Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 79850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
In the waiting room, a woman holding a mastiff and an older man with a cat carrier both smiled at me as I followed Shannon into the back.
“Everyone, it’s an emergency,” she shouted, and the staff came from all directions, asking questions about Peanut, the pit bull, and Delilah, the border collie, which explained her short hair. I knew very little about dogs or dog breeds, so I shouldn’t have assumed.
“Oh no,” one of the women gasped, her eyes filling fast. “Viola said Bruce would do this if he got home and the dogs were still there. I hope she’s okay.”
People began talking all at once, on top of each other, hurling questions at me, one dog on each table, four techs with each, and because I was bad with chaos, had never liked it, I yelled. I had to. I could never stand an overwhelming amount of noise. Funny, but when I had saved Vanya from Burian, that too had been loud and disorderly, lots of commotion, just like now. The difference being that once I started talking, everything had changed. In my old life, I was in charge and people stopped what they were doing for me. They went silent, hanging on my words. Clearly, that would not be the case ever again.
“Sorry,” I said quickly into the silence. “Forgive me, but I’ve been here maybe half an hour, and all I know is where I found the dogs. If you could fix them up, I’ll pay for it, and maybe in the meantime we call Viola and see if she knows anything about this. Is that fine?”
Lots of nodding, so I stepped back, near the cages, to get my bearings and breathe.
When I was second-in-command of the Lenkov family, no one yelled at me or questioned me, and I really needed to change my head space about that. I was no longer the feared son of a mob boss, but instead a private citizen. In my defense, I’d only not been a criminal for a couple of months, so I hadn’t yet had the time to adjust. What was most important to remember was that no one was scared of me anymore, and if I didn’t want to be thought of as a raving lunatic, I needed to count to ten first the next time I had a lot of people yelling at me at once. Though I couldn’t imagine I’d ever be in this exact situation again.
Hopefully.
I jolted when something touched my back, and whirling around, came face-to-face with a tiny puppy. He was in the cage directly behind me, and when I glared at him, he tipped his head sideways like he was sizing me up.
“What?” was all I could think of to say. I felt very judged for being startled.
He put his little paw through the bars a second time, and I stepped forward to touch it. Immediately, he yipped, then growled like he was big and scary, but when I stuck my finger in the cage, he wasted no time licking me, probably trying to see if I tasted like chicken. He was easily the cutest thing I’d ever seen in my life.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him, which was ridiculous, but it was just him and me, so it was fine.
I got more growling.
“Are you being punished?” I leaned closer. When he licked the end of my nose, I wanted to take him out of his cage.
“That one can go home with you,” one of the vet techs told me. “His owners dropped him off, and then when we called to tell them how much it would be to remove a small fatty tumor, they declined the surgery and told us to put him down.”
“Put him down?” That made zero sense. “How old is he?”
“He’s nearly two, house-trained, neutered, and as far as I can tell, they must have kept him locked up in a cage from morning to night with how long his nails were and how desperately in need of a good grooming he was.”
“Poor thing.”
“So we went ahead and got rid of the benign little cyst, and he’s in perfect health otherwise.”
“Why’re you telling me this?”
“Just in case you were wondering.”
I turned back to him, scratched under his chin, and he leaned into my hand.
“He also, as far as I can tell, hates everyone.”
“That can’t be right.”
“Oh yes it can,” she said with a grunt. “He’s been a handful.”
“Him?”
“Yes, him. Don’t be fooled. He’s a demon.”
I shot her a look. “Are you trying to find him a home or not?”
“Oh, right.” She gave me a winning smile. “I meant demon in the best possible way.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Also, for your information, he’s a Morkie, and his name is Baby.”
I scoffed. “He looks like a Misha to me.”
He rolled over and offered me his belly.