by Bethany-Kris
Cara didn’t know anything.
“Why?”
“The first time you come to the shelter since taking time off, and these get sent here.” Jenny cleared her throat, uncomfortably. “Presumably to everyone in the offices.”
“Oh, my God.”
She was going to throw up.
“Who knew you were coming here today?” Jenny asked.
Gian. That was it, as far as Cara knew. And Chris, her enforcer, as she wasn’t allowed to go anywhere without him. She didn’t think either of those two people would have done this to her.
“I should go,” Cara mumbled, grabbing for the infant car seat resting on the floor. “I’m so sorry.”
“Cara, wait a—”
She didn’t wait.
The shame wouldn’t let her.
It ate her alive.
Gian found Chris sitting at the kitchen table as he stormed through the penthouse. The enforcer had set little Marcus up in a bouncy chair, and was apparently reading the newspaper to the baby. Beside him, a row of overturned photographs and a discarded manila envelope sat on the tabletop, seemingly forgotten.
He hesitated at the sight of the overturned images, but only because he knew what he would see on the other side. He, too, had gotten a package delivered while dining with a business associate.
Apparently, so had his mother.
His father.
His brother and sister.
Several of his men.
People he worked with.
People who worked for him.
His aunt in Quebec.
His cousins.
Gian suspected there were more, but the people affiliated with his life were probably too shocked, embarrassed, or unsure to contact him and ask about the dirty pictures of Cara. He had found that with a few, they didn’t need an explanation. Like the ones delivered to his parents—there had been no explanation. Some delivered to his men, or people he worked with, had included a simple note explaining who the woman in the images was, and how it related to Gian.
Others, like the ones delivered to him, or to Elena, had been written on directly. Or so Elena told him. Gian believed her, if only because his package had also held the naked images of Cara with red ink marked across the photos labeling her whore and slut. To name a few.
“Were those sent to you today?” Gian asked Chris.
The enforcer kept his attention on the baby. “Found the package under the wiper of my car after I ran in to get a coffee while Cara was inside the shelter.”
Gian cleared the rising rage clogging up his throat. “I see.”
“The doorman downstairs was nice enough to let me know that the front desk also received the same package of photos.”
Gian’s molars ached as he gritted his teeth in an effort to calm himself down. “Destroy them.”
“I thought you would prefer to, if given the option. I didn’t bother to look beyond the first one when I pulled them out. It was enough for me to know I shouldn’t be looking at them. And then Cara came running out of the shelter like a bat out of hell … so, yeah.”
“Does she know that you saw the pictures, too?”
Chris shook his head. “Didn’t say a word, boss.”
“Keep it that way.”
“I planned to. This is bad, isn’t it?”
Little Marcus seemed perfectly content to bounce in his chair, thanks to Chris helping by tugging on the bottom. The baby certainly didn’t know his mother’s whole world had just been turned upside down, and she would never feel safe or unviolated again. Not even in her own skin. How could she, when every time someone looked at her, she would have to wonder if they had done this to her, or if they had seen?
“It’s bad,” Gian said, “but not in the way some might think. Someone intended to embarrass me, to shame me, and what they did was far worse.”
“They hurt Cara.”
“Yes.”
Chris sighed, and stopped bouncing the baby’s seat as he turned to his boss. “Who would have access to those photos?”
“They’re accessed only on my phone and you know how careful I am with that.”
“But who would, boss?”
Gian had to seriously consider his answer, because he wasn’t sure. Yes, his phone had a pin lock on it, but if someone picked up the device when his back was turned before the screen blacked out, they could easily see inside and explore his very personal and private life. Beyond that, phones were not infallible. Anyone with a decent computer program could plug one in and strip it of files, locked or not, with the owner none the wiser.
“Whoever it was would have needed to have my phone for a bit, I think. Some of those images are back from after the bomb was set on my car, when Cara and I were a new thing. It would have taken time to grab files that far back in the gallery.”
“Then you’re just knocking names off the list,” Chris said with a shrug. “So, who was it?”
“Am I knocking names off?” Gian asked right back. “Because that leaves a few people who I spent enough time with to maybe set my phone down and look away, but that doesn’t mean I did or would.”
“Another question, then.”
Gian figured he was the one who needed to be asking questions, but he didn’t see the harm in letting Chris ask, too. “What?”
“Who would do it—do something that awful to someone like this?”
Gian scoffed, dark and hateful. “My wife. Her father. This stinks of them. It reeks of their kind of nonsense.”
“You don’t sound sure.”
“I have never left my phone within reach of Elena, and she also received a package today with these photos, or so she said when she called to scream at me. I haven’t seen Gabriel since before Marcus was born, and again, he had no access to my phone. It certainly stinks of them.”
“Except how,” Chris muttered.
“Oui.”
“Cara disappeared into the bedroom. I didn’t want to interrupt her, and the principe is fine with me, boss.”
Gian nodded. “Thank you.”
Unsure of what kind of state he would find Cara in, Gian headed for the master bedroom. He opened the door to see a hurricane of devastation staring back at him. Clothes strewn about the floor in piles, wrinkled or torn. Jewelry scattered, perfumes toppled over, and makeup palates crushed in a strange rainbow of colors on hardwood. White sheets had been ripped from the mattress, and glass from the shattered mirror glittered on the floor and the shoes that had clearly been used to smash it.
Rage found him standing there.
Shame screamed through the silence.
Cara, so calm and put together, so strong even in her weaknesses, had clearly broke under a whole new kind of weight. It was not lost on him how she attacked the things that accentuated her life, beauty, or image. Her clothes, perfumes, and makeup. Her jewelry, and the mirror that showcased her reflection when she stared into it.
It killed him.
Because she was so beautiful. Because she was so wonderful. Because in her heart, she was everything sweet, good, and deserving of love, adoration, and respect.
Someone had taken that from her without care or concern. They had taken private moments of her life, things that only he was allowed to see or have from her, and showed them to the world.
And how dare they?
Cara’s worth should never be tied to the acts of a bedroom, and yet, he feared they now would be for far too many. She probably knew it, too.
“Cara?” Gian called into the bedroom, taking a single step inside. “Mon ange?”
A quiet, choked sob echoed from behind the opened door of the attached master bath. Gian instantly headed in that direction, making sure to shut the bedroom door behind him.
He found Cara tucked into the corner of the bathroom, soaking wet from a still-running shower, and naked, though she clutched at a towel. She wouldn’t look at him, not when he called her name again, or even when he got down on his knees and reached for her. She flinched away from him when he touche
d her, but he still pulled her into his embrace.
“I’m sorry,” he said over and over.
“Why would someone do that to me, Gian? Why?”
“I don’t know.”
But he thought he did. He thought he might know. He still didn’t want to tell her. How could he explain that someone had violated her privacy and life, simply to hurt him? Wasn’t it bad enough that Cara had to know those photos were his to begin with? That he had not been careful enough with something like those images she trusted him with?
Cara shook from the force of her cries. No matter how hard he tried, Gian couldn’t wipe the tears away fast enough before more ran down her cheeks.
“I’m so sorry,” he told her again.
He couldn’t make this better.
This couldn’t be fixed.
Gian hated himself for that.
“Cara, look at me,” Gian demanded.
She did, but the sadness that had been constant in her eyes for a week, stared back at him. He was so angry and disappointed in himself, because she asked him the same thing every day: why and who. He was no closer to being able to answer that for her, and each time he couldn’t give her what she asked, he failed more.
“It’ll be fine, a quiet weekend away,” he told her.
Cara nodded, her attention drifting back to the sleeping baby in the car seat next to her. “Maybe it’ll help to get away.”
That’s what he kept telling her.
He hoped it was true.
“Chris will keep an eye on you,” Gian promised, “but if you need anything, if you want me, just call. Okay?”
“Sure, Gian.”
He didn’t for a second think she would call. She blamed him, in a way, and Gian didn’t fault her for it. It had been his phone, his pictures. It was her job lost, her newly beginning career already stained and tainted, and her reputation destroyed with one selfish, vile act. It was her image and self-worth ruined, not his. And fuck him, because he couldn’t even tell her who or why.
“Is it different?” Cara asked. “The Ottawa penthouse, I mean. Is it different from the last time I was there?”
Gian smiled. “A bit. I had some upgrades done. It needed them. I think you’ll like it. Take some time to enjoy it, anyway. I haven’t been able to yet. Not entirely.”
“You could come.”
“You don’t really want me to, though, do you?”
Cara glanced away. “I just need to get out of this city and breathe, Gian.”
“I know, mon ange.” He wouldn’t fault her for that, either. Leaning into the back of the SUV, Gian kissed Cara on her forehead, and relaxed a bit when her soft fingertips stroked his cheek. It felt like a silent promise that things would be better … eventually. Quickly, he laid his hand on top of his son’s head, and Marcus’s eyes fluttered open at his father’s touch. “For anything, Cara, you call me.”
“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.
&n
bsp; 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.