4. ~Emilio~
4
~Emilio~
We were on the verge.
Right on the goddamn edge of cracking under the weight of everything.
The crash, the fucking tragedy of losing our baby that had come along with it… it had been the last straw. We’d been hanging on by a thread, to be honest, and this threatened to undo us entirely.
It had been a few hours since the doctor had told us that the baby had been lost and in that time, Nico had been sedated after his violent outburst in Caterina’s hospital room. It hadn’t ended with him slumping down onto the floor. He’d gotten a second wind where that was concerned. Julian had been sobbing his heart out, and I’d had to remove him from Caterina’s room as a result, because she’d needed to rest. And, yeah, she’d also asked for some space, which had only made Julian more concerned. He was in with Nico now, trying to sleep for a couple of hours.
And I’d been taking point, getting Carlo, Cassio, Rocco and Tony up to speed. Levi had been keeping to himself and texting away the whole time, until I’d seen him get up while I’d been on a call, and head outside. Of course, I’d followed him. I was in heavy protector mode, and I had to make sure everything was okay. To achieve that, I had to be aware of the ins and outs of everything. Especially when it came to somebody who was technically an outsider, somebody I didn’t know well.
As I stood blending into the shadows, I watched Levi approach a black Porsche that was pulling into a spot in the corner of the hospital parking lot.
A woman dressed in a pink plaid blazer and a matching skirt stepped out, her long, black hair blowing wildly in the wind.
He was there in the next moment, wrapping his arms around her, then nuzzling against her. “Thanks for doing this, Wildflower.”
“No problem. With Mason busy overseeing the sanitization at the border after the two of you had to drop those bodies, it needed to be me. Colt wanted to help, but he’s not exactly well-versed with this sort of thing.”
Levi chuckled. Then he gestured at the sweet car. “How did you get Mason to let you drive his beloved?”
“You know my powers of persuasion are unmatched. Plus, I promised to drive carefully, and ensure that I wouldn’t allow you to get behind the wheel.”
Levi slapped his hand to his heart. “I’m wounded, Brianna.”
She rolled her eyes. Then she walked to the rear door and opened it, gesturing inside and telling him, “It’s all here, just like you detailed.”
“Including the spare phones?”
“Yeah, I completed the downloads.” I saw her pull two phones from her blazer pocket and hand them to him. As he pocketed them in his hoodie pouch, she told him, “You should tell them that you breached their network, Levi.”
“I don’t want to stress them out. Besides, it’s already done. I did what I needed to.”
“I get that, but it’s about trust and loyalty, especially right now for them when they’re in the thick of all of this.”
“All right, yeah. I hear you.”
“How is Caterina?”
“She’ll make a full recovery. But losing her baby is a whole other thing.”
“I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine.”
He scrubbed his hand over his face. “It’s fucking brutal. It looks like she’s shutting down, too. She doesn’t want to see anyone in her room.”
“Well, she’s processing it. Have you talked to her yet?”
“No. It hasn’t been possible with her guys hovering, and now her asking for space to rest. I also need to be careful not to intrude too much from a personal standpoint, especially with the way Nico is about it all.”
“Because you slept with her once?”
He jolted. “How do you—”
“Please. I know you. ”
“She has only ever been a friend. I was telling the truth when I told you that before. That one night, although sexual, was just between friends, trust me. And just as awkward because of that fact. It was more… clinical than anything else. For the both of us. A mission, basically.”
“Yeah, I get it. She was the only person you could trust to go there with back then. It was an obstacle she helped you to smash through because you were traumatized when it came to sex after what you saw me suffer through when we were kidnapped.”
“You’re being really understanding about this.”
“You mean mature?”
“Yeah, that.” He slid his hands down to her hips and pushed her up against the side of the car. “I fucking love you, you know that?”
“It’s been well established, lovely.”
He groaned and brushed his lips over the side of her throat, and it had her fisting her hands in the back of his hoodie. “Never gonna get enough of you calling me that.”
As he pushed his thigh between her legs, she grasped his face. “Mason said no fucking in or on his car.”
“ Fucking ? Who’s being presumptuous? I’m just holding you.”
“Your knee is grinding against my—”
“Your sweet cunt?”
“Levi!”
He chuckled. “What? It is so fucking sweet. In fact, get back in the car, spread for me, and I’ll eat you up right here and now.”
“Nice try, but no can do. Mason’s car, remember?” she said, pressing her hand to his chest.
“Fucking cockblocker.”
“Levi.”
“Fine,” he muttered before kissing her forehead sweetly, then pushing off her. “But when I get back, it’s on. Hardcore with the four of us. I’m talking an all-nighter.”
“I look forward to it,” she said, beaming at him.
He gathered two large duffel bags and a laptop bag from the back, slinging them over himself, then shut the door.
“I know this is something you have to do, Levi, but be careful. Promise me.”
“I swear it to you. My reckless days are behind me.” Off her look, he added. “Fine, for the most part.”
She leaned in and kissed his cheek sweetly. “I love you.”
“I love you, too. Text me when you get back home safe.”
“Will do.”
With that, she slipped back into the Porsche, he shut the door for her, then she was driving out of the parking lot.
Levi sighed heavily, clearly emotional at staying behind away from her and his loves.
He went to walk back into the hospital, but I stepped from my position in the shadows.
“Motherfucker!” he exclaimed, jerking back. “For a giant of a guy, you sure can move like a fucking ghost.”
“It’s a honed skill.”
“So, I assume you were watching the whole time, observing the private interaction between me and my woman?”
“It’s not private when the contents of that interaction concern us.”
“Ah, right. Rina mentioned that you’re the paranoid one, the most distrusting of outsiders.”
“She mentioned it, or you discovered it on your own?”
“You got me. I’ve been keeping an eye on her, yes. More so since that meeting that I had with Nico. I was concerned.”
“Good.”
He cocked an eyebrow, trying to gauge my reaction and where I was at when it came to him.
As I reached out and laid my hand on his shoulder, he tensed.
Nico was right. The guy was always expecting a fight.
Even though he was here busting his ass to help us. So much so that he’d had a medevac helicopter called in for Caterina and Nico, he and Mason had even murdered for us, and now he was about to do even more to assist. All because he was that undeniably and deeply loyal to our woman.
“Yes, good. She needs a friend like you in her life. And when this is all over, we should ensure that it’s not so distanced and the contact isn’t so infrequent.”
He smiled.
“So, why did you breach our network? That was my only concern with what I overheard.”
“Rina and Nico’s phones were destroyed in the crash but Rina has a program that backs all their contents up every few hours, which I accessed to essentially replace said phones exactly as they were prior to the crash with all the corresponding data, everything. With what’s happened, and Nico’s position amongst the families, he needs to be reachable. And Rina doesn’t like to be without her phone as a rule.”
“Nicely done.”
He handed me the two phones. “The black case is Nico’s, the green is Rina’s.”
I placed them in my jacket pocket. “Thank you.”
He nodded, then I stepped aside, and we headed inside the hospital together.
“So, how are you doing?” he asked, eyeing me as we walked side by side.
“Just keeping focused on what needs to be done.”
He nodded. “I get it. And I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you. We were really excited about this baby. It’s… it’s a lot.”
“Yeah, it is. I’ll help you find the cause of this tragedy tonight. Angelo Simone.”
“He’s been the cause of a lot of sickening shit,” I ground out.
“So I’ve heard from Rina.”
We made it to the elevator bay, and I was just about to call one down when a rolling thunder pulled me up short, the ground reverberating beneath our feet, just a moment before the power went down.
Levi cursed and spun around.
Emergency power kicked in, whirring to life, but the elevators were a no-go.
“What the hell was that? It sounded like—”
“An explosion.”
Chaos erupted all around us, an alarm blaring, security rushing all over the place, people in the waiting areas screaming and heading for the exits.
What the shit was going on?
Could this be Angelo?
I would’ve believed this to be too fucking bold for him before tonight, but after coming at Nico and Caterina like that and running them off the road, all bets were off where predicting his level of insane actions was concerned.
On our way down here, Levi had told me and Julian that he’d overheard Angelo screaming that Caterina needed to die for taking Santino’s life.
Had he come to finish the job?