Wufei clicked the cell phone off, feeling pleased with himself. The cavalry was on its way, so to speak. Opening the door, he stepped out of the office, and what greeted his eyes was immediately disturbing.
Trowa’s door was open, and Quatre was nowhere inside.
“Quatre! Where are you?” Wufei said, rushing through the door and into the small bedroom. At first, he didn’t hear or see anyone. The bedroom looked empty. But then he spotted the blonde bunched over something in the bathroom, rocking softly and sobbing.
“Don’t die on me, Doc. Please, don’t die.”
The next thing he noticed, one he got to the bathroom’s doorway, was the blood. It was everywhere, smeared on the counter, the floor, even a messy trail down the front of the cabinet’s door. It had soaked Quatre’s shirt as well. The mortician’s face was pale and drawn, his eyes shut. He looked to be unconscious. The blonde man was holding a dark, wet, crumpled piece of something against Trowa’s wrist. Seeing the razor blade laying on the floor next to the two, it was obvious what had happened.
“Quatre, calm down,” Wufei said, lightly touching the blonde’s shoulder.
The blonde jumped under the Chinese man’s touch. “Oh, shit! Sorry, Fei. He’s … oh my God, he’s dying, Wufei. What are we gonna do? He’s dying!”
“Calm down, Quatre, and let me get by.” Gingerly Wufei edged around the blonde and then stepped over the doctor’s sprawled form. He knelt down on the opposite side of Trowa, facing Quatre. Catching the blonde’s gaze, he gave instructions in a clear, firm tone. “I’m going to put my arms under him and lift him, Quatre. When I do this you need to keep that thing against his wrist held tight, okay? Then we’re going to carry him downstairs to Sally’s office. On the count of three.
“One.” Wufei slid his arms under Trowa’s knees and shoulders. He was shocked at how bony the mortician felt.
“Two.”
“Three.” Wufei and Quatre lifted Trowa in unison. The Chinese man was surprised at how very light and fragile the mortician was. The blonde man did as he’d been told, frantically pressing the blood-soaked tie against Trowa’s wrist.
In just a few minutes that seemed way too long to the frantic blonde man, they’d carried Trowa downstairs and into Sally’s office. She looked up when they entered, startled. The first thing out of her mouth was, “Quick, get him inside the examining room.”
She jumped up from her seat, opening the door for them why they carried the unconscious mortician into the small, white room and laid him on the table. She’d spotted the blood and Quatre keeping a tight hold on Trowa’s wrist. “What’s happened?” she asked, hurrying over to the counter to get what she needed.
“He cut himself with a razor. I don’t know how much blood he’s lost. He was unconscious when we found him,” Wufei replied, standing back so he was out of Sally’s way.
“Shit. Keep the pressure on his wrist, Quat, but don’t use that. It’s all soaked up. Use this,” Sally quickly handed him a wad of gauze. Quatre quickly substituted the white gauze in place of his ruined tie, throwing it to the floor, forgotten. She glanced at Wufei. “Go to the back of my office. There’s a cold locker. Get one of the plastic baggies holding the red stuff. That’s blood. Make sure the label says O+, all right?”
The Chinese man nodded and left at a swift trot.
Meanwhile, Sally searched for a pulse. When she found one, it was weak. That wasn’t good. She hurriedly cut away Trowa’s sleeve, swabbed his arm, and inserted an IV tube into his largest vein. Just then Wufei had returned. Checking the label and nodding her approval, she hung the bag of blood on the rack and attached the tube, priming it a little to get the blood flowing into the doctor.
She was still worried, though. Trowa was deathly pale, and she’d barely been able to find a pulse.
Then, moving to the other side of the table, she almost shoved Quatre out of the way, saying, “Move. I need a look at the wound.”
It took her a few agonizing minutes to thoroughly clean the cut and then suture the main arteries shut. Quatre stood back, watching with bated breath. Wufei stood by him, a hand placed on his shoulder. The blonde would never admit it, but hadn’t it been for the comforting weight of his friend’s hand against his shoulder, he might have been in tears.
At long last, Sally was finished.
“Will he be okay, Sally?”
She wiped her forehead and looked up at him. “He should be. I’ve done all I could. He may have lost too much blood. It’s up to him to pull through now.”
Quatre nodded, swallowing hard. Sally glanced at Wufei.
“Wufei, maybe you should go upstairs and inform Treize. He needs to know.”
Looking like he’d just been told to wade into a pit of live rattlesnakes, Wufei nodded stiffly and left.
*~*~*
Dorothy hung up her phone, taking a deep breath. Keeping an informant in Treize’s service had been an excellent idea, after all. Now was her chance to do what she’d wanted to her whole life.
As a Catalonia, the blonde-haired woman wasn’t technically a member of the Khushrenada’s family, but the two surnames were involved much in the same clan. Catalonias usually married Khushrenadas, and vice versa. There was also a Dermail branch of the family. The current patriarch, Dorothy’s grandfather, was a Dermail. And it was through this grandfather that Dorothy was related to her ever-charming second cousin, Treize.
The Catalonias and Khushrenadas had built a monopoly of political power somewhat comparable to the Darlians. They wielded their influence and used their resources to the advantage of their family, just as Prime Minister Darlian had. However, unlike the late Prime Minister, the Catalonias (and Khushrenadas, especially) had gained their positions from dealings shady as well as fair. They’d made enemies on their way to the top, diehard enemies that would do anything to see each and every single member of the clan destroyed.
Not surprisingly, one of these enemy factions happened to be the Darlians. Their methods didn’t run along the same lines as the Darlians, and never had. To be blunt, the Khushrenadas and Catalonias thought the Darlians were a bunch of self-righteous snobs. And not much more could be said for the Darlians’ opinion of the other family. They were, to quote the late Prime Minister, “petty criminals that’d get their come-uppance one of these days.”
However, neither family was exactly as the other saw them. They were both old and had held political power throughout the Western hemisphere for a very, very long time. They’d also been members of a feud for almost that long. Eventually, the Khushrenadas had seen an opportunity to take the Darlians down, and they had. Treize had been awarded laurels for that little victory.
The Khushrenadas’ methods were strict and iron-clad. The men did the work, managed the business, and married for politics. The females of the family were responsible for maintaining the outside respectability of the family, bearing children, and for supporting their husbands. They were also bound by duty to do as their fathers told them; more than one girl had been married off to form a tie with another member of the large and branching family.
As far as supporting their husbands went, Khushrenada women did it proudly, without question. More than one Mrs. Khushrenada had quietly murdered one of her husband’s enemies. They considered it a matter of duty and honor.
All except for Dorothy.
Dorothy didn’t want to marry for her father’s sake. She was ambitious and smart. Ever since she was a little girl she’d wished she was a boy so her father would teach her the things he was always teaching cousin Treize. He never said much to her, though, because she was a little girl. He wouldn’t think about her until she was of age to be married, anyway. Then he’d use her to further his own power. But until then, she was a non-entity. She didn’t exist to him.
He certainly existed to her, though. Because her mother died young, in childbirth, actually, Dorothy had known no other parent except her father. And she’d known no love in her childhood but for two people: her father, and her nana.
Her nana had died when she was eight. When she’d cried at the funeral, her father had nudged her sharply and reprimanded her. “Quit crying. You must be strong. Such a display of weakness is unbefitting of a Catalonia woman.” From that day on, she swore she’d be strong. Instead of angering her, her father’s reprimand only deepened the burning love she felt for him, and the desperate need for his approval.
She did everything to be perfect for him. Excellent marks in school and fencing. She behaved herself like any lady would, dressing well and watching her figure. He was pleased with her beauty that would surely make her desirable for a profitable marriage.
But that wasn’t all she did. She was smart, too, possessed of a razor-sharp intelligence that she concealed well under ladylike decorum. She kept her eyes open, watching, listening to everything he said about running “the business” to Treize. She paid attention to family politics. And most of all, she developed ears that reached everywhere.
More than once she’d tipped her father off about someone that gave him an upper hand in a deal or diverted disaster. She showed him over the years that she was smart and good at what she did. She knew everything before it was going to happen. And she was glad to tell her father.
But for a price.
This too demanded her father’s respect. She would give nothing without receiving something in return, and while it frustrated her father sometimes, it also showed her father the true skill his daughter had for the family business. If she had been anyone else, he would have gone to his own father, Duke Dermail, and demanded that Dorothy be made the designee of the Khushrenada Legacy on the spot. There was only one problem.
She was a girl.
The Khushrenada Legacy was a very old tradition among the three branches of the family. Out of each generation, the most skilled and promising individual would be designated the next head of the family by the current head. Unfortunately, like all traditions among the family, its word was law. It could not be changed. And that Legacy declared that heads of the family could only be males, sons, because the family had been founded out of a line of powerful men that believed their way was the best way. A woman’s place was not directing business; it was raising sons so that the next patriarch could be named. Plead as he might, Dorothy’s father could not convince Duke Dermail otherwise.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It is the way things in our family have always been done, and our law cannot change for the sake of one girl.”
Dorothy was enraged. She’d devoted her whole life simply to showing the family she was worth it, but for naught. Embittered as she was, her father didn’t comfort her. He told her simply to try to forget about it; there was nothing that could be done.
However, that didn’t stop her. She quietly arranged for her male cousins to meet unfortunate accidents, one by one. First Roberto, and then Joseph, then Carlos, and then Richard. And the women of the family quit having sons that could possibly inherit the legacy. They had girls or no babies at all. It was frightening that such things could be tampered with, but Dorothy laughed at her grandfather’s lack of knowledge of a woman’s subtlety. A well-paid cook easily slipped contraceptives into food. Bribed midwives could easily slip and make a fatal mistake during the delivery of a male child, killing the baby and sometimes the mother, too. Since most of the family all lived in the same compound, it made it that much easier.
Dorothy felt no guilt over the whole thing. She’d been robbed of what was rightfully hers, family law or no family law.
At last, there was only one person standing in her way to power: Treize. Treize wasn’t easy to be rid of, she admitted. He was smart, too smart to be done off simply the way her other cousins had been. He moved quickly, too, and he’d figured out what had been killing off the other male members of his family so fast. In her last encounter with Treize, he’d called her the Black Widow. “Just like a spider,” he’d said, “killing off the males of the family for your own offspring.”
Then the attack on the Darlian compound in Valparaiso, and Treize had engineered a major victory for the whole family. With their main enemy gone, they swept over the South American territory, increasing their own resources twofold. Having proved himself worthy, Duke Durmail proudly named Treize the designee of the Khushrenada legacy, leaving Dorothy seething.
Well, this was her chance to topple the delicate house of cards Treize had built in the family’s absence of attention, and win her own place.
She’d earned it, after all.
~TBC~