24. Antonio
Chapter twenty-four
Antonio
T his could be the worst hangover ever. I bring my hand to my head, but I don’t make it halfway before a sharp, stabbing pain shoots through my chest, making me groan. Fuck, that hurts.
“Take it easy, Ant.”
Why is Gio here? And where is my wife?
I screw up my face, trying to peel my eyelids open, but it’s like they’ve been stuck together with glue.
And I can only peer out of them through a narrow slit.
Gio is a silhouette against the light flooding in through a thinly curtained window.
I blink against the brightness. He’s leaning against the sill with his hands pushed deep into the pockets of his pants.
“Gio?” I croak through my dust-dry throat.
He pushes off and steps toward me. “Here, drink this.” A straw slips between my cracked lips, and the cool water tastes better than the most expensive champagne. Too soon, he removes it, then retreats to the window again.
“Thanks, but what happened?” I ask, and this time, it doesn’t hurt so much to speak.
“You nearly had the life beat out of you,” he growls.
I hear the words, and my body certainly aches like what he’s saying is true, but my head hurts too much for me to make sense of it.
“Where’s Lucia?”
“I called her, and she’s on her way in a private jet.” He looks at his watch. “She should be here in a couple of hours.”
“How long have I been here?”
“The doctor told me they brought you in around midnight. And I was called shortly after as the emergency contact in your cell.” His pose is casual, but the tense line of his shoulders and clenched fists give him away.
“You still had your cell and wallet on you, so it wasn’t a mugging. Do you remember anything?”
My brain is fuzzy, and none of what he’s saying makes sense, other than the fact I’ve been beaten up. That is easy to comprehend when my body feels like it’s been run over by a truck.
My eyelids drop closed for a moment at the flash of a memory, before springing open again. “I was targeted, because one of them said, ‘You need to stop before someone gets killed.’”
“Them?”
“There were three of them. Big Italian fuckers.” I squeeze my eyes closed again, straining to recall more details.
“Two of them hit and kicked me while I grappled on the ground with a third man. He was the one who spoke. It was dark and all over quickly, but they knew what they were doing.” It’s all flooding back now in a rush of memory.
“Wait, I remember one of the guys had a five-pointed star on his hand.”
“Fuck, Mafia. This has turned dangerous,” he mumbles, swiping both hands through this hair. After a moment, he breaks the silence. “Did you meet with Salvatore?”
“Yep, at that bar near Centrale. We spoke briefly; he seemed dodgy as hell and escaped out the back as soon as I had the file. I’d just left the bar when they jumped me.
They must have been following me.” I lift my right hand to reach for more water, and it’s completely covered in thick bandages like I’ve just gone a couple rounds with Mike Tyson. “Can I have some more water?”
Gio springs into action, holding the cup for me to sip again, and as I wet my sandpaper-dry mouth, Nico walks through the door.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, but I’m secretly pleased to see my youngest brother. Having the shit beaten out of me before being left in the street certainly rattled my perspective on what’s important. Luce can’t be here fast enough.
Nico walks toward my bed and places a hand on my arm.
“I came to see how messed up you are. How are you feeling?” His brow furrows with concern.
“Leo wanted to come, too, but he couldn’t leave the restaurant.
Though he did offer to do some sessions with you in the gym, since you look like you need a refresher in defense.
” Leo is the martial arts expert in the family and has taught us all some moves over the years.
I roll my eyes—one of the few movements that doesn’t hurt. “There were three of them,” I grumble.
Nico looks to Gio and turns serious. “Do you know who the fuckers were?”
“Possibly Mafia,” Gio replies for me.
“Fuck, that’s serious shit. They don’t like people messing about with their operations.”
“Yep, got that message loud and clear,” I mumble.
“I’ll see what I can find out,” he says, and we both turn to glare at him. If our family has a black sheep, it’s Nico.
Gio’s brow creases. “I don’t think I want to know how you can do that.”
Nico glances down at me from where he still stands beside the bed, then back up at Gio.
“And if I told you, I’d probably have to kill you.
” He says it in all seriousness, but when he catches Gio’s expression, he cracks a smile and adds, “I’m joking.
Seriously, what shit do you two think I’m into?
” Laughing, he drops into the nearby chair.
“Nico, anything you can find out would be helpful,” I choke out past the lump clogging my throat. And it’s at that point I remember the whole purpose of the meeting.
“Do you have my cell?” I ask Gio, hoping my beating wasn’t for nothing. He pulls it from his pocket, and I continue. “Sal transferred the file to me, and I emailed it to myself before leaving the bar.”
Gio brings the cell over to me, and I swipe my thumb across the screen. It only takes him another moment to find the email, and his head bends low as he scrolls through what I expect is the attachment.
“Fuck. We’ve got it. This is the proof we needed.” He looks up, smiling.
A sigh whooshes from my lungs, and my chest hurts like there’s a slab of concrete sitting on it. I’m guessing I’ve got a few cracked ribs, given how hard it is to breathe. The bastards landed a couple of heavy boots into them when I hit the ground.
“What the fuck?” Gio exclaims, and I swivel my head on the pillow to face him. His tanned face drained of color.
“What?”
“There’s a message from an unknown number. Stop now or your wife will be next ,” he reads, and I’m pushing myself up in the bed, ignoring the pain shooting through my body.
Gio is instantly at my side with a hand on my shoulder. “Calm down, or you’re going to make your injuries worse,” he warns before adding, “Remember, she’s safe on our jet, and the car will be waiting to bring her directly here.”
“But then what? She needs protection, because I can’t do it.” My throat tightens with fear. “G, you have to keep her and my baby safe.” I’m barely able to extract the plea past the lump in my throat.
His eyes widen. “She’s pregnant?”
“Fuck,” Nico mutters from my other side.
I nod, then blink my eyes against the tears welling in them. The thought of Lucia being hurt is more painful than any of the cuts and bruises on my battered body. I’d take so much more to keep her safe. If anything happened to Lucia, I wouldn’t survive.
Where his hand still rests on my shoulder, he gives it a squeeze.
“Ant, I can get her bodyguards to protect her, but I need to return to Florence to end all of this.” He swallows deeply before continuing.
“I know you’re not going to like this, but I think she’d be safer under her father’s protection.
Especially now that she’s carrying his first grandchild. ”
“I know,” I reluctantly agree, the pain of failure so sharp that my eyes close briefly. “Luce will hate that. She’ll hate me for doing that.”
“But she’d be safe.”
Though it hurts to admit it, I know he’s right.
“There’s no chance he’s part of this, is there?” I ask, and his eyes widen. Right now, my brothers and Lucia are the only people who I feel I can trust fully.
“I’m sure he’s not involved.” He returns to stand by the window. “All Franco Romano has ever wanted was his daughter to marry into a traditional Italian bloodline. Prestige and power were his only motives. It was never about money. He had plenty of his own.”
I don’t know how he knows this, but I’m confident he’s right. “Well, he got what he wanted, then, just not who.” The words leave a bitter taste in my mouth.
I didn’t really think Lucia’s father was involved, but I had to ask.
Either way, it does nothing to wipe out the fact that I can never respect Franco Romano after the way he’s treated his daughter.
Lucia is not a commodity to be used to increase the family’s social standing.
It’s sexist behavior that belongs in the history books, not in modern Italy.
But if this is the safest option I have to protect her, then I’m willing to swallow my pride and take it. I just hope she is too.
“Could you speak to her father?” I ask, as I doubt Franco would even take my call after our last exchange.
“Of course. I’ll do that now.” He straightens and steps back from my bed.
Nico stands as well. “I’ve got some calls to make,” he says by way of an excuse to leave. “Do you need anything before I go?”
“Just find out who is fucking with my family.”
He nods. “And congratulations to you and Lucia.”
“She didn’t want to make an announcement, so keep it to yourself,” I say, my body feeling as flat as a deflated balloon.
I close my eyes, concentrating on steadying my breathing because the deeper, lung-expanding inhales hurt like hell. The snick of the door closing leaves me alone with only the rhythmic beep of the machine for company.
What feels like only minutes later, Gio returns, his mouth pulled into a grimace. The expression he gets when a deal goes south.
“What the fuck has happened now?”
He releases a heavy sigh, and deep lines crease his forehead. “Franco is coming, and he’s bringing bodyguards. I had to tell him some of what happened, and unfortunately, he blames you for putting his daughter in danger.”
“Huh! As if he needed any more reasons to hate me. But I don’t care. As long as he can keep Lucia safe, then none of that matters.”
“I do have some good news. The jet will be landing in forty minutes, so she’ll be here soon.”
While Gio doesn’t know exactly how close Luce and I have become since the wedding, he can probably guess now that she’s carrying my child.
Suddenly, it’s important for him to understand.
“I love her. And she loves me. Our marriage might have been one of convenience, but it’s completely real now.
Gio, I can’t let anything happen to her. ”
“I understand,” he says, and I know he does. It wasn’t that long ago that he feared he’d lost the love of his life, Tori.
“What did you tell Luce had happened to me?”
“Just what I knew at the time, that you’d been mugged but were okay.”
I nod, glad she’ll hear the truth from me. She’s not going to want to go with her father, but when I explain that it’s the only way I can protect her this time, hopefully she’ll agree.
“While we wait, how about you start reading aloud those documents from Salvatore.”
And that’s what he does, stopping only when we get to a section that mentions a BB and DL as receiving hundreds of thousands of euros each from one of the LLCs.
“Of course there are no actual names,” I grumble, fucking tired of taking one step forward and two back.
“No, but we’ve got initials, and maybe the carabinieri can fill in the gaps.” It’s unusual for Gio to be the positive one out of the two of us. But before I can ask him why that is, Lucia bursts through the door.
She’s a beautiful whirlwind of energy, and for the first time since Gio read that threatening message aloud, my fear for her safety is quieted.
She rushes to my side, tears turning her eyes a watery green as, without a word, she bends to seal her lips to mine.
A silky swish of her hair falls over my bare chest, and I breathe in her familiar floral fragrance.
She smells of home, and I want to drink in her sweet taste as our tongues tangle.
I lift a hand, then instantly drop it again with a pained groan that has Lucia jumping back.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“It’s okay. I just forgot to not move.”
“I’ve been so worried about you.” She swipes a few tears from her cheeks. “That flight was the worst twelve hours of my life.” She places a gentle hand on my cheek before bending to touch her lips to mine again.
A throat clearing has us both turning our heads in Gio’s direction. “I think I’ll just wait outside.”
And as the door closes behind him, Lucia launches into a series of rapid-fire questions. “Tell me what happened? Where does it hurt? Who did this?”
She stops to take a breath, and I jump in before she gets her second wind.
“Hey, I’m okay. A few cracked ribs, a dislocated shoulder, bruising and split knuckles. No major organ damage, but I’ll be pissing blood for a few days.”
She sucks in her breath, then releases it slowly before bending to kiss me again. Lucia’s kisses are better than the morphine they’re giving me for pain.
When we separate again, she asks, “Do you know who did this?”
“Someone who didn’t want me finding out who has been stealing from the company.”
Lucia knew why I was coming to Italy, but I still wish I could soften the words.
There isn’t an easy way to tell her I was targeted and they might come after her too.
“Last night, I met with the whistleblower. He had information that we hoped would tell us who was stealing our products from the port and selling them on the black market.” I stop for a moment to let the news sink in before dropping the bombshell.
But she remains silent, only her wide green eyes speaking volumes. “There’s a chance the Mafia is involved,” I add in a low voice.
Her shock is visible. “What the hell, Ant? Do you think it was the Mafia that attacked you?”
“Maybe? We won’t know until we can find the person on the inside.”
“They could come back for you.” Her voice wobbles before she slaps a hand over her mouth to hold back a soft whimper. The fear turning her beautiful face ashen rips through me.
“Luce …” But before I can continue, the door to my hospital room swings open again, less dramatically than before, but she still jumps.
Gasp. The sound from Lucia is so soft that only I’m able to hear as her father follows Gio into the room. And Lucia’s open-mouthed stare is no worse than if someone had come to attack us. All because I haven’t had a chance to warn her. Fuck.
“Lucia?” he booms, making her name sound like he’s expecting something from her other than frozen silence.
Maybe it was a mistake to ask for Franco Romano’s help, but I haven’t been left with much of a choice. Gio can’t protect her when he’s trying to find the people responsible. And I’m a useless, broken mess, not even able to stop them from beating the hell out of me.
No, this was the only choice I had. Her father is the only person who can keep her and our unborn child safe while I’m unable to. I can’t take any chances with their lives. And these fucking animals won’t stop until we stop them.
“Why are you here?” she demands, finally finding her voice.