Chapter 30
Clara
They came in a slow trickle. First, Paulo’s daughter, Queenie, and her boyfriend, Mateo.
After the very pregnant Queenie blanched and nearly fainted at the sight of me, the nurses had insisted I change out of my blood-soaked clothes and into some scrubs.
When I got back to the waiting room, Paulo’s sister, Carmen, and her husband, Lorenzo, were there, followed shortly by many others.
By the time they rolled Paulo into emergency surgery, they’d asked us to move to a waiting room upstairs in order to get the ever-growing crowd of Syndicate men and women under control.
Zee hadn’t been seen since he arrived, when he’d left Angelo Santini, his girlfriend, and her daughter in the back seat of his car. The three eventually wandered in, and I’d busied myself trying to tend to Lyndsey and Laney’s minor wounds. It was the least I could do.
It was necessary. Without it, I’d surely spiral from all I’d just witnessed.
Every time I saw a new face, the image was distorted, layered with spraying blood and bullet holes. Laney’s little face was the only one it didn’t happen with, so I lingered near her, hoping for a reprieve.
“When’s Papa Paulo coming out?” The little girl looked up at me with her pretty pale blue eyes, and it nearly broke my heart.
I wanted to pick the girl up and hold her, to give her the comfort I so desperately needed. But I barely knew her, and when we’d shared a dinner table just weeks ago, it was clear the child didn’t like to be touched.
Working through the tight knot in my throat, I told her, “I’m not sure, sweetie. But hopefully soon.”
She surprised me then, slipping out of her chair and putting her little arms around my neck. “Don’t cry,” she said, so quietly I could barely hear. “Mommy said it’s going to be okay.”
Tugging her close, I let her words wind through me, hoping it was the truth. Our hug didn’t last long. Footsteps slapped against the tile floors, causing the curious little girl to pull away.
“Uncle Jet!” Laney’s smile lit up her face, but when I turned and stood, I didn’t find her smile being returned.
“Clara.” Jet grabbed my shoulders, peering down at me with eyes as hard as steel. “I need to know what happened.”
“We were—” More footsteps pounded down the hall, halting my explanation.
“Clara?” It was my father, racing toward me with my mother right on his heels.
Reluctantly, Jet let me go, and I hated it. At least with him between us, the blame thrown my way wouldn’t find as easy of a target.
“My God, Clara!” Adalberto Vinci hugged me for the first time in as long as I could remember. My mother didn’t wait for her turn, instead wrapping herself around me and my father like she did this all the time.
“We’re so glad you’re okay.” She pressed a kiss to my head. A kiss. From the woman who’d not reached out to me once since Stephano last threw me out of his club. “When I heard, I thought…”
“We thought the worst,” my father finished for her.
I shrugged out of their grasp, needing space, needing a return to the reality where my parents didn’t give a damn about me.
That reality twisted when I saw who was behind them.
My brother’s hard blue eyes scoured me before he lifted his chin in acknowledgement. It was him I was looking at when I stammered, “How do you even know what happened?”
Jet cleared his throat as all three of them turned their attention to him. “Lyndsey was in the car with Zee when you called. She tried to relay what she could, and I called Berto. I didn’t know…” He tugged at his left sleeve. “I need to know what happened.”
Once again, I started to talk, and once again, I was interrupted.
This time, when my name was called, I spun toward the doors the only nurses we’d seen had disappeared through.
I saw Zeno’s distraught face. I registered him rushing toward me, hair loose around his shoulders and eyes wild.
It wasn’t until his hands were clamped around either side of my face and I was stretched out until my heels left the floor, that I realized Zeno’s mouth was crushed to mine.
I held on to him for dear life, because I was sure something was wrong.
He’d left Paulo’s penthouse without a word to me.
According to Santini, he’d disappeared after chasing Paulo inside the hospital.
I feared the leader of the D’Angelo Syndicate was gone, that the only reason Zee was next to me instead of at Paulo’s side was because there was no more Paulo to tend to.
But when Zeno wrapped his arm around my waist and yanked me against him, when he tilted his head and slanted his lips across mine, all my fears were placed firmly on the back burner, and the only thing I could focus on was him.
The taste of him.
The feel of his hard body against my own.
The complete possession that raged through him as he held me like he couldn’t go on.
Love pulsed between us, and with the way he claimed my mouth, I knew this kiss was only a prelude. This kiss was an apology. A plea.
The edge of the cliff we’d just fallen off.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” My father seized my arm, wrenching me backward when all I wanted to do was get back into Zeno’s arms. “You son of a bitch!”
Zee’s eyes flared as his gaze raked across the tight grip my father had on my arm. “Let her go!”
“Like hell, I will!” The man who’d stopped caring about me before I was even born pushed me behind his back, blocking my way. “How dare you touch her?”
“How dare I?” Zee tried to step toward me, but my father pushed forward, until the two were nose to nose. “How dare you show up here and act like you suddenly care?”
“She’s my daughter—”
“You haven’t even tried to contact her since that asshole tried to rape her. Neither of you! You think you can drop her on my doorstep and she’s no longer your problem? Well guess what, Berto? She’s no longer your problem.”
“You son of a—”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Stephano yelled. My father’s shoulder slammed into my face as his body jerked backward. Holding my throbbing cheek, I peeked around him, only to find Stephano standing between the two men.
“Stephano, what are you doing?” my mother cried.
My brother snatched my arm, wrenching me forward, not giving a damn that the motion slammed me into my father’s shoulder again.
“He’s telling the truth, you know.” My brother tossed me behind himself like I weighed nothing.
“All her life, Zee’s been the one taking care of her.
You made her his problem. You dumped her on his doorstep every fucking chance you got.
And now you’re surprised that they’re fucking? ”
I’d never seen my father’s face go so red. “He’s twenty years older than her!”
“Yeah?” Stephano shrugged. “It’s creepy as fuck, but so what?
At least he was there to take care of her when you wouldn’t.
At least he’s keeping her from getting tossed into the sewers after she’s too doped up to know what’s going on.
Did you even bother checking in on her once in the past month?
When’s the last time you even asked her how she was? ”
All the blood in my mother’s face drained right out. Bottom lip trembling, she turned her perfect blue eyes my way. “Clara?”
I gripped Zeno’s hand, only for him to pull free of my grasp and wrap me in his arms. What more could I say, even if Stephano hadn’t rendered me speechless? While everything he said was true, I was in shock that my perfect brother had pitted himself against our parents in order to stand up for me.
Jet cleared his throat again, stepping closer to Stephano as if he could push the man out of his way. “If you could please just put this discussion aside for a moment, I really need to talk to Clara so I can find out what the hell happened today.”
“She saved us.” Nadia’s quiet voice rose from behind me, and everyone’s attention swung her way.
“Nadia?” My father stepped forward, stopping only when Jet put a hand on his chest to hold him back.
“Who are you?” Jet asked.
My father didn’t give her a chance to answer. “That’s Nadia Fattore. She’s Paulo’s old flame.”
“Current flame,” Zee added, motioning for her to come closer.
Jet’s brow pulled into a deep V, but he didn’t say anything, allowing Nadia to speak.
“Clara saved us.” The woman put her hand on my shoulder, and my heart clenched at the sad smile on her face. “We were ambushed when we came out of Paulo’s penthouse. She knocked me to the ground and took care of Paulo until the ambulance arrived, and she…”
She swept my hair away from my face, tucking it behind my ear.
“She shot the man who killed Ronen and was coming after us.”
“You did what?” While my mother looked horrified, my father looked to be in shock.
And my brother?
My brother stared down at me with a glint in his eye and a smirk on his lips. “Good job, brat.”
“Who was the man?” Jet asked, not giving my father’s question a chance to be answered.
“I don’t know.” Nadia shook her head, tears pooling in the corners of her eyes. “I don’t know who it was.”
“I’ve never seen him before,” I added before glancing up at Zee. “But…”
“What?”
I looked around the crowded waiting room. Peeked up at Zee again and bit my bottom lip. Then, in a low voice, I said, “I think it was one of Cosimo’s men. I think it was Cosimo.”
I should have known this revelation wasn’t going to go over well, and maybe I should have anticipated their reactions a little better.
Maybe I should have found a quieter place to say what was on my mind.
But this very thing had been on repeat in my head for so long, that all it took was Paulo’s last words to me to convince myself I wasn’t out of line.
If only they agreed with me.
Queenie, who had been sitting beside Lyndsey and Laney, jumped from her seat. But her response was covered by every other voice.
My father yelled, “That’s preposterous!”
My mother scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Even the blank stares of Jet and Stephano seemed louder than all the yelling and loud conversations that erupted the minute Cosimo’s name fell from my lips.
The loudest voice of all was also the quietest. Zee looked down at me with pure skepticism in his eyes as he loosened his grip on me and took a step back. “Clara, don’t lie.”
“I’m not lying! Look!” I scrambled to my chair, grabbing for the papers I’d shoved in my purse. My stolen gun tumbled to the floor, and the blood-coated chart fell open before the soaked papers ripped in two.
Queenie doubled over, crying out in pain, her hands on her lower belly, and Mateo rushed to her side. “Help!”
I didn’t get to explain, not with what came next.
The stress of her father being shot was just too much. Nurses rushed in before whisking Queenie away in a wheelchair to a room in the back. Other nurses shooed the crowd away, telling us all to vacate the premises so they could work in peace.
While Nadia, Carmen, and Lorenzo were allowed to stay, the rest of us were forced out. Forced to leave our vigil as the man we’d come to support fought for his life.
“Clara!” Zee came running up to me in the parking lot with Jet hot on his tail. He gripped my shoulders, giving me a little shake. “I need you to go with Santini and the girls. He’ll take you to Jet’s and keep you safe. I don’t want you going anywhere until we get this sorted out.”
“Zee, you have to believe me.” I gripped his arms, squeezing like it could make a difference. “Paulo—”
He shook his head. “I’m not talking about this, kid. Cosimo’s been at Paulo’s side since before Benito died. He’s not behind this.”
“But Zee—”
“Enough!” Zee reached into his pocket, pulling out the vial where he kept my emergency pills. “Take this. There’s only two left. Go with Santini and stay at Jet’s until I come pick you up.”
“Where are you going?” I called to his back.
“I’m going to work, kid. I’m going to take care of this for Paulo the way he took care of my father’s murderer.”
I watched the man I loved walk away again without a word, and pain unlike any other stabbed me in the heart.
He didn’t believe me.
No one did.
They didn’t give me a chance, even though I was the last one Paulo spoke to before the paramedics loaded him up.
Even though I’d figured it all out.