Cara had just set a sleeping Marcus into his wicker moses basket when she heard the familiar ding of the penthouse elevator ringing out in the hallway. She figured it was probably just Gian coming back, considering how long he had already been gone. Setting the wicker basket on the middle of her bed, where the baby was safe, she headed for the attached bathroom, slipping out of her robe as she went.
A hot, nearly-overfilled bubble bath was waiting.
After her morning, she deserved it.
“Cara?”
Shit.
Apparently, the bath was going to have to wait.
She had wrongly assumed the person coming into the penthouse was Gian. It sounded like Domenic. She quickly shrugged her robe back on and left the bedroom, tying the sash securely at her waist as she rounded the first corner leading out of the hallway.
“Cara, are you home?”
The buzzing of her cell phone echoed from the bedroom—she always put the ringer on silent when Marcus was sleeping. Surely, Dom could wait a second.
Cara nearly spun back around to go to the buzzing phone, but it stopped. Then, it started right back up again.
What the fuck?
“Yeah, just give me a second,” Cara called back.
“Gian here?”
“No, he had something come up this morning.” Cara was one step away from reentering her bedroom when Dom appeared at the end of the hallway. “I’ll be right out. Did something happen?”
Dom shrugged. “Nothing you need to worry about.”
Her heart stopped for a split second. “But something did?”
He didn’t answer. In the bedroom, her phone continued buzzing away. Persistent and wanting her attention, clearly.
“Let me grab my phone,” Cara said to Dom, “before it wakes up the baby.”
Dom’s strange, cold expression didn’t change a bit, but he waved her off anyway. Cara didn’t think it was entirely odd, considering Gian’s brother was one of the few people she hadn’t gotten close enough to that she considered him a friend of sorts. The man was always respectful and polite, but he didn’t go out of his way to be friendly with her at all.
She hadn’t minded. She understood some people—some of Gian’s men or family—wouldn’t be comfortable with her or her relationship.
Cara turned her back to Dom and headed into the bedroom, only to realize that was probably the biggest mistake of her life. She hadn’t even taken a single step inside the room, before Dom was suddenly behind her. For such a big man, Cara barely heard him make a sound.
He had a fistful of her hair and was dragging her to the floor in an instant. The pain that radiated through her scalp and down her spine shot through her nervous system like a thousand needles. Dom didn’t seem to mind her first struggle, easily overpowering Cara with his size, forcing her to her back, and then smashing her head into the floor.
Her tears were already starting to form in her pain and confusion. Those emotions were nothing compared to her fear. She had done nothing to Dom, nothing to justify his fists raining down on her body, or his mocking laughter as she begged for him to stop.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Don’t talk,” he snarled.
Why?
What?
While Cara had never felt close to Dom, or even friendly with him, the man above her now was not one she had ever seen before. It was like his entire face had changed, his expression—nearly dead looking—was one of a monster.
It was as though he wasn’t seeing her at all. It was as though his eyes weren’t looking at the mother of his nephew, or a woman who had never spoken badly about him or any of his family. He didn’t care who she was, because she was just something to deal with.
Something to dispose of.
Her initial shock was quickly overcome by the scream she released. A scream that woke her sleeping baby.
Marcus’s wail filled the bedroom. Cara’s heart dropped into her stomach as Dom’s next hit hesitated, and he glanced up at the bed, like he was just realizing then that the baby was in the room, too. And like with her, he didn’t look at the small wicker basket with the familiarity of a man looking at something he should have cared for, on some level.
Cara’s panic ran into overdrive just like that. She had been far too shocked and unsure before to really react, though she had tried stupidly to get out of the way of the slaps and punches. Now, with a single look at a man who she thought might kill her son for a reason she didn’t understand, desperation really kicked in.
It kicked in fucking hard.
The taste of blood bloomed in her mouth, and pain radiated from her face to her chest, but Cara didn’t care about any of it. All she heard was her crying son, and the racing beat of her heart. Her struggle under the weight of Dom increased and she struck out at him. All she had to fight with was her hands, her fingernails. But she used them the best she could, punching Dom as hard as she could and feeling her knuckles crack from the impact of busting his mouth. Her fingernails dug deep into his face, scoring lines from his eyes to his lips as she bucked and kicked out her legs in an attempt to gain some kind of traction.
“Don’t fucking fight,” she heard him snarl above her.
Cara didn’t listen.
She wasn’t sure how she possibly could.
“He couldn’t just let her be,” Dom howled as his hands enclosed Cara’s throat. He squeezed hard, taking away her air and making her lungs burn. “He’d never let her be happy, not like he wanted to be. Fuck him, and fuck you.”
Blood rushed Cara’s ears. Her vision blurred. Her lips tingled with numbness, like the rest of her extremities. She swore she felt her heart slow.
She wasn’t sure how it was possible, but it was as though the world slowed down all around her in those moments. It made her far more painfully aware of the fact she was about to lose her life, and there was nothing she could do about it.
“Please don’t hurt the baby,” Cara managed to get out with what last bit of breath she had left. “Please—”
“Shut the fuck up! Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
Somewhere in the back of Cara’s hazy consciousness, she was sure that she heard a ding echo through the penthouse. Not that it mattered, because Cara didn’t even have the energy to keep her eyes open any longer, never mind pick up her fists to keep fighting.
Please don’t hurt my Marcus.
Please don’t hurt my baby.
I’m sorry for whatever I did, but don’t hurt him.
She wasn’t sure if she said those words out loud, but she thought them. Her mind screamed them until her throat felt raw and bloody, but that could have just been from the choking, too.
The happiest memory Cara could think of in that moment was waking up in the hospital the first night after Marcus was born, to find Gian singing a French lullaby to their son. She didn’t know he could sing at all, and he hadn’t noticed her awake. It was the sweetest sight—proof in an instant that no matter what, he was going to love his child.
And perhaps if one of them could make it out of this alive, she would want it to be Marcus.
He would always have his father.
Crack.
The loud sound accompanied a sudden intake of air into Cara’s lungs. Her eyes widened at the absolute agony it caused for her to breathe in, but all she saw above her was the falling form of Dom coming at her. She couldn’t even find the strength to move out of the damn way.
“Shit, Cara, just a second, baby. I got you.”
That voice … it was so beautifully, wonderfully familiar.
She barely moved at all as Dom’s dead weight was shoved off her. She clutched at her throat, taking in gulps of air. It didn’t really help.
“Look at me,” she heard the man demand. “Let me see your eyes. Don’t take in such big breaths.”
She couldn’t focus on the blurry image above her, her pupils struggling to form the shapes it needed. Careful hands touched her face, and that hurt, too.
“Christ, mon ange, look at your face. Try to calm down and focus.”
Cara did, but it didn’t help. “My baby … get my baby, please.”
“Shh. Marcus is fine, just angry.”
“Get my baby!”
“Okay, okay.”
In the time it took for Cara to smell the sweet scent of her child and have him in her weak arms, her vision had cleared enough for her to see again.
Gian.
He sat across from her, his gaze wary, and his hands outstretched to take her into his embrace when she was ready to move. She only shook her head, not wanting anything to touch her or her child in that moment. He checked her over from afar as she soothed Marcus in a daze.
“Don’t look at it,” Gian said when Cara glanced to the side at Dom’s body.
The back of his head was blown apart.
Blood was pooling across her bedroom floor.
“I don’t know what just happened,” Cara whispered.
“He was going to take you away from me.”
“But why?”
“Because he thought I took Elena,” Gian said.
Cara didn’t entirely understand.
She didn’t think it was all that important.
Once again, the familiar ding of the elevator rang through the penthouse. Cara’s frantic gaze darted to Gian, but he looked a hell of a lot calmer about an unknown someone coming into their place than she did.
“Calm down, it’s probably just—”
“Boss!”
“Stephan,” Gian finished with a sigh.
“Boss!”
“In the fucking bedroom, Stephan.” Gian held his arms out to Cara once more. “I know you’re scared and hurting, but I would really like to hold you right now, mon ange. Please.”
Her skittish nod sent him moving fast across the floor. She felt better the second she didn’t feel anything but him. His gentle fingers skimmed over her face, and through the tangles of her hair. He looked at the marks on her neck, muttered about a busted vessel in her eye, and mentioned a doctor that would come in and look her and the baby over once they had the mess cleaned up.
Cara didn’t care, as long as Marcus was still happy in her arms and Gian was there.
“Holy shit,” Stephan said from the doorway. “How did you make it here before me? I was closer by fifteen minutes, at least.”
Gian shrugged, but didn’t let go of Cara. “I drive fast.”
“Chris always said you drove like a bat out of hell, boss.”
“He understated it,” Gian said deadpan. “This needs to go away, Stephan. This mess—the body. It needs to be gone, it can’t be found.”
Cara chose not to ask about that, either.
“I can do that,” Stephan answered.
That was that.
Cara found Gian sitting on the middle of their bedroom floor, his suit jacket discarded, and his tie hanging loosely around his neck. He sat in the same spot Domenic had damn near killed her, and then subsequently lost his own life. Gian fiddled with his finger, and as Cara came closer, she realized he was spinning the wedding band around and around the digit. She rarely saw him wear the piece of jewelry—he said he didn’t like it, and only put it on when necessary.
She supposed today would have been one of those necessary days.
Elena’s funeral.
The last two weeks had been especially trying for Gian, she knew. Perhaps had it been any other man he’d killed, and not his brother, the heavy weight he carried around wouldn’t be so present and obvious. She had gone along with him when he chose to tell his mother and father that Domenic would not be coming home ever again. Gian hadn’t needed to do that, because as far as Cara knew, by Gian’s request, Stephan had taken care of the body so that it wouldn’t be found. As sad as it would have been for Gian’s parents to realize something had happened and not have answers, Gian was not required to give one.
Yet, he had.
And the sound.
Oh, God.
The sound of Celeste Guzzi’s heartache still resounded in Cara’s mind. It was as though the woman’s whole world had just fallen apart entirely. It had been a tug of war in the mother’s eyes as she listened to Gian explain and apologize. Cara did not think she was as good of a woman as Celeste seemed to be in the moments that followed. A woman who faced the reasons why, and forgave all the same. A woman who loved a murdered child, and the child who had done the killing.
Gian’s father, on the other hand, had not been so understanding. Coward. Fool. Your fault. You did this. And for what, Gian, for a whore?
Cara would never forget those words.
She suspected that neither would Gian.
“Gian?” Cara asked quietly.
He didn’t look up at her, but his fidgeting stopped. “Hey, mon ange.”
“I didn’t see where you went when you came in the penthouse.”
“I needed a second.”
“For what?”
Gian let out a heavy breath. “To think. Alone, for a while.”
“I can let you—”
“No, don’t go.” He caught her wrist in a snug grip, and tugged her down. She sat opposite to him on the floor as his ring spinning started up again. “Last time to take it off.”
Gian said that with a soft smile and a shrug.
“Then why haven’t you?”
“A part of me thinks it’s not real. As much as I hate this ring, I don’t hate what it means, Cara. I just hated who it tied me to and how it chained me. It felt like it was choking me every time I had to put it on. I’m worried, that’s all.”
“About what, Gian?”
“That maybe the way this one has always felt will taint the way the next one feels.”
Oh.
“We don’t need to be worrying about that right now,” Cara whispered, reaching out to stroke Gian’s tense lines away on his face. “You know that, right?”
“I’m a boss. A boss needs—”
“To be happy. To take some time. To manage a family and his organization. To be a dad. To be my lover. To be a son. Have you ever taken the time just to be, Gian?”
“I don’t have that kind of time, Cara, not in my position.”
“And who the fuck is going to tell you what you should and shouldn’t do for you at the moment, Gian? Who is going to tell you anything? You got one thing right—you’re the boss, not anyone else.”
It took Gian nearly an entire silent minute before he said, “But I do want to marry you. I have wanted to marry you since the moment I knew I loved you, mon ange.”
“And someday, you can ask. Today doesn’t have to be that day and neither does tomorrow.”
He laughed. “That’s quite a way to leave me hanging.”
“You have to ask someday, Gian, that’s all.”
Gian’s gaze dropped. “I found out some things today—coroner’s report came in, and I went down after the funeral to go over it.”
“All right.”
“Elena was pregnant, maybe with Dom’s kid, I’m not sure. I suspect it was. They had some tissue to test against my DNA, if I wanted—they suspect me of being the father. Not possible, but I didn’t correct them. They don’t need it on record that I wasn’t the father of the child because it’ll just give them something to look into, so I didn’t ask for testing to be done. As it was, I deleted the messages, calls, and Dom’s contact off her phone before I left the mansion that day. I took the pill bottles with his name on it. I knew I was going to kill him, and I was still trying to protect him. I did it again today. I realized I wasn’t even mad at Dom for what he did with her, or for falling into her trap. I was him once, too. I’m pissed because of what came of it, because of what he did, but not for her. I miss my brother, but not the thing she turned him into.”
“Anything else in the report?”
Gian shrugged. “Toxicology said there was a significant amount of prescription opiate use going back at least two years. It explained why they found bottles of painkillers with her name on it, and the ones I found and took with Dom’s name on them. Doctor shopping, likely. She hid that well.”
“Addicts sometimes do. High-functioning ones, anyway.”
“She was at least four months along in the pregnancy, Cara, so she had to know.”
Cara sighed. “I would think so.”
“That day I found her, I thought she was selfish,” he admitted, “because of what she did to Dom, something that was only meant to hurt me. She couldn’t help herself, clearly, she had to manipulate and play her games even at the end.”
“So?”
“So, then I learn she’s pregnant, too, and it just verified those thoughts. I don’t feel so awful for thinking them, now. I don’t feel as bad for what she did, because I don’t think it was ever about me. It was always about her, that’s just who she was.”
“It’s done now, Gian,” Cara said.
He nodded. “I was wrong when I told you freedom was always weightless. Do you remember that?”
“Of course. I remember everything you’ve ever told me.”
“Sometimes freedom feels heavy, too. Like when you don’t know what to do with it.”
Cara pushed up from her backside to rest on her knees. She leaned forward and kissed Gian softly on his mouth, feeling his lips grow into a sensual smile the longer she held him there. “You’ve got all the time in the world to figure this out, Gian.”
“With you.”
“With me,” she echoed.
“Because I don’t care much about the rest,” he said, holding her gaze, “as long as you’re going to be there with me, Cara.”
“I’m always going to be here.”
Where could she possibly go?
Life and love had entangled her heart and soul with Gian Guzzi.
He was hers.
She wasn’t going anywhere.
“He was wrong. All those years, what he kept repeating to me; he was wrong.”
“Who?” Cara asked.
“My grandfather. Duty. Legacy. And only then, love. Always in that order. That’s what he told me but he was wrong. At least for me. He used to say that if a man failed at his duty, his legacy would be nameless, and his love, hopeless. But that only works if a man loves his duty more than anything else in his life and I never did. I love you far more—I love my son far more. I would have no legacy without love, and then what would be the point of my duty at the end of it all? There would be no point, I suppose. I would have nothing worthy to pass on, nothing to watch grow. Or worse, I would have no one to pass it on to, no one to give all of my legacy. Yet, I do, and it was only because I refused to put duty first. I’m not sure if that counts as failing, or not.”
“Oh, Gian.”
“Yeah, I know.” Gian slipped the wedding band off his finger one last time, and handed it up as though it was an offering for her to take. “A gift I didn’t think I was going to be able to give you.”
Cara pinched the tiny piece of jewelry between her fingers, staring at it for a long while before she said, “One woman to one man, Gian.”
“For the rest of my fucking life, Cara. I promise.”