Three years ago, a rival faction kidnapped Judy. I brought every last man from Crown City to get her back.
A knife went clean through my lower back.
Eighteen hours on the operating table. Thirty-six steel pins just to hold my spine together.
The day I was discharged, Judy knelt in front of me and told me what I'd done for her was a debt she could never repay in this lifetime. For three years after that, every time the sky turned gray or the rain set in, the pain nailed me to the bed—and Judy would cancel everything, meetings, dinners, all of it, just to stay beside me pressing hot compresses against my back, hour after hour, without stopping.
Now, for Howard's sake,
she'd kicked me right in that same spot.
"Dustin, I told you. Apologize. Or you're not leaving here in one piece."
Judy's voice, cold as iron, dragged me back.
She pressed her foot down on my lower back.
*Crack.*
Something deep in my spine gave way—a white-hot, nerve-shredding bolt of pain that ripped a strangled groan out of me before I could clamp it down. I knew instantly. Something in there had just snapped.