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Each motion was more painful than the last. Dante had been shot before, but after each instance his mind just sort of chose not to remember how fucking painful it was, so he got to experience each bullet wound like it was his first.
This was definitely his worst first yet.
Dante reached the fallen groom first, and a cursory check of his pulse told him what the half-dozen bullet holes in his tuxedo had already made obvious. His traitorous brother Bruno lay a few feet away, just as dead. Dante wasn’t sure who had fired those shots, but he was glad someone had.
He resumed his slow, laborious journey toward his boss and best friend, certain that when he reached Enzo he would find him just as dead as Antonio. After stopping twice to grit through a particularly intense jolt of pain, he was finally within a few yards.
Then he collapsed, and there was no gritting through it this time.
He would never know exactly how long he’d blacked out. It couldn’t have been much more than a minute or two, though, because when he regained consciousness he was still the only one moving in the room. The guests wouldn’t be coming back after fleeing for their lives, of course, but if it had been more than a few minutes then surely the police would have arrived in force.
Because this wasn’t some score-settling hit that could be kept within the families.
This was a fucking massacre.
A casual glance around the room told him there were at least two dozen dead, mostly armed men but with a few unlucky revelers caught up amongst them.
As he struggled to focus, Dante couldn’t help wondering what the hell Gennaro had been thinking. This wasn’t something you just walked away from. If somehow the mob didn’t get you—and even uninvolved families might come after you for something this brazen and brutal—you’d have a target on your back from every law enforcement agency in the western world.
A real “We’re going to fucking hunt you down, asshole” target, not a “We’ve got multiple agents working on it, we assure you we’re taking this case seriously, please just let us do our jobs ma’am” target.
Not that it mattered. Dante had been too busy trying to keep from bleeding out long enough to crawl to Enzo to see who it was that had carted off Gennaro’s body, but there was no way he’d survived the number of rounds he’d taken. If he hadn’t been dead when he hit the floor, he’d be dead long before they got him to a surgeon. Dante would bet his life on it.
Putting the questions—and the pain—out of his mind as well as he could, Dante began crawling toward Enzo again as quickly as his wounds would allow, and this time he didn’t stop until he reached his don.
To his surprise—the first and only happy surprise so far on this most horrible night of his life—when Dante felt for a pulse he found one. Not a particularly strong one, but it was there.
Forcing himself up on one elbow, he began to do what he did best. What had made him who he was today. Trying to keep a bullet-riddled mobster alive.
The minutes that followed were the longest of his life, and when he was done he blacked out again, but when he awoke in a hospital bed he was greeted by the news that Enzo was alive.
For the moment.
Days passed as Enzo fought for his life and Dante’s long, slow recovery began, but by the end of the week it was clear that this wasn’t a fight Enzo was going to win.
He remembered that afternoon like it was yesterday. The slow, nurse-assisted walk to Enzo’s ICU room. Aurora—he’d barely known her then—standing just outside the door, tears in her eyes. The resignation mixed with a tiny bit of pride in Enzo’s eyes as he spoke. The dying kingpin had even managed a pained smile as he spoke to Dante for the first time since before the massacre.
“Too bad I didn’t fucking listen to you, eh? Story of my fucking life.”
Dante couldn’t help but smile back. Then the sadness returned full force and his voice almost broke. “I should have been there, boss. I should have been there in time.”
He’d driven like a madman, making it from the warehouse district to the posh reception venue in what had to be record time, but it hadn’t mattered. By the time he’d arrived Enzo was already bleeding on the floor and all Dante had been able to do was send Gennaro off to hell.
“No time for that now. I need you to do two things for me.”
“Anything, boss. What do you need?”
Enzo beckoned him closer, his voice barely above a whisper.
“The Moretti family needs an heir, and my niece needs a husband.”
Dante had argued, but he wasn’t going to refuse Enzo’s dying wish and Enzo knew it. So while he entered Enzo’s room as a grieving friend, he left it as the head of the Moretti family.
And as Aurora Moretti’s future husband, whether she was happy about it or not.
Dante had only met Aurora a handful of times over the years. Enzo had kept her largely out of their world, which he’d always respected.
He’d always liked that she had some spunk in her, but she’d always been off limits. He’d never let himself look at her that way, which was damn hard too, given her gorgeous face, pouting lips, and wavy chestnut hair that reached the top of her perfect little ass.
