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I saw his face when he kissed her. He might have appeared indifferent to everyone else, but I know every one of his masks. Whether he realizes it yet or not, he will keep her.
And everyone knows three’s a crowd.
* * *
The bleeding stopped oncethe emergency room physician finally appeared to examine Ciera the night before last. He x-rayed the area and then sutured the wound with five stitches. Domenico wasn’t satisfied and demanded an MRI and a full body CT scan be ordered to ensure there wasn’t any internal damage somewhere else.
The attending physician didn’t like being told how to do his job, but he was a smart man. He kept his thoughts to himself while placing the order. But Ciera regained consciousness again during the MRI and freaked out, and without getting authorization from either of us, they sedated her.
I was as furious as Domenico was when the tech brought her back to the room, informing us of the situation. He also let us know that he was advised not to tell us, so lucky for him, neither one of us lost our shit—not on him, at least.
Yesterday I was able to get Dom to go to my apartment to shower and change since it’s closer than his house. He isn’t ready to go back there, so Sasha brought him clothes to change into, as well as Ciera a change of clothes for when she wakes up.
It’s been thirty-six hours since they administered drugs to keep her asleep, not knowing if she had any history of side effects or not.
While Dom was gone for an hour yesterday, I made a call to one of the members of senior leadership. My father has donated too much money to this hospital over the years for what that doctor pulled to go unchecked, and I know Tony used to match the dollar amount my father gave. I used to think it was a competition between them, and perhaps it was or perhaps it was an agreement among them.
Sasha cleaned up the mess I let happen in my apartment. I should have seen the signs that something was wrong with Ciera. I saw her fall when Tony crashed into her. His body weight alone would cause her to get bruised and banged up.
Sienna and Giovanni are handling the funeral arrangement. From what Sasha has been texting me, it’ll be held a graveside service on Wednesday at the site where Tony’s deceased wife was laid to rest eighteen or nineteen years ago.
Lorenzo is funneling all of Dom’s captains, as well as handling any legal bullshit. I was starting to think Domenico’s kid brother must be a genius lawyer in training since cops haven’t shown up to process either one of us since we’re the ones who shot and killed Cormac. My curiosity got the best of me, and since I’d brought my laptop, I tapped into the Caputo’s security feeds from the wedding reception.
There was a video showing Tony firing a weapon at the DJ who’d had his handgun raised and aimed. Another showed Cormac taking a shot, but not one angle showed Dom or me. I figured Ren erased the footage, but to my knowledge, he doesn’t know how to do that, and Dom hasn’t left Ciera’s side except to shower.
After digging deeper, two cameras had been turned off right before the reception started. I’m confident that’s no coincidence. The only logical explanation is that someone fucked up and turned off the wrong two cameras.
There should have been a fail-safe to notify Domenico the second those cameras were shut off, but I haven’t had a chance to look into why that didn’t happen. Something else has been too pressing and nagging at the back of my mind since Dom told me my door was open when he found Ciera slumped over my laptop.
After closing out of the Caputos shit, I pulled up the browser I’d left open after stealing Cormac’s money from one of the banks in mid-town Manhattan known to service shady fucking clients. Their security is shit too, which is why I was able to route the one-point-four million dollars that had been in his account to an offshore account, and then I set it up to re-route three more times, splitting the transactions and funneling the funds to other banks.
I spent five hours tracing everything she’d done in the ten minutes I’d left her unsupervised when I went to shower and change clothes. Only a goddamn genius could do all of what she pulled off in that small window of time. Hell, it could have been less since we don’t know how long she’d been unconscious when Dom found her. She didn’t have a concussion, which was good, but she did lose too much blood and had to be given a transfusion.
Dom finally fell asleep six hours ago with his head lying on the side of her bed and his right hand wrapped around her wrist like he thought she may not be there when he woke up. It was the first time he’d slept since we crawled out of bed two mornings ago—the day of his wedding.
I fell asleep at some point last night, only to wake up around one this morning to Dom barely able to keep his eyes open. He didn’t even want to leave to get cleaned up yesterday. He only conceded so that we didn’t end up in a fight and escorted out of the hospital. I thought I was going to have to take measures into my own hands and knock him out. Luckily, exhaustion did the work for me.
Closing my laptop, I slide it on the plastic cushion to my left of the small couch I’ve been sitting on and then stand, needing to stretch my legs. I’m ready to get the fuck out of here. I’m not even sure why I stayed. It’s not like Domenico needed me, nor did Ciera, but here I’ve remained since we brought her to the ER the other night.
She’s been restless for the past hour, so I’m taking that as a sign that she’ll be waking soon. I’m surprised she hasn’t woken Dom with the slight jerks her body just started to make.
My head swings to the door when it opens and in walks the male nurse she had on the day shift yesterday. He gave us a wide berth, only coming in to check on her when absolutely necessary. If he’s smart, he’ll do the same today and then get her discharged when she wakes up.
“Morning,” he greets as he wheels in a cart, but I’m not in a hello kind of mood, so I turn my back to him and stare out the window. We’re on the fourth floor with a view that looks out at the front of the hospital where the main entrance is.
It’s a rainy mid-morning, but it’s not storming, just pissing every now and again. It’s windy out there too. I can see several young trees scattered around the landscape that are blowing in the distance.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
I pivot, finding Domenico with his hand fisting the nurse’s wrist and his stare wide awake but deadly, leaving no room for the pissant RN to get away from the hold he has without Dom allowing it.
“She’s agitated,” he stutters. “The doctor ordered something to settle her. It’s fine, sir.”
“It’s not fucking fine. She doesn’t need more drugs. She needs to wake the fuck up,” he spits as he rises to stand to his feet. That’s when I notice the syringe in the nurse’s hand; the hand Dom is gripping while the nurse is holding the arm that Ciera’s IV is in with his other.
“Which doctor?” I demand, stepping up beside him and crowding his space.
He releases Ciera and tries to step back but can’t do more than squirm.
