by Bella Rose
Momentarily helpless, Antonin watched in horror as his father charged into the room from the hallway. Josef was waiting for him. Mikhail had no chance. The moment Josef had a shot he took it. Blood spattered the office as the bullet went right through Mikhail’s head. The gore was horrific.
Adrenaline surged through Antonin’s body. He bowed upward, taking Dimitri with him. His former friend grunted with the effort of holding on. Then Antonin felt the barrel of a weapon pressed to his back. Dimitri fired and Antonin moaned as he felt the thud of bullets entering his body. He went slack. His vision curled at the edges, turning black as he began to pass out from the extreme pain of bullets riddling his flesh.
“It took you that long to shoot him?” Josef scoffed. “I told you to put one between his eyes when we got upstairs.”
Dimitri shifted Antonin’s body away from his and regained his feet. Antonin watched, his vision hazy and dreamlike. He hovered in a twilight zone between consciousness and unconsciousness, waiting—no, expecting another bullet to hit him in the head at any second.
“You know,” Dimitri said sarcastically, “I don’t necessarily find it as easy to shoot my former friends as you do.”
Josef muttered something uncomplimentary in Russian about Dimitri having female genitalia. Then the two men turned and seemed to be on the verge of walking out the door. They paused beside Mikhail, both staring down at the man who was supposed to own their loyalty.
Dimitri nudged Mikhail’s shoulder with his toe. “He was a shitty Pekhan.”
“I will be a better one.”
Dimitri snorted. “You better be. Or this will be you next week.”
Antonin tried to move, but couldn’t. His body had stopped taking orders from his brain. The world seemed to drift out of focus completely, and then all went black.
***
JULIET SAT NUMBLY in the treatment room of the St. Mary’s emergency department. Father Barelli lay on the hospital bed before her. They had already sent him for a CT scan, and now they were waiting for the doctor to decide if there was any internal damage to the soft tissue that would require surgery. The priest had been quiet since Giovanni’s completely inappropriate disclosure in the car.
Juliet had no idea how much time had passed when she finally roused herself enough to speak. “Did you know?” she asked the priest.
“Yes.”
“Oh, so now you can respond?” Juliet couldn’t keep the bitterness from her tone.
The room was dim. The nurse had turned the lights off, and the beeping of the heart monitor drowned out the murmur of voices on the other side of the closed glass door. Giovanni had disappeared almost as soon as they had arrived. Juliet didn’t care where he was. He could go down to the morgue and climb inside one of the refrigerator units for all she cared.
Father Barelli sighed. “Technically, once someone is dead the confidentiality thing can be somewhat fluid dependent upon the situation.”
“That’s convenient.” Juliet pointed at the priest. “You’ve known me my whole life. Who spilled the truth in confession, my mother or my father? At least I’m assuming that’s how you found out.”
“Actually, it was your biological father,” Father Barelli admitted.
Wrapping her mind around that notion was almost impossible. Juliet shook her head, unable to reconcile the idea of her mother being unfaithful to her father. “Why would she do that? She loved my father!”
“No.” Father Barelli’s tone was adamant. “She loved your biological father. His name was Leo D’onofrio. He was a man of smiles and laughter. Everybody loved Leo. He charmed your mother from the time they met as schoolchildren. But your mother was chosen to marry a very powerful man, and her parents insisted that she accept.”
“So my father got a job working for—” Oh, this was so messed up. “—my father?”
“Leo was already working for the Cagliones,” Father Barelli informed her. “He had been since high school. I believed him when he told me that he was fighting the attraction, but watching your mother slowly wither away because she loved a man who was not her husband was heartbreaking to watch.”
“So after Enzo was born, Mama figured she had done her duty,” Juliet said dully. “And Papa was already cheating on her, since Enzo and Giovanni were nearly the same age.”
“Yes.” Father Barelli sighed. “It was all very complicated, but Charlie Caglione knew his wife was in love with another man.”
“What happened to Leo?” Juliet almost hated to ask. She was afraid she already knew.
“He was killed in a turf war.” Father Barelli reached out and patted Juliet’s knee. “Your mother didn’t live much longer. I always wondered if she died of a broken heart.”
Juliet thought about her own heart and how much it hurt because Antonin had lied to her. He had murdered her father—a man who, as it turned out, wasn’t really her father, but was the only father she’d ever known. Yet Antonin had only been doing his job. It wasn’t like Charlie Caglione hadn’t done similar to other fathers. Wasn’t that just the life they chose to lead?
“If you love that man,” Father Barelli murmured, “you need to forgive him before you wind up losing him and being unable to forgive yourself.”
***
ANTONIN CAME ROARING back to consciousness with enough pain to make him wish he were dead. He rolled from his back onto his belly. That eased the severe discomfort just a little. He blinked as he tried to remember what had happened. Then he caught sight of Mikhail’s body lying on the floor.
Using his forearms, Antonin dragged himself toward his father’s body. There was no question that the man was dead. His open unseeing eyes were evidence enough of that. The sight of Mikhail brought the whole incident rushing back. Dimitri and Josef’s betrayal, their obvious plan to take over the Bratva, and the fact that they had turned Juliet against him.
No. My actions did that.
It was that horrible realization that forced Antonin to gain his feet. He wobbled, grabbing on to a bookshelf in order to remain upright. He could not leave things like this with Juliet. He could not live in a world where she thought he was nothing more than the man that had murdered her father. There had to be a way to make this right. He couldn’t bring back the dead, but he could grovel and beg her forgiveness.
With a newfound sense of determination, Antonin began schlepping his way out of the office and down the hallway. The steps were murder, but he managed to stop himself lurching over the railing. He heard voices near the kitchen. There were murmurings and even a few shouts. The sounds made him think of the other men that should have been inside the house. Where were they? Even after the disastrous meeting with the Cagliones, there should have been at least a dozen or more Bratva vory hanging about the house.
Then the voices coming from the kitchen grew more distinct. “Who says you’re the new Pekhan, you arrogant prick?”
“I think we should let him be in charge.” That was Dimitri.
So even though Josef had disposed of the Pekhan and his heir, the Bratva wasn’t willing to just accept him as their new leader. Antonin felt strengthened by this knowledge. He forced himself to keep walking, to put one foot in front of the other as he entered the kitchen.
“Don’t listen to him!” Antonin shouted to the Bratva men ranged around the kitchen of the dead Pekhan’s home. “Josef is a traitor, and Dimitri has helped him. My father was murdered by these men, and they will do the same to you if you trust them!”
Antonin’s words certainly had an immediate effect. The men in the kitchen surged toward Dimitri and Josef, their angry ranting getting louder as they demanded satisfaction. Antonin turned and limped toward the garage where he could acquire a car. There were more than a dozen hospitals in the area where Juliet might have taken the priest, but there were only two Catholic hospitals frequented by the Italian mafia. They were either at St. Vincent’s or St. Mary’s. He had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right, but he had to try. He had to try to make things right wi
th her.
***
JULIET FROZE WHEN Giovanni stepped back inside the priest’s treatment room. She had been so swept up in Father Barelli’s story that she had forgotten all about Giovanni’s presence in the hospital.
“There’s a chapel here,” Giovanni informed her. “The chaplain says he can marry us.”
“Giovanni!” Juliet didn’t even try to hide her exasperation. “Can you please just take no for an answer?”
“I’m not giving up my inheritance!” Giovanni shouted.
“It’s not yours.” Juliet tried to be very plain and very firm. “I realize that you were the biological child of Charlie Caglione, but Charlie didn’t actually own any of that property. It was all still in Carlos’s name. When Carlos died, Charlie would have inherited.” She swallowed. This next part was really going to piss off Giovanni. “Mr. Luciano told me that my grandfather was very specific.”
“What are you babbling about? They all had wills. When Charlie died, then Carlos’s will just bequeathed it all to you. It’s mine! It’s all mine!”
“No.” Juliet shook her head. “You’re wrong. The day after Charlie was murdered, Carlos had a new will made. It named me specifically as the heir.”
Giovanni gaped at her. His mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out. He looked somewhere between shocked and really pissed. Then he pointed at her. “You did something. You tricked that stupid old man.”
“How?” she asked, her voice rising in pitch as she began to feel as though he would never let up. “How could I trick someone when I didn’t know any of this? I didn’t realize my grandfather made a new will. I only called Luciano after Carlos died because I wanted to make sure things were settled enough to be business as usual. I didn’t realize that I was the sole beneficiary or that I was named specifically. How could I trick him?”
“You used your feminine charm!” Giovanni shouted. “He wanted you to marry me!”
“True,” she agreed. “But if the inheritance thing had been at question, he would have changed the will to reflect you as the beneficiary. He didn’t. And I’m not marrying a man who held a gun to my head and shot a priest! I don’t even think my grandfather would argue with that!”
The door of the treatment room suddenly whooshed open. Juliet shut her mouth. There was no need to let the nurses and doctors know just how dysfunctional the Cagliones were. Except it was not a nurse or doctor that poked their head into the room.
Dimitri gave them a long, slow smile that reeked of evil intent. “You guys are so loud I think the entire hospital probably knows your business by now. But that’s all right. I’m just here for Juliet. The rest of you don’t need to worry.”
Giovanni bristled. “What do you want with Juliet? You said if you got Antonin, that you’d leave Juliet alone.”
“Yeah,” Dimitri said sarcastically. “That was before we started having such a difficult time killing Antonin. We’re going to need Juliet as an insurance policy. I’m sure you understand.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
THE ENTIRE ROOM seemed to be frozen for just the span of a few breaths. Father Barelli had his finger on the nurse call button, but Juliet was afraid that would only result in dead nurses. Dimitri had already shot some people and appeared to be in desperate straits. That didn’t bode well for anyone who interrupted him.
Then in a strange burst of chivalry, Giovanni launched himself at Dimitri. At the second just before impact, he glanced toward Juliet. “Run! I’ll keep him busy!”
Dimitri grunted as he and Giovanni went down to the hard tile floor of the emergency department. Both men were punching and kicking as they rolled around on the ground. It was as though the whole world was stuck in slow motion. Juliet stared at them, trying to reconcile what was likely to happen to Giovanni when Dimitri stood up.
Then Father Barelli’s clipped voice sliced right through her nervous inaction. “Juliet, you must run!”
She bolted from the treatment room without looking back. Fighting her way through the curtain, she slammed the glass door shut behind her and took a right down the wide hospital hallway. The ER was laid out in a square with the treatment rooms placed according to the level of triage.
Dashing down the one hallway, she pushed her way through a set of double doors into the regular hospital hallway. Down the hall, two left turns, and a flight of stairs later, she ducked into a room labeled “storage.” Hunkering down in the dim glow of a single overhead bulb, she tried to do her best to hide beneath a hanging rack full of hospital lab coats. There were shelves full of gauze, tape, and other miscellaneous treatment items. She could only hope that she had run far enough to lose Dimitri.
Her breathing was loud in the closeness of the little storage room. She couldn’t help but worry that someone would come in here to look for extra supplies and think she was a stowaway or an intruder. With her luck, someone would see her and start screaming. Then Dimitri would stumble upon her and that would be it for Juliet and the tiny life she carried within her.
ANTONIN SAW JOSEF pacing back and forth outside the emergency room entrance of St. Mary’s hospital. Unfortunately for Antonin, he had tried St. Vincent’s first. How was it possible that Josef and Dimitri had extricated themselves from that mess at Mikhail’s home so quickly was beyond Antonin’s ability to understand. He should have had plenty of time to search both Catholic hospitals and still find Juliet before Josef managed to. If Antonin had believed in such things, he would have thought someone had put an evil hex on him. Everything he did lately seemed cursed.
Suddenly Josef turned on his heel and strode into the hospital. The only thought in Antonin’s head was that Dimitri must have found Juliet. Without even waiting to see if it was safe, Antonin charged forward through the sliding doors. He had forgotten until that moment that he was bleeding from three gunshot wounds on his back.
“Sir!” A nurse approached Antonin as soon as he cleared the mats at the entrance door. “Sir, come with me. You’re bleeding.” The woman turned to the reception desk. “Tell Dr. Hammond that I have a gunshot wound with hemorrhage.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the receptionist said quickly. “I’ve paged him.”
“I don’t need treatment,” Antonin insisted.
The nurse was already dragging him toward a triage room. “Sir, who shot you?”
Just at that moment, two armed policeman came striding around the corner at the far end of the hallway. Josef was between the policemen and Antonin. He realized right then how he might try to intervene on Juliet’s behalf.
“That man shot me!” Antonin shouted, pointing at Josef.
Josef had until that moment not even realized that Antonin was behind him. Now he turned and gaped, but it was too late. The policemen reacted with record-breaking speed. They snatched at Josef’s arms and spun him around to face the desk. A quick search turned up two weapons. They were already hauling Josef off toward the exit when the new self-appointed Pekhan of the Bratva spotted Antonin.
“You bastard!” Josef snarled in Russian. “These charges won’t stick, and then I’ll be after you again before you can find someplace to hide your sorry carcass!”
“I’ll look forward to it,” Antonin returned.
The nurse pushed Antonin down on a rolling hospital bed and began probing his back. “Just sit tight and calm down. The police will take care of that man. They’ll be back in just a few minutes to take your statement. Until then you’re going to stay put. We need to dig these bullets out before you get an infection.”
“There’s a patient here, a priest,” Antonin said quickly. “He’s got a woman with him. Her name is Juliet Caglione. I need to see her. Could you please see if she’s here?”
The nurse gave him an appraising look. “I’m guessing this has something to do with a lovers’ spat?”
“In a way,” he hedged. It was far too complicated to explain.
The nurse gave him a smile. “I suppose we could work something out. I hate to see two lovebirds fighting.
Wait until Dr. Hammond gets here, and I’ll go try to find her. I think we’ve only got one priest in here this evening.” Two lines appeared on the nurse’s forehead. “Come to think of it, there are an awful lot of gunshot wounds in here tonight.”
***
JULIET REFUSED TO breathe. She could hear very deliberate footsteps outside her storage closet, and she was so very afraid that she knew exactly whom they belonged to. It felt like she had been hiding for a million years when in reality she knew it had probably only been a few minutes.
“Oh Juliet, Juliet, wherefore art thou, Juliet?” The sarcastic voice right outside the doorway made the blood run like ice through Juliet’s veins.
It was Dimitri. She would have recognized that sarcastic tone anywhere. He was so close. Did he know where she was, or was he just waiting for her to make a mistake? She was cursing herself for being foolish enough to wind up trapped in a room with no exits. What had she been thinking?
She cast about for possible weapons. There were all sorts of tubing, towels, lab jackets, and other soft first aid supplies. She fumbled about and came up with a syringe. It seemed such a paltry weapon against a man like Dimitri who was probably armed with a gun. Still, she ripped open the plastic packaging and uncapped the needle. It was too bad there wasn’t something awful like bleach or ammonia that she could inject him with. As if she would have had enough time to do such a thing. This was not some kind of action movie. This was real life, and Juliet needed a plan fast.
The door handle turned, and Juliet tried to listen past the roaring in her ears. She was going to be sick. That was all there was to it. She pressed the palm of her left hand low over her abdomen and held the syringe in her right. The door began to inch open. She saw a set of shoes. Maybe she should stab his feet. That way she could just bowl him over and sprint out the door.
“I know you’re in here, Juliet,” Dimitri sneered. “I saw you come up here. You’re very slow, you know?”