Wolfe turned his beaten-up car into his driveway and parked alongside his fence. Kevin was in the backseat, still out cold—they had quickly moved him from the Grimms’ vehicle to Wolfe’s car once at the mansion. He had asked Liam to have the SUV cleaned immediately, and he was pretty sure Liam would get it done.

Wolfe hurt everywhere and was feeling weak. His arm and leg had scabbed over but not before quite a bit of blood had left his body, and his clothing was torn and crusted in gunk. His car had blood smears on it.

He put the car in park, paused for a second to muster his energy, knowing movement would bring pain now that the adrenaline had faded. Finally, he just grit his teeth, opened his door, swung his aching legs out, and stood.

Shel got out on the other side, her eyes flicking to the back door. “What are we going to do about my brother?”

Goddamn it, can’t I just go fall into a coma somewhere? “Come get his legs.”

Wolfe opened the back driver-side door and put his arms under Kevin’s torso, hooking them around his armpits, and lifted him out of the back. His own arms screamed at him in pain as he did so. His legs and back joining in with a slightly lower chorus of agony. It was hard to focus or think.

Wolfe started backing, and Shel came and tried to grab her brother’s legs but dropped him. Wolfe groaned and just dragged her brother. He was actually quite small, more so than a lot of the women Wolfe knew, and on a normal day—not a shot, clawed, and slammed-to-the-ground day—he wouldn’t have even noticed the tweaker’s weight.

Wolfe pulled him to the gate. “Get my keys and get the gate and door open.”

Shel nodded, took the keys from his pocket, undid the latch on the chain gate, and let Wolfe through, then ran ahead and unlocked his front door and held that open. Wolfe dragged her brother into the front room and dumped him on the couch, then leaned back and tried to stretch his muscles out.

“Can we put him in the guest bedroom?” Shel asked.

“Are you fucking shitting me right now?” Wolfe growled out.

Shel tapped her fingers together in front of her, tilted her head down, and then stared up at him with her emerald-green eyes through long lashes. “Um… please?”

“Oh, for the gods’ sake…” Wolfe forcefully grabbed her brother and dragged him back to the guest bedroom—the one Shel had been using—and awkwardly got him into the bed.

He stood again and glanced over at Shel. “Where are you going to sleep?”

She shrugged.

Wolfe ground his teeth. “I’m going to take a shower. There’s a first-aid kit under the kitchen sink—”

“Why there?” Shel asked. “Have a lot of cooking accidents?”

“Cute. The point is, it’s there. Get it and get some bandages, lots of disinfectant, and some painkillers and wait for me please.”

Wolfe left and stepped into his bedroom. He grabbed a pair of workout shorts and a tank top from his closet, then went into the bathroom. He opened his narrow-tiled shower and flipped the water to near-scalding, then stripped and looked at himself in the mirror.

It was a study in contrasts in many ways. Six-foot-two, two hundred and thirty pounds of muscle, and he still had abs. A body any man should be proud of. His hair, although balding enough to give him a widow’s peak, was still black.

But it was a body with damage. His dark-brown eyes were tired, and he had a flat stare. A huge scar ran from his navel to his neck, distended from his skin, mark of an encounter with Nico that hadn’t gone Wolfe’s way. A few much smaller scars also crossed his body, each with a memory—knife to the side, burn mark on his thigh from a lab explosion and fire, another knife to the arm, a tin can lid he’d sliced his hand on. He smiled at the last one. Not his finest moment.

And now, a long, bloody pair of furrows down his shin and a bullet hole in his arm. It was a lot less of a normal gunshot wound, and more a puncture to the arm thanks to the mantle he had been wearing when he had been shot, but it was still a puckered hole in his flesh. I have to deal with that.

Wolfe grabbed a pair of tweezers and extracted the thankfully easy-to-remove bullet, grunting out a half-scream past gritted teeth. He dropped the bullet into the trash and then watched as a bit of blood ran down his arm before trickling off.

He stepped into the shower, hissing as hot water ran over all his various wounds. He watched as his lifeblood washed from his skin and ran down the drain, the water pink with rivulets of darker red. He waited, staring down at his feet, water running over him, until the pink was all gone.

Then he washed, very slightly scrubbed with soap at his wounds, hoping he wasn’t being an idiot, and finally exited the shower. He quickly put his workout shorts and tank top on.

The mirror was fogged up, and Wolfe wasn’t unhappy about not seeing himself again. He toweled off quickly and then walked from the bathroom, feeling a bit better but now tired beyond all belief.

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He found Shel waiting in his bedroom with what appeared to be most of the first-aid kit. She was still dressed in the stained jeans and his huge shirt, and Wolfe resolved that tomorrow, he would try to get her some decent clothing.

“All right, I need you to use the antiseptics on me and then wrap the wounds,” Wolfe said, sitting on the bed with his wounded leg extended straight.

Shel watched him for a moment, and Wolfe was pleased to see her eyes roam his body once. She took powder from the first-aid kit and put it all over his wounds. It stung fiercely. Then she gently lifted his leg with her fingers and began slowly wrapping him and taping the bandages.

Wolfe felt himself starting to drift off as she worked deftly to repair the damage he had sustained following her purposes. He wasn’t ready to go to sleep yet, so he thought about something they could talk about. He settled on her family.

“So why do you care so much about your brother?” Wolfe asked as she worked.

“I just want to give him a chance,” Shel responded—a non-answer in Wolfe’s opinion.

“C’mon, don’t be like that. I saved your brother like you wanted, right? You could at least give me a straight answer.”

Shel continued to wrap his leg for a bit before answering, “We had a hard life. Dad was physically abusive, our oldest brother was the same. My mom left and took my younger sister. Everyone except my brother either beat me… or left me.”

A single tear rolled down her cheek as she worked.

Fuck, I don’t know how to handle weeping women. “I’m sorry,” Wolfe said, awkwardly reaching out to wipe the tear away.

“Anyway, at some level, I know Kevin’s a piece of shit. He does bad shit all the time, like stealing and doing drugs, and he failed out of high school. He’s practically self-destructive, like the rest of the family convinced him he really is just a piece of shit. But he’s the one family member who’s maybe redeemable, who also needs me, you know?”

“I do,” Wolfe said.

He thought he had covered his emotions better, but Shel must’ve heard something in his voice because she met his eyes. “Something happen with your family?”

Wolfe didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled his deck out and grabbed Cereboo and brought him into the world.

Cereboo immediately licked Wolfe’s face repetitively, then sniffed his leg where Shel was working and whined, hanging his head.

“It’s okay, boy,” Wolfe said, reaching out and running his hand over his dog’s middle head rapidly. “You did great. It wasn’t your fault I was too slow and got cut up.”

Cereboo’s other heads play-chomped at the air near Wolfe’s hand while the first one panted happily.

Shel raised her eyebrow at him.

“You going to bring yours out?” Wolfe asked.

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?” Shel asked, smiling a touch.

“Heh,” Wolfe replied, but he didn’t reply any further. I shouldn’t go for her. I’m the worst guy for someone precious like her.

Shel frowned slightly. “I don’t want to bring Sorinia out right now—she’ll just lecture me. Or you.”

Wolfe snorted laughter.

Shel finished his leg and moved up, kneeling next to him on the bed with her knees just barely touching his thigh. Then she started to gently clean the arm wound with antiseptic.

“Why do you work for Big Man Grimm?” she asked.

“I owe him everything,” Wolfe said simply. It was the truth, and he owned it.

“I heard he saved your life,” Shel said. “Like in a big gunfight.”

Wolfe laughed. “He did save my life, but there was no gunfight. Not even a little bit. We’ve had one or two gunfights together since, but that was in early days. He hasn’t fired a gun in anger in over fifteen years.”

“Then… why?” Shel asked, finishing up but leaving her hand on his shoulder and not moving away from him.

Wolfe exhaled violently. He was very aware of the young, beautiful woman next to him on his bed and was getting extremely irritated that she was making his very last good deed so fucking difficult. Tomorrow morning, she and her brother are both out of my life.

Plus… it was an unpleasant memory. “I ended up with a murder rap as a teenager. They were going to try me as an adult, and Big Man Grimm… Well, he had a personal connection to the case. When he heard about it, he leaned on some people and threw some simoliums around toon town, and the lawyers and jury suddenly found my self-defense case compelling, got it dropped to an insufficient self-defense manslaughter rap, and I did less than a year at juvie.”

“Was it self-defense?” Shel asked.

“No.”

Shel sat back and then moved to the chair by his desk. “Why did you kill… whomever you killed?”

“He truly had it coming,” Wolfe said darkly. “I’ve never regretted the death of any man less than him… even if I’ve regretted the fallout.”

“Why?” Shel asked again, staring at him with wide eyes.

Wolfe huffed again. “Look—I don’t like talking about this. Tomorrow, you’re on a plane to wherever the fuck, fifty thousand dollars richer. So it doesn’t matter, okay?”

Shel nodded.

“Now, get the fuck out of here so I can sleep.”

Shel didn’t move. “Where should I sleep? Kevin’s in my bed.”

“The couch?” Wolfe offered, having not considered the matter.

“Can I just… sleep in your bed?” Shel asked, reddening.

Gods be fucked, I can’t even have my bed now. “Fine, I’ll sleep on the couch.”

Shel went full crimson and whispered, “Not like that… I meant with you in it.”

She stared at him from the chair, then got up and moved back and sat on the bed again. She stared at him while biting her trembling lip, cheeks red.

Wolfe stopped. She had been flirting with him heavily, at least at some points. He had suspected this was coming. He was also a red-blooded man, and he had just fought and killed… a lot. He wanted to take her offer—and her—badly.

But Wolfe knew he was tainted, stained with a lifetime of blood, no matter how justified. Just in case there had been any doubt of who he was and what he stood for, the Infernal had picked him to receive a god-gifted deck.

Helping Shel, who was too precious for Wolfe’s world, was just a last ‘fuck you’ to the gods. Loyalty to Big Man Grimm and a giant ‘fuck you’ to everyone else who’d given him shit had been Wolfe’s primary motivations for his whole adult life. Having sex with Shel now, no matter how beautiful and willing she was, would just make the Infernal right, somehow.

And he had older demons of his own to deal with as well.

Wolfe slipped around her on the bed and stood. “Shel… I can’t. Okay? I can’t. It’s hard to explain, but I have to do this right. I need do one thing that isn’t for me, and have it turn out right.”

Shel reached out and took his hand gently. “But you’ve done so much for me, and you’ve gotten nothing.”

“That’s the point, girl. Sometimes that’s what a man needs to do. Besides, you’re always being a fucking martyr for every damn person we come across. Maybe let someone do that for you, huh?”

She smiled up at him radiantly. “Okay… but can I just sleep in here? I’ll sleep on the floor and you can sleep on the bed. It’ll be fine, I promise. I’ll just get a couch cushion and one of your blankets. I feel safer when you’re around.”

That’s legally admissible proof of fucking insanity, but whatever. “Sure.”

Shel went to the bedroom door and opened it, then gasped.

“What?” Wolfe asked.

“Um… Kevin’s gone.”

“Son of a gods’ damned bitch.”