“Hello?” Her sweet voice filled the van, flooding the goddamn place like an overwhelming perfume.

“It’s Sam,” I hissed in annoyance.

“Oh,” was her response. It was a response I was familiar with as she’d often used it when people told her things she did not like. But she’d never used that ‘oh’ with me before. “How can I help you, Mr. Brennan?”

I was Mr. Brennan now?

Being an asshole certainly had its cons. I trudged forward with my request.

“I have two injured soldiers. I can’t drop them at the hospital for obvious reasons. If I bring them over to Badlands, could you get a triage kit and treat them? You’ll be paid handsomely.”

I hated asking for favors and could count on one hand the number of times I had to do so. Usually, I had some kind of leverage over people, something they wanted back from me, hence the luxury of not ending a demand with a question mark.

“What are their injuries?” she asked, cold and quiet. “Give me the physical description, please, not your medical assessment, unless of course you went to med school without my knowledge.”

For the first time in my life, I got the ice princess treatment everyone else received and not her unabashed adoration.

Not that I could blame her, after shoving her pride into a blender and setting it on high that night at Badlands.

“One has a broken arm. The other was shot in the chest.”

“Where about in the chest?”

“Lungs. Meet me at Badlands in thirty.”

She was going to ask me if she was still banned from the nightclub, and I was not going to lift the ban. Nothing was going to lift the fucking ban, Jesus himself included.

If it were up to me, Aisling Fitzpatrick wouldn’t be allowed near a red-blooded man who wasn’t a relative until the end of her days. Not to mention a fucking herd of them, drunk and sweaty, in my club. The memory of her being yanked by that asshole in my club scorched through my brain. I’d almost killed the kid. The only thing that stopped me from slashing his throat in a room full of people was I didn’t know it was Aisling at the time.

“No,” she said flatly. “We’ll do things my way. Hold on a sec.”

She rummaged through things in the background. Little Nix was just full of surprises, wasn’t she? First, she gave me the fuck of my life. Now she was saving my ass, or at least my soldiers’ asses. I was half-sad to see the opportunity of ramming into her with my cock again go to waste because of her father.

“You won’t have the equipment I need. I’ll text you an address in a few minutes. Come alone—just you and your soldiers—and make sure no one sees you.”

I was going to ask questions. The most pressing one being “what the fuck?” but she hung up on me. Not a minute later, she texted me a Dorchester address. I drove to the address and was surprised to see that it was a residential building. One of those never-ending red-bricked Victorian structures a variety of college students and gang members favored.

I hurled Beavis and Butthead out of the van and dragged them to the black wooden door, punching the doorbell. The door opened on its own accord—unlocked—and when I stepped inside, there was a wordless sign leading to the basement. The apartment itself looked not only residential but occupied. Canned laughter of daytime TV shows echoed from somewhere inside the apartment, and the welcome rug was damp with melted snow.

What. The. Fuck.

Dragging Becker and Angus like they were sacks of potatoes down the stairway by the hem of their shirts, I dumped them at the foot of the bright, clean, white basement, scanning the place. Motherfucker. I knew an underground clinic when I’d been in one, and this was definitely it with an off-white couch, a shelf full of medical books, a fake plant, and cheap paintwork.

Illegal. Operating. And goddamn secretive.

The place looked empty.

Aisling walked out of a white door, dressed in one of her signature dresses that made her look like a sexually oppressed British royal. No scrubs, I noted, even though she’d been wearing them last time I saw her at Avebury Court Manor.

Even wearing something Queen Elizabeth would deem too conservative, the pale pink against her snowy skin made me want to tear off her stupid dress and eat her out on the floor. Especially now that I’d decided not to.

“What do we have here?” She went straight to Becker and Angus, notably ignoring my existence. She slapped on a pair of elastic gloves, starting with Becker. She flipped him over like he was a fish she considered buying at the market, zeroing in on his wound, frowning. Yet again, I realized that she was delicate looking but could hold her own. She wasn’t physically frail and wasn’t squeamish.

She pointed at Becker, not even asking for his name. “I’m going to start with this one, since he needs urgent medical attention. Make yourself useful for a change and help me set him up on the table, will you, Sam?”

Was that a dig? I’d bite her head off if I were in a position to do so. As it happened, she was doing me a solid, so I hoisted a mostly unconscious Becker against my shoulder, ignoring her patronizing tone, and followed her into the small room, which had a surgical table, a desk, and a large medicine cabinet.

The room was fully decked out in medical equipment, anesthetics, IV stands, and a blood pressure monitor.

The what-the-fuck questions were piling up, nice and high, as I tried to piece together how this meek, innocent woman, who was doing her residency at Brigham Hospital as an OB-GYN, knew about a place like this, let alone had easy access to it.

“What the hell is this place?” I hissed, not accustomed to being kept in the dark. Especially as I’d always thought I knew everything there was to know about the youngest Fitzpatrick.

“A friend of mine owns it. He treats people without insurance here. People who cannot afford urgent care,” she explained primly, signaling me with her chin to the spot where she wanted me to dispose Becker. So I did.

“Are you helping him do this? It’s fucking illegal, Aisling. I can’t let you do this.”

This made her bark out a laugh. “I’ve seen you shoot someone in the head and you are here so I can patch up your hitmen. Oh, the hypocrisy. Dare I say, Sam, this is so deliciously rich I think your statement alone should be in a higher tax bracket than my family.”

“You and I are not the same.”

“According to you …” She shrugged. “You’re nothing to me.”

“I am your father’s right-hand man. My job is to keep his kids out of trouble. I will do whatever the fuck I need to to stop you from getting thrown in jail.”

“You will keep well away from me, Brennan, and let me do my job, or I will never help you again.”

She went to a nearby sink, dumped her elastic gloves, and scrubbed her hands with soap before putting on a new pair as I glared at her. She had a point. Her access to this place could be beneficial to me. There was no reason why old Gerry needed to know his daughter was being an idiot as long as it worked in my favor.

“Can I see your ticket?” she asked, her back to me.

“What the fuck do you mean?” I frowned.

“To the show you are apparently watching. Get out, Sam. I’m working here.”

Concealing my surprise (and delight at discovering this bossy side of her), I leaned against the door, giving zero fucks about Angus, who was still in the reception with his dangling arm and porn star moans.