Page 253 of Cara & Gian: The Guzzi Duet

“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.