by Bethany-Kris
“I will. I love you, Gian.”
That, he didn’t doubt.
Not at all.
“Ti amo, Cara.”
Closing the SUV door, Gian smacked the roof with his palm, and caught Chris’s eye in the front seat. He didn’t have to verbalize his order for the man to do his job, Chris always did it without needing to be told.
Gian stayed standing on the sidewalk long after the SUV had disappeared out of sight. It was only as he headed toward the underground garage to get his own vehicle that his cell phone started ringing. Dom, he thought, or maybe Stephan. There was always too much shit for him to do, and he never got time to rest anymore.
He picked up the call without even checking the ID.
“Ciao, bonjour.”
“It’s been a while, Gian.”
Every inch of Gian turned to ice at the sound of his father-in-law’s voice.
“Gabriel,” Gian greeted as he closed in on his car. “I’d like to say it’s nice to hear from you, but we both know that would be a fucking lie.”
“Yes, well, I hear you’ve been looking for me.”
Gian slid into his car, and started it up. “You heard correctly. I like to keep an eye on men who threaten me and my men, after all. You can’t blame me for that.”
“Of course, not. Have you found your rat yet?”
“That’s not your concern.”
“So, no,” his father-in-law said rather cheerily. “As I suspected. Still too busy putting your attention and time where it neither deserves to be, or needs to be. Such a shame, Gian. I thought giving you some space and time to think might have changed your mind—especially now that the whore has had the baby. Babies change things, I thought. They make a man … see things a bit differently. It’s not as fun with a whore when you’re not just fucking her, but changing nappies and listening to a child cry for hours on end. I thought the baby would send you back to where you should be.”
Gian’s brow furrowed. “Where I should be? What in the fuck does that mean?”
“With my daughter. Where else?”
Oh, fuck that.
Gian had no idea where Gabriel was getting this nonsense, but he wasn’t even going to indulge it. “My personal life is not up for discussion today.”
“It is always up for discussion when it’s a man like you, in your position.”
“Was this ever even about a rat in my family, Gabriel?” Gian wondered out loud.
The older man chuckled. “It was. These are things you need to learn, and fast, Gian. Tell me, did Cara like the gift I sent out last week?”
All over again, ice and fire spread through Gian’s veins, threatening to send him into a rage before he even knew what happened.
“How did you get those photos?” Gian asked.
“I have ways.”
“You just signed your death warrant, Gabriel.”
He figured the man deserved a warning, at least.
“Wrong,” his father-in-law murmured. “You’ve signed hers, and the child’s. As I warned you. I would have overlooked a lot of your personal business, until you began hurting what belonged to me.”
“What?”
“I let you have Elena. You should have taken better care with her; I won’t have her crying to me over something as stupid as you. Perhaps your man will make it out alive, though. The one driving them, I mean. I hope you said goodbye.”
The phone call hung up.
Gian couldn’t get his fucking car into drive fast enough. He hit the road already breaking the goddamn speed limit, but knowing he was probably too late.
Hospitals were both horrible and amazing places. Horrible, because just the smell alone brought memories of more deaths and nights spent in worry than Gian cared to remember. Amazing, because the smell also brought along memories of lives saved and time given.
The only thing keeping him sane as he sat in a hospital room, waiting?
His son.
Marcus slept off the bottle of formula he’d downed as soon as the nurse had brought it in for Gian to feed the boy earlier. Although to be fair, Marcus had not wanted the formula at all or the oddly-shaped nipple that was nothing like his mother’s breast, shoved into his mouth. In a hospital crib, swaddled in a warmed blanket, the baby had no idea how close to death he had come.
No idea at all.
Gian, despite tired legs and an aching back, kept watch over the boy. He tensed at every flicker of Marcus’s lids, and each jerk of the baby’s limbs beneath his tight swaddle. Marcus was perfectly fine—not a scratch or bump on his beautiful, innocent head. His car seat had made sure of that when the SUV had been run off the road, and then subsequently rolled down an embankment.
Still, Gian couldn’t get the image of his son’s car seat with a single bullet hole through the back rest, only a couple of inches higher than where his son’s head would have been laying. He couldn’t forget the pieces of broken window glass scattered across the baby’s body, or the bloodstained blanket, colored red with Cara’s blood.
Cara.
Pain shot through Gian like a lightning bolt.
His gaze darted to the closed door of the hospital room, and he had all he could do not to go out and demand someone give him more answers. He would get none if he did, anyway. Not until Cara’s surgery was either over, or unable to be completed.
Three shots.
One through her hand.
One to her thigh.
The final one—the most deadly and likely to cause complications—to her chest. They had been aiming for her heart, though a shot to the head would have been quicker and cleaner. Gian figured it wasn’t about quick or clean, it was about making a point.
A point he heard loud and fucking clear.
“Boss?”
The sound of Stephan’s voice brought Gian from his internal war. The underboss stood in the now opened doorway, his gaze stuck on the phone in his hand.
“Dom wanted me to let you know that he got ahold of Tommas Rossi, and that your mother is on her way up now,” Stephan said. “Tommas can’t get out of Chicago right now, but he demanded updates every hour, on the hour. I guess your mother is in quite a state and is asking to see the baby.”
Gian nodded, but the numbness was beginning to seep in, taking away his desire to talk, or even think. This was better, though, as he wouldn’t feel so guilty when he left his child and Cara to recover in the hospital without him while he finished a job that was long overdue.
The guilt would come later, surely.
He would deal with it then.
“Mr. Guzzi,” greeted the maid as Gian walked past the kitchen’s entrance inside the mansion. “I was not told to expect you tonight, sir.”
Gian cursed under his breath, but turned back to Mariana with a forced smile. “I wasn’t expecting to be here tonight, either. Are you the only staff left?”
She nodded.
“Good,” Gian said, “you’re free to leave early. Now, preferably.”
“But I haven’t finished my—”
“It’s fine. Please head out.”
Gian waited for Mariana to gather her things, and then saw her out the front door. Satisfied he was now alone in the Guzzi mansion—albeit, his wife was somewhere—he went back to his task. Finding Elena.
It didn’t take him long.
Elena rested in a Jacuzzi tub with bubbles that smelled of vanilla and overflowed to the floor. A half-downed bottle of wine sat on the edge of the tub, no glass in sight. Apparently, she was drinking it straight from the bottle. The steam in the master bathroom was thick enough to make Gian squint down at his wife from up above. He ignored her nakedness, as it did little for his desires, and it wasn’t as though he hadn’t seen it before.
“Elena,” Gian barked.
She jerked awake in the tub, her flailing sending water and bubbles peppering the walls, floor, and Gian. He didn’t bother to move, simply continued standing above her, glaring down.
Elena met his glare with one of he
r own when she realized he was there. “Gian! What in the fuck are you doing?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“I beg your pardon?” Elena scrambled to sit up properly in the tub, using an arm to cover her chest as she reached for a nearby towel. She couldn’t quite reach it, though, and Gian didn’t offer to help. “What do you want?”
“Again, I’ll hand that question right back to you, wife.”
Her brow furrowed. “What does it look like? I wanted to take a bath.”
“And drink a bottle of wine in the process, apparently.”
“It’s a half of a bottle.”
“Details. Get the fuck out of the tub.”
She narrowed her gaze. “I—”
Gian was not in the mood to play games with this woman tonight. He yanked Elena out of the bubbly, hot water by her wrist, not caring at all that she slipped and stumbled before righting herself with an angry huff. If looks could kill, he would have been dead right there on the spot.
“We’re not going to play your games tonight, Elena,” he warned. “I have a feeling you’ve been playing enough games with me as it is. I’m going to speak, you’re going to listen. I’m going to ask questions, you’re going to talk. If you lie to me, I will know it. If you spin bullshit with me, I will know it. Do you understand?”
“Could I at least get dressed?”
Gian grabbed the large towel hanging off the hook and shoved it at his wife. “Cover yourself up, it’s the best I can do at the moment.”
“You’re an ass—”
“Yes, I’m aware,” he interrupted before she could insult him. “You know, your father told me again and again that I needed to watch you. He tried to get through my thick skull that women like you can’t be trusted. And after all the shit you already did to me, I should have listened to the man. Except I didn’t, because I listened to too much of what you were saying. You’re just as much of a snake as your father is.”
Elena blinked, her brown gaze icing over. “What is this even about? Shouldn’t you be fucking that whore of yours across the city? I—”
Gian moved forward, crowding Elena to the bathroom wall as his hand came up to clench around her throat. He squeezed hard, feeling her swallow under his grasp as she attempted to take in some kind of air. “I talk, you listen.”
“O-okay, Gian.”
“I don’t know why, but it seems you’ve been feeding your father some kind of crazy bullshit where you and I are concerned. You have him believing you actually care about me on some level. You have him thinking I’m hurting you. That you’re alone here, without me, and poor little Elena is just so fucking heartbroken.”
Sarcasm oozed from Gian.
He couldn’t even control it.
It was all lies.
“And what I didn’t understand, Elena,” Gian continued, “is why you would want to do that at all. We keep your father away and out of our life for a goddamn reason. He was always too fascinated with you, too close to you. Controlling. Vindictive. Dangerous. That’s what you said. I saw these things myself, and I knew it was true. You wanted away from him, and you used me to do it, so I protected you for all these years, even after you lied and hurt me. I still protected you. Didn’t I protect you from him?”
She nodded, though the iciness in her gaze hadn’t left. She didn’t look at him with fear, either, despite the fact he only needed to squeeze her throat a little tighter and she would have no air left to breathe at all. Gian figured that was because this was not the first time his wife had found herself in a position like this one.
“Then why?” Gian roared. “Why would you invite that man back in? Why lie to him, manipulate him with personal things about you and me that aren’t even close to the truth? Why use a woman I love and my child—an innocent baby—as a sacrifice for your games? Why do any of that?”
Elena let out a slow, steady stream of air, as much as she could, and then smiled.
Goddamn.
It was cold.
Dead.
It burned.
Like her.
“Because look at you,” she whispered, her voice hoarse and strained. “Look at you, Gian. Look at how angry you are, how ready to kill you are. Years ago, when you found me battered and beaten because of him, you were angry, but not like this. So calm and steady, but with rage so real it radiates. I thought it would have been enough back then to push you into killing him—seeing me like that, and what he did to me—but it wasn’t. And because of that, I had to follow through, didn’t I? To get away, I had no other choice but to follow through with the next part of the plan.”
A heavy realization settled on Gian’s shoulders like a dead weight as he took in his wife’s words.
“To marry me, you mean.”
Elena shrugged dainty shoulders. “I can’t help that it’s taken this long for you to finally find something you give a shit enough about to kill for it, but don’t you ever fault me for using it, Gian. You know exactly who I am—I can’t help that my father forgot for a time, too.”
Yes, he knew.
She was a snake.
Just like her father.
Elena winked. “Hiss, hiss, Gian.”
All that rage that had been beating at Gian’s surface finally spilled over. The control he thought he had was gone, just like that. There wasn’t a single part of Gian that was able to be rational in those few seconds. He took the greatest pleasure in seeing Elena’s eyes water as he choked her against the bathroom wall—how her words struggled, and her body tensed with the urge to fight. It was one of the most beautiful sights he had ever seen, where she was concerned.
“You deserve to rot in hell, Elena. He almost killed them! Because of you.”
“We’ll be free,” she croaked out under his hands. “Don’t you get it?”
“You’re—”
“We’ll be free, Gian.”
He wasn’t quite sure what it was that sent him jerking back from Elena. Partly, her words. Partly, her blue-lipped smile and happy eyes.
“You’re fucking crazy,” he said, pointing a finger at her. “You’re insane.”
“Why, because I figured a way out of this for both of us? All you have to do is get rid of the problem, Gian. He gave you a reason to do it, didn’t he? A reason to justify all the problems that might come of it. You’re angry, remember, he nearly killed Cara and the baby—your precious things. So, kill him.”
“You think that’ll fix this?” Gian asked, waving between them. “You think that’s enough?”
“Shouldn’t it be?”
“This is for life, Elena! And not because of your father’s rules, but because of the ones I am forced to live by. You stupid, silly woman.” He laughed darkly, taking another step back from his wife and shaking his head. “You’re so blinded by your need to manipulate and control and gain by hurting others that you don’t even realize how fucked you are. Killing him isn’t going to get you the divorce. It will never get you the divorce!”
She stiffened, clutching the towel against her body with suddenly shaking hands. “But … but—”
“And the biggest problem is that I can’t even kill you for what you’ve done this time,” Gian snarled at her. “We’ve made such a fucking spectacle of this sham of a marriage—how unhappy you are, how distracted I am elsewhere. Killing you would do nothing but turn everyone against me when I need them the most. But Jesus, it might just be worth it, Elena.”
Finally, a spark of fear lit up her gaze. “You can’t kill me. I’m your wife, Gian.”
Exactly.
And it had nothing to do with her, but everything to do with him. He was a made man—he chose this life, he lived by it, he spoke the rules, and he enforced them even when he hated them. No one could ever possibly understand the struggle it was to be him, and he wouldn’t ever be able to explain it unless someone walked in his shoes.
No one ever would.
“The only reason I would ever give you a divorce, despite how it
would ruin me,” Gian said, “is so that when everyone finally stops looking at me, and you think you’ve finally gotten what you wanted, I could take it all away from you. I could kill you and no one would ever look to me, Elena. That is why I would divorce you, why I would sacrifice my name and legacy, because that is what you deserve. How badly do you want to be free? You’ve already taken everything from me. When is it finally going to be your turn?”
Elena only continued to stare at him, seemingly horrified and in disbelief, all at the same time. This was their life—he couldn’t help the fact that she ignored things that were right in front of her face simply because she figured she could manipulate her way out of them.
That might have worked in her father’s Camorra world.
It did not work in Cosa Nostra.
“You’re going to get dressed,” Gian said quietly, “put your makeup on, cover those marks on your neck with a scarf, and do your hair. Then, you’re going to call your father, and tell him whatever you need to so that he comes over here tonight. You’re going to sound pleasant and sweet and whatever else he needs to hear so that he doesn’t think for a second that anything is wrong. And once he is here, you’re going to do the same thing, and you’ll look away when you need to, you’ll say nothing to anyone about what happens here. Is that understood?”
Elena’s hands trembled more. “Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I understand, Gian.”
He tipped his hand toward the bathroom door. “Hurry the hell up. I won’t be far behind, so don’t think I won’t hear if you try to fuck me over, Elena.”
Gian did exactly as he said he would, following behind his wife while she readied and then called her father. He said nothing as she convinced Gabriel to come to her, and Elena kept her act up the whole time.
He might have been proud, had he felt something at all.
He didn’t.
Not an hour later, Gian had two snakes in his mansion instead of just the one.
“Daddy,” Elena said, a false cheeriness coloring up her tone. “I’ve missed you.”