by Bethany-Kris
Lucia didn’t look at John as she said, “Some bagged tea.”
“Yeah, so take her,” Siena said, dropping his sister’s arm and giving him a pointed look. “And I will meet you at the entrance on the way out of the market.”
John tried not to scowl as Siena dropped a quick kiss to his lips and murmured, “Stop pouting, John.”
He was not fucking pouting.
“I will meet you at the entrance,” John grumbled.
“Good.”
Her hand patted his cheek affectionately, and then she was gone. Quickly disappearing into the crowd of people. Just as fast, one of the two enforcers that were following along, but also keeping their distance, split away from his partner without needing to be told. He followed behind Siena without her ever realizing he was even there.
That left John.
And Lucia.
Alone.
Together.
Fuck.
“Well, come on, then,” Lucia said with a cool tone and a dismissive wave. “It’s cold, and I don’t want to freeze out here for too long.”
John chuckled dryly, but followed along behind his sister. “You didn’t mind five minutes ago when Siena was here.”
He saw Lucia’s shoulders stiffen from behind.
“Yeah, well …”
Time to bite another bullet.
“What do you need me to say, Lucia?” John asked quietly, speaking to the back of her head because she still wouldn’t even look at him. “Tell me what to say so that we can move on, and I will do that. Sorry isn’t going to be good enough—I get that. So what will do it for you?”
For the briefest second, his sister’s posture softened. She stopped walking, but the people continued to blow by them in the market. No one around them seemed to feel the tension biting pain passing between the two siblings.
Slowly, Lucia turned around to face him. The coldness in her gaze had finally left, but he wasn’t all too sure that he liked what replaced it, either. A line of watery tears that were damn near ready to fall, but somehow, she held the floodgates back.
“You’re right,” Lucia said quietly, “sorry won’t be good enough, John.”
“But I am sorry.”
She nodded. “Now.”
“The day it happened. The day I found you. The day Renzo was taken away. That very second, Lucia, I was sorry. That was not what was supposed to happen.”
Her jaw hardened, and goddamn, she looked so much like their father in that moment, it was unreal. Only their dad could hold back his emotions with a hardened jaw, and clipped words.
Lucia didn’t do that, though. “Did you know he hated me?”
“Who?”
“Renzo,” Lucia said. “At first, he thought I was just some little rich bitch with an air-filled head, and a pretty face. I didn’t know what it was like to be poor, or to struggle. I didn’t know the streets, or how hard they are on people like him. I didn’t know what it was like to come where he comes from, or how to survive without a trust fund.”
“Lucia—”
“He was right, too. And maybe I should have thanked him for making that obvious to me, you know? He woke me up. It took thirty days to change my life, and seconds to make it worse all over again.”
John scrubbed a hand down his jaw, and glanced away. Silently, he dug in the inner pocket of his jacket, and pulled out a piece of information he had been keeping hidden for a while. He always planned to give it to Lucia, sure, but at the right time.
Now seemed like that time.
“Here,” John said.
Lucia eyed the folded up piece of paper. “What is it?”
“A better apology.”
His sister plucked the paper from his hand, but never took her gaze off him all the while. It was almost like she thought he was going to jump out and snatch the paper back, or some kind of nonsense.
Lucia unfolded the four squares of the paper, and silently read over the information. He saw the way her gaze flicked back and forth—how her fingers tightened to crumple the edges of the paper, and the way her eyes filled up with tears all over again.
“You don’t have to say anything,” John told her. “Not thank you, or fuck you, or anything, Lucia.”
“Does Dad know you got this for me?” she asked.
John shook his head. “Nope. It’s also not about Dad. It’s about us. Sometimes, I think Dad just worries too much about us. He wants us to be safe, and happy, and fulfilled. In the process, his protective nature sometimes smothers us, too. And that’s just Dad—he is who he is, and we have to love him regardless, Lucia.”
“I do love Daddy, but—”
“You’re angry with him, too.”
A single tear dropped down Lucia’s cheek, but she didn’t move to wipe it away. “So fucking mad, John.”
“It’s cliché, kiddo, but what’s meant to be, will be, and fuck the rest.” John pointed at the paper, and said, “There’s your lifeline, Lucia. You want to talk to Renzo—you want to know? He’s right there. I’m sorry it’s not more.”
Lucia clenched the paper harder, and looked up at her brother. “This is perfect, John.”
He smiled. “That’s all I wanted to—”
His words cut off when a scream filled The Annex. A terrified scream that was accompanied by several other shrill shrieks. People began to scatter like horrified rats shoved in a very small space. One shoved John, which caused him to ram into Lucia. He grabbed hold of his sister with a fucking death grip to keep her from being shoved to the ground.
“What is happening?” Lucia asked.
John had no idea.
Another shrill scream echoed.
Someone shouted, “She’s got a gun!”
John’s blood ran cold. He didn’t have any reason to think this was an attack on him, or Siena, but for some reason, he just … knew.
It had to be.
His luck had run out.
“Don’t fucking move,” he told his sister when he shoved her behind a vendor tent.
“John!”
“Don’t move!”
John didn’t look back as he darted in the direction that everybody was now running from. The same direction that Siena had went in earlier to get his fucking jam.
Jesus Christ.
For jam.
He would be lucky if he could ever put the shit in his mouth again after today. At the moment, it only made him want to vomit at just the thought alone.
John rammed through the oncoming people—he barely heard their shouts of terror, and he faintly registered the fear on their faces. He was laser focused on one thing, and one thing only. He didn’t care about anybody else at the moment.
Siena. Siena. Siena.
His heart thundered her name. The organ practically jumped into his throat, and beat even harder there, too.
“You ruined us, you little bitch! Everything our family worked for, you ruined it! You disgraced our name, and our legacy and for what? So you could spread your legs for some Marcello—”
“Ma, put the gun down. Please, put the gun down. You’re scaring people.”
John pushed through the last few people, and came to an abrupt stop only fifteen feet away from the entrance of The Annex. Siena stood in a cleared circle with her mother only a couple of steps away.
Coraline Calabrese.
That fucking bitch.
John hadn’t been able to get a lead on the woman once she disappeared after Darren’s death, but he hadn’t been too worried. He thought—stupidly, clearly—that the woman was just that … a woman. Not one with any power, or capability to hurt them. She could go away and lick her wounds about her shattered family in private, and maybe come back to beg her daughter for forgiveness in the future.
He had been wrong.
So wrong.
They were going to pay for it.
Siena held up her hands, and in one, held the jar of jam John liked. A bright red, sweet mix of raspberries and strawberries. Her position almost looked
resigned—she spoke so calmly, and without fear.
John reached for a non-existent gun at his back at the same time Coraline pulled back the hammer on the revolver. He didn’t have a gun on him; it wasn’t safe given his position, now. He had too much attention from cops and detectives, and his probation said he couldn’t have any firearms on his person, legal or otherwise.
That’s why he kept the enforcer’s close.
Where the fuck were they?
Coraline’s gun lit like a sparkler on the Fourth of July when she pulled the trigger. Another gunshot rang out right after.
John was already darting into the circle. His arms were already opened to grab Siena … or in this case, to catch her.
He fell with her.
On damp pavement.
On cold ground.
Unfeeling.
So numb.
The jar of jam shattered—spilling sweet red all over the ground. It mixed in with the blood pumping from the love of his life in his hands, and the woman resting face-first on the ground with a blown out skull.
Siena stared up at him from his lap as red bloomed over her chest. It soaked through her white, off-the-shoulder dress in the most morbid way. “John.”
Panic and rage and fear and pain washed through John’s senses all at the same time. He had never been very good at handling this kind of thing.
He raged.
Roared at the man who had shot Coraline.
Shouted at Siena, too.
“John,” she breathed.
Dots of blood peppered her lips. Losing pink, and gaining the wrong shade of red, he thought.
“Look at me,” he heard himself say. “Keep looking at me, my girl.”
She did.
And then she didn’t.
The noise in John’s mind and emotions became impossibly louder. It became far more painful. It couldn’t be contained.
He raged on.
• • •
“They were only trying to defuse the situation, John,” someone said.
“Which is exactly what enforcers are taught to do,” someone else added.
“You don’t want them going out with guns blazing all the damn time—that’s not how we fucking work, and you know it.”
“They did their job, son,” was the next sentence flung his way. “Coraline is dead—he took the shot the second he knew he had no choice.”
Over his shoulder, John hurled with venom, “A fucking second too late!”
Silence answered him back.
His emotions were up.
Then they went way down.
Like a fucking swinging pendulum. One he couldn’t possibly control no matter how much he tried to hide his issues.
He knew it was because today had just been too much—too much stimulation, and too much happening. His meds were not meant to combat these kinds of mood swings caused by traumatic events.
He tried to force himself to be quiet so his outbursts lessened.
John went back to staring at the clock.
Three hours in surgery …
Three more hours to go.
Or, that’s what the nurse said when she came with an update.
Siena’s heart had been nicked by the bullet. It ricocheted off a rib, punctured her lung, and grazed her heart. She’d been drowning and choking in her own blood while she laid in his lap, and that killed him.
He was never going to forget that.
Nothing was going to take that image away.
“And you want me to fucking let them go without punishment?”
His snarl echoed back in a silent waiting room.
He had tried to be quiet again.
He failed.
“John?”
He blinked as he stared at the clock. Every ten seconds, on the dot, he blinked again. Like a fucking robot. He heard them talking—his family, and his men. He heard their words and their justifications.
Part of him knew they were right.
Part of him didn’t give a fuck.
That part was the one with bloodstained skin, and hatred in his heart. That part was the one who wanted to punish every stupid fuck that had failed to protect Siena today. That part was dead and dying and full of a rage so hot, it could only be the color black.
Like his mind.
Tar black.
“John?”
He looked to the side as someone tugged on his jacket, and found Lucia staring up at him. Her red-rimmed hazel eyes were a stark contrast to his dry, blazing gaze.
“Is she okay?” Lucia asked.
John shrugged, but even the action felt like it took too much effort. “I don’t know.”
“John, we need to talk about the enforcers—”
He found the men staring at him over his shoulder again—his father, uncles, Andino, and his own men.
They wanted to talk.
He wanted to kill.
John looked back at the clock. “I don’t need to do anything at the moment.”
Besides, his choice for those enforcers had already been made.
She lived—they lived.
It was that simple.
It was in God’s hands now.
John’s hands were tied.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SIENA CRACKED aching eyelids open to see white stucco tile staring back at her from the ceiling. A strong antiseptic smell burned her lungs with every breath. The low, rhythmic beeps made her head pound. Something hurt like fucking hell in her chest.
She coughed.
Oh, God.
Yeah, shit, that hurt way worse.
Still, she refused to close her eyes and go back to sleep, no matter how much she wanted to do just that. She could tell she was in the hospital, but it was only after a few seconds of being lucid that she remembered why she had found herself there.
Her mother shot her.
Her own mother.
Siena blinked again.
“Look into this light for me, sweetheart, and follow it,” she heard a man say.
That statement was quickly followed by a snarled grumble in the corner of the room—an angry, heated hiss of words that both worried her, and comforted her. Siena’s bed was propped up higher, and her gaze found the person in question.
John.
His hard-set jaw, and blazing eyes would have nailed the doctor to the wall had the man been looking at John. He clearly didn’t like the man using pet names on Siena, and while it was cute, she didn’t even think she had the energy to smile at the moment.
“Follow the light, not the angry Marcello in the corner,” the doctor said, grinning just a little.
Apparently, she could smile.
It didn’t take that much effort after all.
“Sorry,” she rasped.
“Johnathan,” the doctor said, “I think the patient could use a bit of water. Three quarters of ice, one quarter of water, please.”
“The nurse—”
“They are all busy at the moment. Siena will be fine for the entire forty seconds it will wake you to walk across the hall to the machine, and fill her a cup of water.”
John looked like he struggled the most just to get up out of that chair. His blazing gaze flitted between the doctor, and Siena momentarily before settling on her. The anger there quickly bled away when she offered him a dry-lipped smile.
Or the best she could give.
“Please?” she asked him.
John nodded, but he didn’t tear his gaze away from her until he was out of the room entirely.
“He’s very protective of you,” the doctor noted, still moving his light.
Siena followed it with her gaze as she had been instructed to do. “He can’t really help it.”
“He scares my nurses sometimes.”
“Yeah, he can’t really help that, either.”
The doctor chuckled low, and clicked the button on the end of his mini-flashlight. The bright light turned off, and then he shoved it into his breast pocket.
“All
in all, you’re doing remarkably well. We expected you to wake up within a few hours of your surgery,” he explained, “but maybe your body felt you needed the extra rest, as it’s been twenty-four hours since you came out of the OR.”
Siena almost felt like a sludge hammer had come and beat her right in the chest. “A whole day?”
“Your surgery took about five hours. There was a lung to repair, and a small piece of heart. Once in there, I found fragments from the bullet had embedded into different places. I didn’t want to leave those in, so what should have been three hours turned into five. I suspected six—sometimes we all win.”
Siena coughed, and pain followed all over again. Blinding, aching pain deep in her chest cavity that then spread throughout her entire nervous system. As though it was her body’s way of trying to numb the pain a bit by spreading it out.
Still, it fucking hurt.
She pulled back the hospital gown to see the bandages wrapped around her chest. She suspected there was going to be a mighty scar left behind, but it was only details in the background of far bigger thoughts.
She had survived.
She was alive.
“How long is it going to feel like this?” she asked.
“Hmm, like what, sweetheart?”
“If he doesn’t like it, then you probably shouldn’t call me that.”
The doctor grinned, saying, “You’re probably right.”
“It feels like I am breathing in acid.”
“Ah. Well, until the wound in the lung heals, I imagine. You’re breathing without a respirator, and came out of surgery like that, so it won’t be long. You are young, and healthy. All good things. I suspect you will be discharged in a couple of weeks, and by then, you probably won’t need the bandages. Your nurses will be in twice a day to check the surgery incision, and change the bandages when needed.”
The doctor shrugged, adding, “You were incredibly lucky. Had the bullet been even a couple of millimeters to the left, your heart would have been useless. You’ll need to take it easy for a month or so. No strenuous activity—nothing more than walking from one room to the next.”
That sounded fun.
“I will make sure she rests,” John said from the doorway.
John gave Siena a sexy wink, and crossed the room with a cup of ice water in his hand. The doctor gave her one last order to get some sleep, and keep the excitement to a minimum for the first couple of days, and then he left.
