Shattered Dreams (Boys of Bellerose, #3)(4)

It just got compressed under hate.

If they were dead, I wouldn’t be able to hate them anymore. I had to ensure they stayed alive and well so I could resume my normal toxic relationship of simultaneously loathing and missing them.

Once inside the building, the heat and smoke were already thicker than a few seconds ago when I’d seen the sculpture fall and land on Angelo. Glass crunched under my boots as I ducked down low, hauling up the collar of my dress shirt to cover my mouth.

“Angel,” I called, coughing through my words. The ringing in my ears had moved deeper in my head, to the point my brain felt like it was shaking. I’d suffered a head injury from the force of the explosion, but I couldn’t succumb to it yet. Not until they were all safe.

More smoke billowed in from farther back in the building, but Angelo had only been a few steps inside the main foyer. He couldn’t be far from me.

Practically crawling, I managed to bump into his legs, which were only visible when I was right at his side. The black-clad pants led up to a shard of glass lodged firmly below his left knee. His right leg looked burned as well, but there were no flames, as if he’d managed to get them out. Somehow.

Whatever the case, Angelo was injured and needed medical attention now.

I was about to grab his left leg to drag him out of the room, when my rattled brain kicked in and reminded me that half of him could be trapped under the fucking sculpture. I’d probably pull his head off by doing that.

“Angel!” I rasped. “Don’t you be fucking dead, you hear me. I still need to beat your ass a dozen or more times, and if you’re dead… it means my fun is over.”

And part of my soul would die because he was one of my brothers. There were Rhett and Grayson too, but Angelo was the first, and I couldn’t imagine a life without him in it.

Moving up his body, the fucking relief I felt to see him free of the sculpture, with just a nasty cut on his forehead, almost knocked me to the ground. The dick sculpture had clearly clipped him as it fell, but he’d managed to move enough that it hadn’t crushed his skull in.

At least I hoped it hadn’t. The wound was bleeding, but more of a slow seep, rather than the gush of a deeper, more serious injury. Not that any head injury couldn’t be serious.

But at least he had a chance.

Coughing and trying to breath shallowly, I wedged my arms under Angelo, cursing him for being such a giant fucker. Luckily, I wasn’t small by any means, because hauling his bulk out of here was going to take all of my strength.

Trying not to jostle his head any more than necessary, I lifted him into a fireman's hold and took one step after another, heading in the direction of the door. I got a little turned around at some point, but the firefighters entered the foyer before I managed to wander into a damn wall and escorted me out into the fresh air.

My lungs were screaming at that point, the smoke filling every crevice of my body, and when they shoved oxygen on my face–while also taking Angelo from me and hauling him off into an ambulance–I spent a good ten minutes hacking my guts up.

“You’re a fucking idiot.” Grayson took it upon himself to yell at me. “You ran in there injured and without a plan. Next time, fucking wait for me to help you. ”

“Angelo didn’t have any extra time,” I rasped, pulling the mask briefly down. An EMT started pushing me toward one of the ambulances then, forcing my mask back on my face. Grayson shook his head, looking stern, but he didn’t stop them from doing their job. I pulled my mask back down again. “How’re Billie and Rhett?”

His dark gaze drilled into me as he huffed. “Injured, but they should recover. Billie had some sort of seizure, though, while I was holding her, so they’ll most certainly take her in for tests.”

“You’re all coming in,” a short, blonde woman said. She was dressed in an EMT uniform and looked about twenty years older than us. She had a serious, no-nonsense face. “You were in an explosion. Every single one of you needs to be checked out.”

“Where’s Billie?” I shot back, before she firmly shoved me onto a stretcher and got the mask back on.

“She’s in another ambulance,” she said quickly. “They’re taking her straight to the hospital since Mr. Taylor is correct about her possible seizure. Mr. Silver is with them as well since he has a head injury.”

What the fuck? Why was Billie seizing? She had been unconscious, but I hadn’t seen any visible injuries to account for that reaction. Maybe it was just the whole ordeal affecting her. I mean, the area was like a war zone right now, with medical service, police, helicopters, and more all around us. It would be a lot for anyone to handle, let alone someone who had gone through the death of her family before.

The EMT forced me to lie back so they could wheel me to the closest ambulance, and I saw her try the same with Grayson, before he eyeballed her hard enough that she backed off. “We suggest getting checked out,” she said, but the rest was cut off as two men loaded my stretcher into the vehicle and the doors were closed.

One had gotten in with me, but he was still chatting with the other guy as he got a drip set up. “Can’t believe we’re treating fucking Bellerose,” he said, shaking his head, acting like I was either unconscious or hard of hearing. “Someone tried to blow up Bellerose.”

Considering the mild ringing in my ears, I genuinely worried that I had damaged something permanently in my hearing, and how the hell would I make music the same after that? The fine tuning of my hearing was how I found the best sound. “They didn’t succeed,” I managed to get out before he lifted my mask once more, looking a little embarrassed.