“I get your point. I wouldn’t allow strangers around my family, especially if I had a woman of my own. So yeah, you did the right thing. I don’t have to like it, but you’re right.”
“I could use a drink right now,” Raimondo said, looking at Leone as the nurses crowded around him. “Hell, not just a drink, a whole damn bottle.” The second doctor had arrived. Dr. Townsend had begun work on the young bodyguard. “Brielle told me to get a line in their veins. First thing out of her mouth. I was trying to stop them both from bleeding. Even in the shape she was in, she knew to do that in case they crashed.”
“What the hell happened?”
Raimondo shrugged. “Everything looked fine. We vetted him. He checked out. He was the real thing. We’re going to have to make his death look like an ambush somewhere. I don’t know, Stefano can figure it out.” He put his head back against the wall and stared up at the ceiling. “He asked her questions. Nothing pointing to him lying to her. She didn’t signal she thought anything was off. Neither did Leone. Then they walked to the front door. He said or did something that hit her wrong and she reacted fast. He pulled a gun from somewhere he’d hidden it outside. His men were everywhere, firing at Leone and Brielle, hitting both of them.”
Raimondo wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. “She dragged Leone inside with my help, but when I told her to get into the safe room, she didn’t; she went after them.”
“These women,” Dario said. “I told Elie she was like Emmanuelle. She may not be quite as outspoken as Emme, but she’s going to go her own way when she thinks she’s right, no matter what. She likes you too much, Raimondo. You’re not mean enough.”
Raimondo shot him a faint grin. “I hate to give you the bad news, Dario, but she likes you, too. All that snarling you do hasn’t put her off much. She isn’t very afraid of you.”
“She should be.”
“You’re losing your reputation.”
“Thankfully, only in your family circle. In my world, the mere mention of my name makes people hide in their homes and hope I pass by without stopping.”
“Can you get more light in here?” Dr. Arnold snapped.
Raimondo got to his feet. “Coming right up.” They had everything they needed. They could get lights. They had blood. Medical equipment. Surgeons on call. This was a rider family and they had the money necessary to support whatever was needed. They needed more manpower. Raimondo was going to talk to Stefano about that. He never wanted to face this situation alone again. It didn’t matter that only a few minutes had gone by; he could have lost both Brielle and Leone in those minutes. There were others in the family who could be trusted to guard the riders and they needed them.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Elie paced back and forth across the floor, never too far from the large, four-poster bed where his wife sat pretending to look at her book. The Ferraro Hotel had luxury beds, but mostly, he cared about the tight security. They were staying there, he told Brielle, while their home was being cleaned of all the blood and evidence that she’d nearly been taken from him. They were really staying there until he could remove the threat to her. He was done with anyone trying to kill his wife.
“Honey, stop.” Brielle put her book down and gave him a look that told him she was about to get up.
Elie pointed a finger at her and gave her a severe look that would have stopped an army. “Don’t even think about it.”
She sighed. “How long am I going to be confined to bed? The doctor said I was fine.”
“No, that’s not what he said, mon petit monstre. He said your other wounds were mostly superficial, but that you had to be very careful of the internal one for a while. No jarring. No running or working out. Definitely no riding the shadows. But then, we had already discussed that, hadn’t we?”
He couldn’t look at her. If he did, his chest hurt like hell. He stalked over to the window and stared down at the view of the city. Every single time he thought about that moment when he walked into their home and saw what looked like a slaughterhouse, his wife on their dining room table, a surgeon operating on her, up to his elbows in her blood, he would nearly go to his knees. Nothing had ever come close to taking him out the way that had.
Stefano had been with him, the only reason he hadn’t gone crazy and left for New York to kill every member of the Santoro family and then gone to Barcelona to go after the Toselli family. Anyone involved in the ordering of his wife’s assassination was going to die. And he was going to find every last one of them, no matter what. When he needed answers, he could be every bit as driven and ruthless as Dario or Valentino.