I gave Eli the Cliff’s Notes version of events, explaining how it was basically an arranged marriage on Edison’s part and that, really, the person to blame was Perrie’s asshole of a father.
“I still don’t get it. Why was it so important that Perrie specifically had to be his wife?” Eli, who’d long since let go of his initial anger, asked from where he was leaning on the wall next to me.
The nurse had taken Perrie down the hall a few minutes ago to go get her scans done, and while I knew she was safe, the itch to hurry after her and get her in my line of vision was making me twitchy as Eli continued to ask questions.
“Have I ever been able to explain Edison’s reasoning to you, El?” I asked, shooting the man a dry look.
Eli sighed, shaking his head. “No. The man’s mind is like a steel trap and always has been. But you’d think that he’d at least come to his new wife’s cancer checkup.”
“He would have but he’s away on business…” I trailed off, knowing that Eli would understand what I meant.
“So some dangerous shit that Perrie will inevitably get dragged into? That’s just great, Rhodes. She literally just recovered from leukemia and this is what she has to deal with now? It’s bullshit and you know it.”
“It was her choice—”
He cut me off. “And that’s even bigger bullshit. Her choice was basically to marry those Italian assholes or your Irish asshole. That’s not fair to her.”
It was far too late for Eli to try and make me feel guilty about this, and yet as he spoke I felt a little twinge in my chest because, standing in this familiar hallway, I finally remembered where I’d met Perrie before and why Edison had chuckled like he had on the phone.
Four years ago on the night that woman decided to try and kill Edison, I’d smuggled him here to get treated on the downlow. I didn’t have many options—If his father or any of his father’s subordinates found out that Edison had nearly been taken out by a woman in the middle of sex, they’d have lost all trust in him as a potential leader. That just left good old Eli to treat him under the table.
At the time Liam Flannagan was trying to push Edison’s younger cousin who was only nine at the time as the next head, arguing with Declan Keane that Edison’s relation to crazy Aine Keane would make him a poor leader.
But the man, while not being a very good father, was a very prideful individual and had even gone so far as to impregnate a woman whose mental health was fragile at best in order to secure his perfect heir. There was no way that some cousin would win out over that, no matter how disappointed Declan was with Edison.
Either way, that night with Edison bleeding from two bullet wounds and not wanting to call the clan’s doctors, Eli Stedmeyer had been our only choice. He’d patched the both of us up all through college, never asking too many questions, and when he graduated from Med school Edison had offered him a job.
Eli had declined because he wanted to specialize in Oncology. The man always did have a bleeding heart. It was probably why he’d never married himself—too busy with his job for any man or woman to make him turn his head.
And it was the same night that I’d brought Edison here, I now realized that it was Perrie Chandler that had been the bald, skinny girl that had been caught spying on us.
I’d realized it as soon as we walked into the room and saw Eli, that Edison must have realized it much sooner than me. The bastard.
We were going to have a serious discussion about him revealing shit like he was some kind of magician revealing a new trick.
I could already hear what he was going to say when I confronted him about this: ‘Well, it was in Perrie’s file which you refused to read, so really who is at fault here?’
“Dr. Stedmeyer?” a woman’s voice brought me out of my internal beat down of my best friend and I looked up to find a woman in an ill-fitting dress suit carrying a clipboard clutched in her hand. “I’m from billing and I was wondering if you could give me a moment to talk to your patient?”
“She’s in radiology right now, can I relay a message?”
The woman glanced over at me, probably not wanting to give away a patient’s information while a stranger was present.
Eli looked over at me before sighing. “He’s a part of her pack, so it’s okay, you can check her paperwork if you want to confirm.”
I stiffened at that, trying to keep the shock off of my face at his lie.
The woman looked at me one more time, her eyes wide as she took in my appearance before nodding. “Well, we need the patient’s updated insurance information or else we can’t process this visit and we will have to charge her as uninsured.”
“What do you mean? She’s been on the same insurance for years?” Eli, without any more preamble, yanked the clipboard out of the protesting woman’s hands. His eyes scanned the paper before his lips turned down into a scowl.
“That motherfucker!” he hissed, making the poor woman from billing flinch back as the doctor hurried to apologize, “Sorry, not you.”
“What’s going on?” I asked, wishing I could edge around Eli and try and read whatever was on the clipboard over his shoulder.
“Ethan Chandler pulled his insurance coverage for Perrie as of two weeks ago.”
Two weeks ago… also known as Perrie and Edison’s wedding day.
Just when I thought the rat who sold his daughter for political funding couldn’t sink any lower, he proved that the bar was, in fact, deep in hell.
When Perrie and Edison were negotiating she told us that the only reason she was marrying Pack Ricci was because her father threatened not to pay for her medical bills and now he’d made good on that promise despite the fact that he’d originally made the other end of that deal with Edison.
“I’ll handle her insurance information and get it all updated,” I told the woman, trying my best not to let the anger I was feeling leak into my voice as I turned to Eli again. “Take care of Perrie until I get back?”
Eli seemed to size me up, his expression still pissed, before he finally let out a long sigh as his shoulders dropped. “Yeah. Getting through all of the scans should take another hour or so.”
“Thanks and don’t mention this to her? I don’t want to stress her out.” It was all too easy to envision the little redheaded omega and how she would deflate like a balloon when she learned that her father truly was a monster. Just like I had when I’d learned that about my own father eighteen years ago.
Perrie was better suited for smiling as she fiddled with the settings of her too-complicated camera, or laughing at whatever her vapid friend Kailey had to say. Not this.
Eli eyed me with a contemplative look on his face. “Who are you and what have you done with Rhodes McCreary?”
Shrugging at him, I turned and followed the billing lady back down the hallway.
Because I wasn’t sure what I’d done with him either.
Seventeen
