by Bethany-Kris
Melina handed over the keys to Giuseppe so that he could unlock her door. As he stepped off the sidewalk and went around to the driver’s side, Melina frowned.
The streets around them were quiet.
Too quiet.
The car beeped as Giuseppe unlocked it with the remote. He opened the door and then everything happened at once.
Oil.
Fire.
And burning flesh.
The force of the explosion threw Melina backward so hard she was sent crashing to the ground.
Her head hit the sidewalk with a resounding thud and the last thing Melina saw before she closed her eyes was a shadowy figure coming her way.
“Fuck. Jesus, give me the strength …”
“A bad boy who prays, huh?” the nurse asked. “Never would have taken you for that kind of man.”
Air hissed hard through teeth in a sucked inhale, and the hospital bed rattled with the force of the man’s trembling as another wet, cold cloth was peeled from his skin. And with it came a strip of blackened, burned flesh.
Mac glanced away at the sight of a tear escaping from the corner of Giuseppe’s eye.
There was a smell lingering in the hospital room, something that was hard to explain but Mac knew he would never be able to forget. Like dead skin, burnt oil, and antiseptic, all rolled into one. It burned his lungs with every exhale, but Mac said nothing, and he wouldn’t. Giuseppe couldn’t help the situation he was in, and frankly, the enforcer was lucky to be alive. Beyond that, had positions been reversed, and Giuseppe allowed Melina to drive, Mac knew all too well …
Jesus.
It could have been his wife in the bed with forty percent of her body burned.
Thankfully, Melina was two floors down in a private suite with a few bumps and bruises, a minor burn on her side, and a concussion. She was also demanding to be let out of the hospital, asking for release the very second she could get it.
Mac wasn’t allowing that just yet.
Soon, but not yet.
“Three more and then we’ll be able to take a break,” the nurse said.
Giuseppe’s gaze flicked to Mac, who was standing in the corner with his arms crossed. The two men hadn’t been able to talk a great deal with the nurses and doctors coming in and out of his unit, caring for his burns. Giuseppe was hopped up on morphine, which made anybody a little loopy in the head, but it wasn’t doing fuck all for the pain. They couldn’t give him more without overdosing him, and that was a real concern.
The pain was another thing that could very well kill him.
But he was taking it well.
As the nurse pulled another wet bandage off, this time from the side of Giuseppe’s face that had suffered burns, he cursed a blue streak, every muscle in his body protesting as he damn near lifted himself from the bed.
Mac thought the man would have, had he actually had the strength for it.
“That’s your three, sweetheart,” Giuseppe told the nurse once she had replaced the bandage with a fresh one.
“Mr.—”
Giuseppe barked out a weak laugh, eyeing the pretty, young nurse who was working on his burns. “You’re a cute thing—give me a break, huh? Give me five.”
The nurse passed Mac a look in the corner, then nodded her head and scurried out with her head down, muttering something about getting more supplies. The room was stocked—she didn’t need more, as far as that went. But if the excuse worked to get her out of the room without guilt, Mac didn’t blame her.
Being on a burn unit couldn’t be an easy job.
“Spit it out,” Giuseppe mumbled, turning away from Mac.
Ah.
So that was it.
Giuseppe thought his Capo was angry with him, that perhaps Mac felt as though his man’s decisions had been the catalyst to the bomb and Melina being hurt.
Mac had news for the guy. “Thank you.”
Giuseppe turned back slowly, blinking though it seemed painful for him to do so. “Pardon, Skip?”
“Quit bugging that nurse for morphine—you’re going to overdose.”
“The pain is going to give me a fucking heart attack.”
“Better your heart stop than to be a made man with ‘overdose’ stamped on the coroner’s report,” Mac shot back.
Giuseppe only nodded once, his silent agreement. “You shouldn’t thank me. I did my job, and here we are.”
“Yes,” Mac murmured, “here we are. And this could have been my wife, but it isn’t. I think that deserves much more than a thank you, but that will have to do.”
“You and I have different ideas of what doing my job means then, Skip.”
“Melina’s alive. The job is good.”
Whether Giuseppe was too exhausted to argue, or he didn’t care to, the man said nothing.
“Tell me,” Mac started to say, “Did you see anything going on or someone unusual around last night?”
“Everything was good. It was on the up. Melina had a guest or two she wanted an eye kept on, but she was also ready to go. I’d been checking the alley and the lot on and off, plus keeping an eye on her. I don’t know when it happened. It shouldn’t have happened.”
“Maybe it wasn’t set in the parking lot,” Mac suggested, “or in the alley.”
“Where else?” Giuseppe groaned, looking like he was about to throw up as he shifted in the bed, his broken body seeping and bleeding. It was a terrible sight, and Mac could only begin to imagine how the man must feel. “It’s not like those bombs are the type to just sit idle.”
“Some can, if set right. Do you remember what happened leading up to it?”
“Melina passed me the keys, she’d had a drink or two in the club. She seems like a smart woman, I wouldn’t take her to drink and drive. I didn’t ask, though, she just gave them to me.”
Mac smiled absently. “She wouldn’t, no. Then what?”
Giuseppe struggled for a good thirty seconds, rambling about things he couldn’t remember and his foggy brain. Finally, he said something that might have been important. “I hit the unlock button on the fob, and then boom.”
For some, details were unimportant.
For Mac, details were everything.
He was the kind of man that could put a lot together about a person or a situation just by a few choice details.
For now, however, his conversation with Giuseppe was finished, as he could see the young nurse making her way back with arms full of clean towels and a cup of some kind of juice in her hand.
“Stop asking for morphine,” Mac reminded Giuseppe. “Because even if it doesn’t overdose you, I won’t have any guy of mine coming out of the hospital a junkie. I’d put a fucking bullet in your head before I’d let you ruin your name like that.”
Giuseppe didn’t argue. “Got it, Skip.”
Mac found Enric posted outside of Melina’s hospital room door. The young man rested in his chair, his gaze focused on the car magazine in his hand. Mac didn’t have a lot of men to be passing around and using them for guards when they had other fucking jobs to be doing, too. Unfortunate as it was, and given how very directed the attacks seemed to be on Mac and his wife, he’d wisely chosen to move Enric from his mother and sister, to his wife for a while.
At least until Melina was out of the hospital and home.
She wasn’t going to like it, but Mac was locking her down after this.
Until this shit was figured out—until whoever it was could be put in the ground like the dog they were—his wife was going to be safe, first and foremost.
Mac was still prepping for the battle that was sure to be.
Melina didn’t frighten easily.
He figured that was half of her problem, though he loved her for it.
For now, it was one thing at a time.
That would have to wait.
To anyone passing by, Enric probably looked like a family member waiting in the hall for whoever was in the room. He even seemed distracted, given his attention never once left t
he magazine, even as people passed him by.
That wasn’t close to being the case.
Mac was but three feet away and Enric hadn’t even passed him a look, but the young man tossed his magazine aside and stood.
“How’s Giuseppe?” Enric asked.
Mac frowned. “Managing.”
That was the best he could offer. As it was, Giuseppe had asked no one be permitted inside his unit room, even his family. Mac understood why, given the scene it would be over the coming days and weeks and even months as his skin was stripped from his body in an effort to make graphs to help heal the burns.
It was not for the faint of heart.
“And Melina?” Mac asked.
Enric smirked, letting out a chuckle. “Just give it a minute.”
Mac’s brow furrowed, but sure enough, he heard the snarl of his wife shortly after a nurse had taken in yet another round of medicines and things.
“She’s not happy to be in here,” Enric noted.
Well, it was what it was.
Mac almost considered running to the coffee shop down the street, just to give his wife a few more minutes to relax. He’d been with her for most of the night and morning, only taking a short break to make a few calls and visit Giuseppe during that time as well.
Still, Melina was not a fun patient to take care of.
He was pretty sure she was every nurse’s worst nightmare.
Enric let out a laugh as though he could read Mac’s mind. “Don’t even try it, Mac. If she asks where you are one more time, I’m going to tell her.”
“Pretty sure I’m the one running this show,” Mac muttered.
“Pretty sure it’s my father.”
Mac flipped Enric the middle finger as he began to move past him to enter Melina’s hospital room.
Enric’s question stopped him. “Did you find out anything?”
Mac hesitated. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Enric, because he did, but rather, he didn’t know if the information was something he was right on. What Giuseppe had told him was a possible theory, and as of now, nothing more.
Mac would have to ask his wife a few details about her car over the last few days.
“It may have been on a timer,” Mac said, “and probably not planted at the club.”
As sick as that thought made Mac.
There were very few places Melina went, and one was the club, another was to his mother’s place, and finally was their home.
If the bomb wasn’t planted at the club, it was very likely that it had been set right under their noses.
That just pissed him off like nothing else.
“Bombs don’t just sit idle like that in cars,” Enric said, repeating what Giuseppe had noted earlier.
“That’s why I said a timer,” Mac offered, giving nothing else.
He strolled into the hospital room, leaving Enric behind. The nurse was still in the room, huffing with her arms crossed as Melina glared at the older woman from her perch in the bed.
“It’s a vitamin,” the woman said to his wife. “The doctor wants it added on because it’s needed.”
“For what?” Melina barked. “To shove more pills down my throat?”
Mac had already heard enough. “Leave the meds, thanks. Please have the doctor stop by as soon as he is able, and I’ll handle it from here.”
If looks could kill, the nurse would have been dead as she left the room.
Mac turned his sharp eye on his wife, letting every ounce of his displeasure pour into the look. Melina barely even flinched.
“What?” she asked.
“Stop being difficult. Take the medicine.”
“They just added random pills to it without explanation!”
Mac sighed, the tremors of an oncoming migraine burning the sides of his temples. He found a seat beside his wife’s bed and found her hand with his own, soaking in her warmth and her life.
Because how easily … how close they had been to losing it.
Mac found Melina staring at him, and he could plainly see how unhappy she was in that hospital bed. She probably felt helpless or useless.
Jesus.
He knew the feeling well.
“Tell me about the car, doll,” he said.
Melina patted the side of her cheek were a few scrapes were. She’d had glass imbedded in those scrapes, and it had been a very painful two hours watching each little piece be pulled out with tweezers.
“I don’t remember,” she told him.
She’d said that over and over again.
Mac kept asking because he hoped she could regain something he could use.
Anything at all.
The human brain was a funny thing in that way. Any sort of hard whack or trauma and sometimes, the moments in which it happened and the time leading up to the event could be lost. His wife remembered all too well the hospital trip and even up until she lost consciousness. She couldn’t remember that night, though.
Mac didn’t want to push, but he didn’t have a choice.
Melina was the only one with answers.
“Okay, the day before,” he said. “What about the car then? Where did you go? Any new stops?”
Melina shrugged. “I picked up dinner for us, but that’s not a new stop.”
“What else?”
“I went to your mom’s to get your sister a couple days ago. We went to the salon.”
Mac knew about that, too.
His wife hadn’t deviated at all from her usual routes, which meant to him that the bomb had probably been planted at one of their familiar haunts.
He needed to be more vigilant, clearly.
Or they were going to die.
“When you left to go to the club, did you unlock the car?” Mac asked quietly.
Melina’s brow knitted together. “I don’t leave my car unlocked, Mac.”
“Sure, but did you unlock it?”
“I …” Melina couldn’t come up with a response, and this time, Mac could see it wasn’t because she couldn’t remember. “I didn’t unlock it, I just grabbed the door and opened it.”
Mac knew how careful his wife was with her car. She loved it—it was a gift from him, and an expensive one at that. She’d been a little annoyed at first over the purchase, but quickly had gotten over it. Still, she took good care of her vehicle, and leaving it open to get stolen was not one of those things.
Not that he thought anyone would steal the car of a Capo’s wife.
That would be fucking stupid.
“I didn’t realize until now,” Melina said. “Someone messed with my car?”
“They would have had to, in order to set the bomb, doll. But the more important thing to me is the timer it was set on—that says a lot. Any fucking idiot can put together a shitty little pipe bomb and drop it in a garbage can on a timer from a burner phone. It takes some real skill to set up a bomb on a car’s unlocking mechanism.”
Melina seemed to understand right away. “And how many people do you know that can do that?”
“One, maybe.”
But he’d have to go through Luca, first.
It didn’t matter.
Mac was going there.
Melina gave her husband a brilliant smile, one of the few she’d managed since entering the hospital. “We’ll figure it out.”
Well, he would.
He still wasn’t ready to tell her about the new rules regarding her and not going very far, though. Not yet. Her mood was better, and Mac wasn’t about to ruin that.
Mac smiled back, leaned over the bed, and gave her a quick kiss.
A clearing throat interrupted their moment. Pulling back from his wife with a wink, Mac found the doctor standing in the doorway, his clipboard in hand and his stethoscope slung around his neck. Glancing down at the file, the doctor shook his head.
“Mrs. Maccari, you are giving my nurses some kind of hell, aren’t you?” he asked, amusement coloring up his words.
Mac laughed under his breath, even at his wif
e’s scowl.
“I don’t need to be in here,” Melina said firmly. “I’m taking up a bed—”
“Yes, well, until your husband agrees to discharge you, given the price he paid for this room and the tests he asked for, you will remain right where you are.”
Fuck.
Fucking fuck.
Melina turned those eyes on Mac.
Perhaps he had forgotten to mention that it was him keeping her in here as long as possible. Maybe he had been blaming it on the hospital.
Truth was, he did just want to make sure she was okay.
“And while I am at it,” the doctor continued, not giving Melina the slightest chance to even argue, “you will take that vitamin the nurse brought in with your other medicine. When you leave, I expect you to make a stop at the drugstore and pick up a bottle of your own for future use. One a day for the rest of the pregnancy.”
Mac froze, and so did Melina.
They were both stuck like that, Melina staring at the doctor with her mouth slightly open and her eyes a bit wider than they were.
Mac was just caught staring at her.
Pregnant.
“That’s not …” Melina tipped her head to the side like she was trying to comprehend that statement. “Possible?”
Mac’s grin was growing, his hand squeezing tighter around his wife’s.
Because hell yes.
“I assure you it is,” the doctor replied, turning on his heel to leave. “Congratulations.”
The man wasn’t gone but two minutes and Melina turned on Mac, a mixture of uncertainty and joy dancing over her pretty features.
“Get me out of this place,” she told him.
Mac was already standing before she’d finished her sentence. He leaned down and caught her still-surprised lips with his own, wanting her kiss.
She was going to have a fit, he knew.
She was going to be scared about the changes.
But Melina would be just fine.
“Whatever you want, doll.”
Mac had a feeling he would be saying that a lot for the next eight or nine months.
Mac peeled out of bed with measured slowness and extra grace, so as not to jostle his wife more than he had to for fear of waking her up. The beeping of his phone had woken him, and the call had been one he was waiting for.
