*Giovani*
Olivia twirled into the open doorway of my office, without Elio for the first ti since we woke up in bed with him yesterday morning. I smiled. Part of was a little envious—I wanted to sit and stare at him until I could convince myself I hadn’t done the wrong thing by bringing a little life I loved so much into this world—but the rest of was just so thrilled she got to be with him. I couldn’t stop thinking about how broken she’d looked when I first found her on the floor.
I didn’t want her to ever look like that again.
“He just went down.” She smiled. “I’m trying to be very brave and trust the three guards on him by not also watching him sleep today.”
I leaned back in my chair, happy to push away the piles of dull paperwork. “You look very brave to . Why don’t you co here?”
She danced into the room, almost glowing with glee, and perched herself in my lap.
“He’s back.” She wrapped her arms around my neck.
I stabilized her with a hand on her waist. “He’s back.”
She laughed, and the shift in her posture made sothing hard in her pocket dig into my thigh. I fished it out to see the receiver of the new cara-enabled baby monitor I’d rush-ordered yesterday.
“So this is why you’re still so chipper,” I teased.
She buried her head in my neck. “It’s not cheating if it’s in my pocket.”
I squeezed her and lifted the receiver so that I could see Elio, dozing blissfully wrapped around his sharkie.
“I don’t think there’s such a thing as cheating on day two of having your son back after he was kidnapped.” I kissed the top of her head. “I think you’re doing great.”
She pulled back from my neck and t my eyes. “Really? Cause I kinda feel like I’m about to beco one of those insane helicopter moms.”
I moved her so she straddled my lap and pulled her tight against . “Trust , carina. I will not lose access to what little private ti I have with you.”
Her gaze heated, and she rolled her hips. “You make a very compelling argunt.”
I was leaning in to kiss her, wondering absently how I was going to close the office door without taking her off my lap, when the front door slamd open.
I shot up, dislodging Olivia onto my desk and the forgotten paperwork. She looked at with panicked eyes, and I put a hand on her shoulder that I hoped would be reassuring before grabbing a tal baseball bat I kept behind the curtains and racing for the door.
If Lorenz was attempting a full-frontal assault, I wasn’t going to let him walk out of here. This baseball bat had gotten through more fights than Olivia would ever prefer to know, and it could get through another.
I arrived at the top of the stairs and froze. Instead of the oncoming armies of the Russian mob, Tallon and Alessandro stood in the doorway, lugging in a wounded and partially conscious Salvatore.
When I told them to play the rescue as slow as they needed yesterday, I’d expected to hear from them later this week. That they found an opportunity so quickly was astounding.
But not more astounding than the sheer presumption of bringing the man who’d made it possible for the Russians to kidnap my son into my house.
I turned back toward the office and growled, “Clear.” I didn’t want Olivia worried.
Then, I turned and stalked down the stairs, baseball bat still in hand.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I spit.
Alessandro bristled, then winced as the movent aggravated a small cut across his cheek. It didn’t look like anything a band-aid wouldn’t fix. Tallon, for once in a black T-shirt and jeans, turned to with nothing but cool rationality in his eyes.
“He’s bad enough shape that he needs a doctor as fast as possible,” he said. “Our regular patch-up guy is out of town, so I had to call his assistant, and the assistant has only ever been here.” He t my gaze. “I figured bringing him here was better than him dying because so intern got lost.”
I raked a hand through my hair. Once again, the kid made good points. He even looked uninjured, though I did see a couple of fairly shallow cuts on Alessandro’s skin, nothing that would require more than a stitch or two.
“Put him in the parlor.” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder to the little-used formal sitting area. If I rembered correctly, there was a fainting couch in there that would be perfect for the good doctor to set up on.
“Is he...?” Olivia asked shakily.
I whirled to see her standing stock still at the top of the stairs, terror in every line of her body and the receiver clutched in her hand. I took the stairs two at a ti to reach her and enfolded her in my arms. She trembled against my chest.
“He’s not dead,” I murmured. “Not dead, just very hurt. The doctor will be here shortly. You and I should go to the room so you don’t have to see this.”
She shook her head. “No, I—I wanna....”
Olivia wriggled free of my embrace and began fumbling her way down the stairs as Tallon and Alessandro dragged her father across our foyer, leaving a streak of blood in their wake. I took her arm and walked alongside her, letting her lean on as heavily as she needed.
We all collected in the parlor, where they stretched Sal out on the deep blue velvet fainting couch I rembered. The piece might be ruined after this, but I wasn’t worried about replacing it. All my worry collected in the shaking hand on my arm and the tears in Olivia’s eyes.
“What happened?” she asked.
I looked Sal over in more detail now that I had grown used to the idea of his body in my house again. He wore only the khaki pants he’d showed up to the raid in, now dirt- and blood-stained. On his bare chest, I could see the gunshot wound in his right shoulder that made us leave him behind in the first place, but it seed even two days in Russian care had not been kind to him.
Nearly every inch of exposed skin purpled with bruises, and the skin around his eyes swelled massively. In my unprofessional opinion, he had at least a broken nose and a couple of broken ribs to go with his gunshot wound, not to ntion any internal injuries.
“Found another Russian hole,” Alessandro grunted. “Got in, got him, got out.”
It wasn’t the sort of report I expected later, but it seed to satisfy Olivia for now. She sank into a chair across from Sal.
“I didn’t expect him to look so... so weak,” she murmured.
I rubbed her shoulders. Sal didn’t look weak to . He looked like maybe he’d done the first half-decent thing in his life and stood up to the Russian scum a little. A man didn’t co out of mafia custody with injuries like that unless the score they had to settle was personal, and nothing was more personal than a rat.
For the first ti since he’d appeared outside my property, I felt the barest flicker of respect for the man... not enough that he wouldn’t be out on his ass as soon as he had enough of an ass to be out on, but enough that I t Tallon’s eye and nodded.
Tallon nodded back. Increasingly, the younger of the two brothers impressed .
Olivia looked up at . “What now?”
I sighed. “We wait for the doctor and hope for the best. He looks rough, but I don’t know that he’s unsalvageable.”
She swallowed audibly. “And if he is... unsalvageable?”
I crouched next to the chair and t her eye. “Then we give him whatever funeral you think he deserves.”
Tears welled in her eyes, and she turned back to him, nails sinking into the arms of the chair. Like when Elio disappeared, she clearly intended to keep so kind of vigil until soone stopped her.
I’d let her stay until the doctor arrived, I decided. However responsible she felt for the man, she didn’t need to see his insides. I grabbed one of her hands and held it tightly.
“Update Gabriele,” I instructed the brothers. “Put the whole house on alert. If there was a scuffle getting out, they know you have him, and we have to be ready if they guess he’s here.”
Alessandro scoffed. “Do you really think they want a rat like him back?”
Olivia’s breath caught.
I squeezed her hand and glared at Alessandro.“They might assu we’re distracted. They might want him back. It could be anything.”
Tallon pulled out his phone and began typing. “Better to be ready. I’ll warn Dahlia, too.”
Alessandro shook his head but didn’t say anything further, perhaps cowed by my glare.
Matteo knocked on the doorway into the parlor. “Patcher’s here. Send him in?”
I nodded and stood. Olivia stared at with wide eyes.
“We have to go now,” I said softly. “The next part is going to get ugly. But I’ll sit with you until it’s over.”
“But–” She furrowed her eyebrows. “I’m his only family here.”
I smiled softly. “And you’ll be here when he wakes up. That doesn’t an you need to watch the doctor open him up.”
She grimaced and cast one last glance in Sal’s direction before standing.
“We’ll be in the bedroom,” I told the brothers. “Get when there’s news.”
They nodded. As Olivia and I exited, we passed a surprisingly young man in a white coat with a dark, wispy goatee. He nodded at , and I rembered vaguely seeing him bent over during so patch-up before I’d t Olivia. He hadn’t had the goatee then, but he’d done a good job.
As Olivia wandered, zombielike, toward the room, I said, “He’s good, that doctor. He put back together at least once.”
She nodded absently. She remained quiet and distant when we reached the room, staring at nothing and barely responding when I spoke to her. I rembered the tense monts after we’d rescued Dahlia. She’d been much like this then, so wound up with worry she could hardly uncoil a finger. I’d barely known her as more than a fling then.
I swallowed. I couldn’t deny I was a little surprised that the father she told to kill with no reservations evoked so much emotion.
I was more worried about how bad he looked. No matter how good the doctor was, at a certain point, there was no going back. And the Russians weren’t exactly known for their personal restraint.
After pacing a little, trying to talk to her, putting on a show neither of us watched, and opening up the door to Elio’s room so we could see him sleeping peacefully from our couch, I simply sat next to her and held her hand in the tense quiet.
She accepted my touch gratefully, as though she’d been waiting for it.
I didn’t know how long we sat like that. The sun sank lower in the sky, but it had been afternoon anyway. But after interminable minutes, soone knocked on the door.
“Co in,” I called.
Tallon swung the door open and leaned in, looking grave.
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