5. ~Caterina~
5
~Caterina~
Placental abruption.
Blunt force injury.
Abdominal trauma.
I hated those words.
I hated them all.
But they were the same ones swirling through my mind over and over.
Tormenting me.
Blaming me.
Our baby was gone.
And she was gone because of me.
Nico had almost joined her in that tragic fate, too.
And he still could. So could Julian and Milo.
Because of me.
I didn’t understand why the guys didn’t blame me too, why I hadn’t seen or felt anything like that at all from them.
I was the one who’d lost control and murdered Santino, which had led to Angelo coming for us on that road.
And I wouldn’t have been in a position to do that at all if the guys hadn’t been so scared of benching me, of how I would react and lose all trust in them, and possibly even leave them if they’d forced me away into a safehouse somewhere.
I would’ve been safe there right now. Our baby would still be alive.
I’d brought this down upon us.
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to get comfortable in the hospital bed, so I could fall asleep again, to get a reprieve from the suffocating grief and guilt that had such an unbearable stranglehold on me.
I brought my hand down to my belly, tears filling my eyes as I stroked it, stroked what was no longer there anymore.
“I’m sorry… I’m so sorry,” I whimpered.
A sudden, violent rumbling had me jolting.
A thunderous sound inundated my senses, the whole room reverberating with it.
I strained to push myself up in bed.
In the next second, the power went out; the room plunging into darkness.
What the hell?
A whirring started up and the emergency power activated, casting a little light back into the room, but not enough to not have to strain to see clearly.
An alarm pierced through the place, making me wince.
Shit.
I dislodged the IV with a grunt then pushed out of bed, my body killing me with the strain of moving.
I’d just made it to my bare feet when the door flew open, startling the crap out of me.
As if the rest hadn’t already been enough.
Adrenaline tore through me at the sight of two guys in all black, wearing striking red and black hockey masks, bursting into the room, headed straight for me.
I went to spin into a kick to defend myself but, with the state of me, a brutal wave of dizziness assaulted me and I staggered back, smacking into the bed instead.
In the next second, one of them was on me, trapping me in a bear hold, while the other pulled a knife and approached me.
“You’re to die the same way Santino did. But first Angelo wants you to suffer,” the knife wielder rumbled.
I struggled against the hold on me, but I was too weak to make much of it.
Shit!
Something that I wasn’t used to gripped me, something that made me shudder and made me fucking sick and ashamed at the same time.
Helplessness.
Just like earlier, when I hadn’t been able to keep our baby safe.
Panting, all I could do was watch and struggle futilely as the knife wielder moved in close. “Let’s carve this pretty little body up. He wants you sent to him in pieces.”
I caught sight of more of the assholes outside and then the door slammed shut, being locked too, as a bunch of them stood guard, blocking the way so these two could take their time hurting me, like Angelo had clearly ordered.
The explosions I’d heard had to be some sort of distraction to send the hospital into evacuation mode, get security out of the way, the medical staff, everyone, basically.
There was a struggle outside that had the knife wielder pulling up short.
“Caterina!” I heard Nico roaring, followed by an agonized scream from somebody else.
“Destroy these motherfuckers!” Levi’s voice followed.
“Cat!” Julian’s voice came.
A bellow that I recognized as Milo’s rang out, just before a hefty thud hit the door.
The guy holding me told the knife wielder, “They’re making too much headway too fast. We’ll have to speed this up. Kill her, then bring the body to one of the safehouses to carve it up for him.”
Safehouses? One of?
I steeled myself as the knife scraped across the skin of my throat and I glared into the sadistic eyes of its wielder.
Just as he went to puncture my flesh, a violent crash tore through the room, the sound of glass exploding, wood cracking.
The guy holding me spun around with me still in his clutches, and I choked as I saw a very familiar figure landing in a deep crouch in front of the window amongst the wreckage.
His powerhouse form filled my vision. That brown buzz cut that, combined with the scar over his right eyebrow, gave him a very severe look. But as usual, when those amber eyes looked upon me, the gentleness and softening there transcended that harsh edge he always put forth to everybody else who he encountered. He was dressed all in black, in tactical pants and an aviator jacket.
Joe.
Without even taking a moment or disengaging the harness strapped to him, he pulled his Sig, fired off a shot through the fingers of the knife wielder that had him screeching, dropping the knife, and staggering back. The guy barely got in two steps before Joe put a bullet in his skull, and he dropped like a creepy rag doll.
The guy holding me screamed in the next split-second as Joe fired a bullet through his kneecap. And then Joe was there, using the chaos and agony that had the guy lurching forward to wrench his arms off me and haul him out through the shattered window.
Screaming rang out before it was silenced by a violent thud as the guy obviously met his demise when he landed three floors below.
“Just like you to make a dramatic entrance,” I rasped, sinking back against the bed for support.
Mirth shone in his eyes for a moment.
But then it turned to concern as he took me in.
“You’re barely mobile. As I feared.”
He rapidly disengaged the harness, then holstered his gun and walked to me.
He wiped the trail of blood down my throat away.
“We need to get you out of here. They won’t stop coming until you’re eliminated. Angelo Simone has put a contract out on your life.” He glared at me. “In retaliation for the murder of Santino, Caterina.”
“Don’t pretend you’re not glad he’s gone.”
“Not like this, not at this juncture,” he gritted out. He held up his hand. “Later. Now we must move. You need to disappear. But first, we need to give them something to chase, and that has to happen before the second wave arrives here.”
“What are you—I’m not disappearing. I can’t just—”
“You already lost your baby tonight. If you don’t cooperate with me, you stand to lose more. All three of your loves.”
I jolted at his awful words.
The brutal truth to the first part and the fear that had already been stoked in me where the rest was concerned, that I’d lose Nico, Milo, and Julian because of my actions.
He pulled his backpack off, then unzipped it, and yanked out a pair of tactical pants and a jacket.
“If you don’t leave with me right now, they will all die. Every moment you stay here is endangering them.” He held the pants out to me. “You need help?”
I snatched them from him as I eased myself away from the support of the bed, wincing at the ache through my abdomen. Emotion threatened to take me over as the awful reason for that hit me once again. Over and over, it kept doing that. And, shit, I couldn’t stand to lose anybody else. I certainly couldn’t take me being responsible for it again.
With shaking hands, I tried to put the pants on, but he ended up having to help me quite a lot. He pulled the jacket on for me too, top-of-the-line Kevlar, and tucked the hospital gown inside the pants and the jacket, then zipped it up for me. He even had a pair of boots for me that he helped me to put on.
He put the backpack back on and snatched up the harness, about to reattach it, when he told me, “This can take both our weights. Let’s move.”
I hesitated. “I can’t just take off. I can’t just leave them like this and—”
He startled me as he pulled my ring off, then tossed it on the bed.
“What are you—”
“I know there’s a tracer embedded within.”
“Leaving isn’t—”
“This is a temporary situation, unlike what their deaths will be,” he bit back at me.
I started at the harshness of his comment, especially in light of what I’d just suffered through.
“I’m sorry,” he said, registering it. “You’re emotional and vulnerable right now, more than I’d accounted for. I thought you’d be shutting down to cope with it. Not this. Not opening yourself up to the grief and despair at this juncture. I see your men have impacted your ability to do that.” He shook his head, not happy about it in the least. “There’s no place for that right now. Rationality needs to prevail. Emotion needs to be squashed. You can’t allow it to complicate what needs to be done.”
Something he’d drilled into me repeatedly when he’d trained me.
But that had been then. A lot had altered.
“If I just disappear with you into the shadows, especially right after losing the baby, it will break my men to pieces.”
“That’s an emotional reaction, one we absolutely cannot afford, Caterina.” He loomed over me, glaring down at me.
And that was when the door flew open.
I looked out to see Milo bursting through first, someone’s blood splattered across his cheeks and drenching his knuckles.
He misread the situation, as did Nico, judging by him snarling as he took in what Milo had, coming in just behind him, seeing a man with his back to them looming over me with a gun in his hand, the dropped bodies on the floor, the window.
“Stop!” Levi called out, coming into the room with Julian just behind him holding Nico’s gun at the ready and shooting glances back and forth between us and the corridor outside, on high alert.
Joe grunted with frustration at the interruption while he was in mission mode and focused on getting me clear.
He pushed back from me and turned around.
“Stover,” Milo uttered.
“What are you doing here?” Julian demanded. “How did you even get in and—” Catching sight of the debris around the shattered window answered his question. “Jesus.”
Joe zeroed in on Levi. “Long time, Knight.”
“A few years, give or take,” Levi responded, tensing up because he knew Joe almost as well as I did. I saw him slip his hand to his back pocket, where I remembered he kept his collapsible bo staff. He also signaled Milo, warning him.
Nico’s sapphire eyes were flaming with fire at Joe still standing so close to me. It was hard to pull off the intimidation factor when he was standing there in a sling, unstably too because he’d clearly just woken up as a result of the insanity while still having a heavy-duty sedative running through his veins. But Nico had that ability to do what he believed needed to be done, no matter what state he was in.
Joe told them, “I have solid intel that Angelo is sending another unit here as we speak. Caterina is the sole target. I need to remove her from the situation and use her to draw them away from here. They’ll follow. I’ll keep her safe. And the rest of you will be fine.”
“That’s not fucking happening,” Nico growled.
“You’re not taking her away from us,” Julian bit back.
Joe wasn’t the least bit fazed by their protests, eyeing Levi and telling him, “Concentrate on finding Angelo. I’ll keep her off the radar, give her time to recover.” He then looked at Nico. “You’re needed back in Tolhurst. Your presence needs to be felt amongst your men and your enemies alike, especially at this critical stage where you’ve unofficially taken power, as well as the precarious situation with Leo Marchetti. Taking you all with us right now will undercut that and all your efforts, this war you’ve been raging. Caterina is the sole target of this hit. Like I said, I’ll draw them away, have them follow us, take their attention. Return to your stronghold and we’ll be in touch.”
“Be in touch?” Milo scoffed. “And we’re just supposed to trust that? Especially after your past manipulations?”
“Caterina,” Nico spoke to me. “Do you trust in him?”
I stared out at my men, seeing their desire for me not to do this, not to leave. Levi was noticeably quiet on the subject, both not wanting to cross a line or intervene in the personal nature of it between me and my men, but also knowing Joe too well to believe there was any other safe choice right now.
And, yes, he also knew that with Joe adamant about this, he’d make it so, no matter what. He’d put them all down if he had to. And as accomplished as they all were, he was another level with decades of experience on them.
While I couldn’t stand the idea of them getting hurt, of them suffering anymore than they already fucking had with all this madness we were caught up in, I also could bear the thought of being responsible for it.
So, it had me responding, “I trust in his strategy and his judgment where this is concerned.”
“So that’s it?” Julian asked, his voice cracking. “You’re just going to leave?”
Nico scrubbed his hand over his face.
“It’s only temporary,” Milo uttered, as much to convince himself, it seemed, as the rest of them.
“It’s not your fault, you know?” Julian told me. “Losing the baby is something that happened to you, not something you’re responsible for, Cat. I promise. So if this is partially why you’re choosing to do this—”
A beeping sounded, interrupting Julian’s words that had me staring out at him, emotion threatening to get the best of me.
I looked to see it coming from Joe’s watch.
He brought it to his eye level and tensed. “They’re here. We’re out of time.”
Levi came forward. “Do what you need to,” he spoke, before wrapping his arms around me, but I felt him slip something into my pants pocket as he did, using the hug as a cover. He gave me a chin lift as he stepped back.
“Caterina, you don’t need to do this,” Nico said, coming to me.
“I can’t let you suffer because of me.”
I stepped back and Joe blocked his path to me.
“That’s not what’s happening,” he bit back.
“We’re in this together,” Milo said.
“And we still are.”
“Caterina—” Nico started.
“This is the best solution for everyone right now, Nico. Please.”
Before anything more could be said, screams and yells came from outside, down below at the rear of the hospital, followed by gunfire.
“We’re out of time,” Joe said.
“This is not happening,” Nico told him, starting forward again, his eyes blazing with the clear intent to physically prevent it. Julian went to take aim at Joe.
Joe yanked me back, then pulled something from one of his pockets.
Too late, I saw it was a smoke grenade.
He activated it and tossed it toward the guys.
“Back up!” I heard Levi yelling, seconds before it went off.
All I could hear was coughing and cursing as thick smoke erupted, blocking our view of each other.
Joe took advantage of the distraction, reattached the harness, then grasped me in a sturdy grip and barreled out the window.
I heard the guys roaring, and I looked up to see them rushing to the window in spite of the smoke, as Joe repelled us down the wall of the building.
“Fuck!” Nico bellowed. “Caterina!”
As we landed, Joe disengaged the harness, then rushed me toward a vehicle hidden by shadow and darkness in the far corner of the lot, as I took in the sight of the mercenaries rushing toward the hospital.
I jolted as I found myself staring at my Lamborghini, and Joe unlocking it with my fob.
“What’s my car doing here?”
“We need to give them something obvious to chase. This is it.”
He slid his fingers into his mouth and whistled.
It cut through the chaos and several of the mercenaries pulled up short on entering the hospital when they took in the sight of us supposedly trying to make a break for it.
In the next moment, they turned tail and came for us.
“Perfect,” Joe said, then ushered me into the car while he hurried around to the driver’s seat, firing off two shots to cover us and slow the enemy down as he went.
He rapidly started the car and turned to me. “Time to disappear, sweetheart.”