Cold Brew and Bullets (Part 1 of the Syndicate Series)

Chapter 7- Origami Animals

What were the odds of a robbery actually occurring in the very place I had started to frequent? What was the alternative?

I floored it almost all of the way to the hospital, breaking every single speed limit along the way. This was the same hospital that my men preferred, the same on that we had managed to get Benvolio to when the Russians had shot him. I knew my way around it well, and while no one here explicitly knew what I did for work, they knew the way that the surgeons and doctors treated me, and how often I was here.

When I got to the front desk, they didn't hesitate to tell me which floor I should head to. I just stood there, hands in pockets and glare on full view, "The ambulances brought in a young woman and older man late last night, botched robbery?"

The woman that answered was younger, I had seen her only once or twice so she must have been relatively new, but she still seemed to understand that I was going to get what I wanted. "Last I heard, they were on two for surgery, but unless something went wrong and surgery took much longer than it should have, I would check recovery on three."

I nodded and didn't even wait for the elevators, heading straight for the third floor on the stairs. I didn't even think to ask the nurse about which one had been in surgery, if not both, I had been so focused on seeing it with my own two eyes that my mind wasn't being rational.

The floor was laid out in a circle, with chairs outside of the individual rooms where patients were being treated. As I left the stairwell, my eyes immediately fell on Eliana at the end of the hall. Just seeing her awake and not in a hospital bed was enough to relieve about fifty percent of the tension and anxiety rolling through my body.

She was curled up in a plastic chair that looked extremely uncomfortable, but it didn't seem to faze her in the slightest. Her knees were tucked to her chest and I could see a slight spatter of blood on her dress and tights, but her cardigan was being wrung in her hands, leaving her arms bare and making the stark white color of the bandage against her skin stand out. It was spotted with blood as well, but she wasn't paying attention to it in the slightest.

I took a breath to calm myself. She was alright. Well, at least alright enough to be on her own two feet and not be confined to a heart monitor.

She didn't see me coming, completely preoccupied by her worry and the spot on the wall next to her. I didn't want to scare her out of her reverie, so I said her name quietly, "Eliana?"

She still jumped, then looked even more shocked when she processed who was standing in front of her. "Alessio. What are you doing here?"

"I've got a coworker who's in a room down the hall. I was here visiting him before work when I thought I saw you," I lied easily. Lying was my life, I was good at it and it was a smooth enough explanation that she didn't question it. It helped that Benvolio really was in this very hospital, just on a different floor.

She looked extremely stressed and extremely worried, beyond what I would think since she was outside of a recovery room. I figured that she must be closer to her boss than I had assumed, but every once in a while her eyes would flicker around her setting, looking cautiously and nervously at the hospital walls.

The way she seemed to curl in on her self and hide was creating the inexplicable urge to comfort her, whether it be by holding her hand or wrapping her in my arms completely and whispering to her that everything would be alright. Instead, I opted to crouch in front of her slightly, "Are you alright?"

She nodded wordlessly, but I could see that she must have been crying because her eyes were still rimmed with red. When I looked pointedly at her arm and the bandage on it, she glanced at it, almost surprised, like she had forgotten it was there.