood at the end of the counter with his arms wrapped around himself and watched Vin's big hands do something small and careful.

"Smaller bites," Aoife said. "It's a palm, not a leather jacket."

"Smaller bites."

"And square your knot."

Vin squared his knot.

She leaned over and looked at it.

"Huh," she said. "That's actually good."

"Thank you."

"Don't let it go to your head, Coat."

"I won't."

By the fourth stitch she was telling him about her anatomy professor.

By the sixth she was laughing at something he said about his own first stitches, at sixteen, on a cousin, with fishing line.

When he wrapped her hand she looked up at him.

"You didn't ask me what I saw," she said.

"Did you see anything?"

"A gray van. No plate on the front."

Vin's face went very still.

The same gray van that had driven Shawn away on Thursday.

"Okay," he said quietly.

The driver boarded the window with plywood from the back room.

Then he took Aoife home to River Forest, where Nonna was waiting up with a pot of something.

Mickey stood in the middle of his father's shop with glass in the treads of his sneakers.

Vin was sweeping.

He didn't ask if he could. He just picked up Mickey's dad's push broom and swept glass into a pile.

"Leave it," Mickey said.

"It's almost done."

"Vin. Leave it."

Vin leaned the broom against the counter.

"Where do you want to sleep?" he asked. "The house is forty minutes. My father's old flat over the restaurant is ten."

Mickey looked at the brick.

He looked at the plywood where his dad's name used to be.

"The flat," he said. "And Vin."

"Yes."

"I want you to stay with me tonight."

Vin didn't move.

"In the same room," Mickey said. "In the same bed. I'm asking you, out loud, because you said I had to ask."

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