“That’s because you’re my daughter and don’t need to know every fucking thing about me.” Leon inwardly winced when he heard himself using that word again. Because, according to Carla, it was what he did when he was agitated.
Right now, he was beyond agitated.
After Carla had been ill, and then collapsed into a faint, Leon had hauled the doctor’s lazy ass out of bed so he could make sure she was okay and hadn’t lapsed into a coma or something equally as dangerous.
The doctor had checked the wound again and confirmed he didn’t believe there had been any cranial damage. Instead, he thought Carla’d probably had a slight reaction to the morphine put in the saline drip to dull her pain from the bullet wound. His shrug and “it happens” comment hadn’t gone down too well with Leon.
Instructing the doctor to deal with the IV unit, Leon had carried Carla into another bedroom and closed the door on the mess of blood and vomit in his own bedroom. He’d be paying housekeeping a huge tip in the morning to clean that up.
The only reason Leon had left Carla now, with the doctor in attendance, was because Jericho and Kieran were now bringing up several images of the shooter on the security feed. They needed to know if Leon recognized him.
“Good-looking guy,” Natalia remarked as they stared at the image of the laptop screen. “But obviously stupid,” she added dismissively when Leon glared at her.
The man in question was young, probably late twenties, and tall and muscular. His swarthy complexion and dark hair and eyes indicated he was probably, but not definitely, of Italian descent.
Leon was sure he’d never seen the younger man before.
But that didn’t mean the man wasn’t working for one of the dons who had attended the wedding yesterday.
Or that one of those images didn’t confirm the look of horror on the young man’s face when he realized his shot had missed Leon and hit Carla instead.
A killer with a conscience?
He was going to very quickly become a dead fucking killer with a conscience when Leon got his hands on him.
No doubt the young man thought, by killing Leon, he would become a made man and quickly climb the ranks with whatever Mafia don had ordered the hit.
When the truth was, and this was something the shooter obviously hadn’t considered, what was more likely to happen was the killer would then be killed, thus eliminating all evidence of the betrayal. Either way, the man who had shot Carla was a dead man walking. It was just a question of who got to him first, Leon or his employer.
“Find out who he is and then bring him to me,” he grimly instructed the two bodyguards. “Needless to say, I won’t be returning to the States today after all,” he told Natalia.
She shrugged. “Then I won’t go either.”
Leon briefly debated insisting his daughter returned to the US with her bodyguards, against letting her stay here. “You’re going back on the jet first thing in the morning, accompanied by Killian. Once there, you’re to go straight to the New York estate and stay there. Is that understood?” His estate had the best high-tech security in the world, along with half a dozen security guards patrolling the grounds with their trained dogs.
Natalia nodded. “Understood.”
“I mean it, Natalia,” he warned. “I’m not in the mood to put up with any of your disappearing acts.” His daughter had a habit of redirecting his jet and going on shopping trips, usually to Milan or Paris, whenever she felt like it.
“I heard you,” she snapped back. “Fly home on the jet. Do not pass go or collect two hundred dollars, but go straight to the New York estate and shut myself in. Got it.”
One of these days…
Leon knew it was too late for him to even think about disciplining Natalia.
“I’m sorry, Papa.” She gave him a warm kiss on the cheek to accompany that apology. “But please don’t worry about me. I might be impetuous, but I’m not stupid.” She frowned. “It’s your girlfriend you need to keep an eye on, if only to make sure she doesn’t throw herself in front of any more bullets meant for you.”
“She’s not my girlfriend!”
Natalia patted his cheek affectionately. “Keep telling yourself that,” she taunted. “You probably don’t need it, but anyone willing to sacrifice themselves for you has my unconditional approval. Also,” she added with another telling wrinkle of her nose, “I meant it about you taking a shower and changing into some clean clothes before you go anywhere near Carla again.”
“Go back to bed,” he ordered gruffly before striding out of the room and down the hallway to enter Carla’s new bedroom.
“Miss Andretti wished for me to take out the cannula and remove the saline drip,” the doctor informed him as he rose from the chair beside the bed. “I have done so on the condition she drinks plenty of fluids.” He nodded in the direction of the jug of water with ice cubes floating in it, sitting on the bedside table.
“I’ll see that she does,” he assured the older man, waiting until the doctor had left the room before crossing to sit in the chair the doctor had vacated.
A band tightened about Leon’s chest, and he placed his hand over Carla’s—the one without the gauze pad on the back of it after the removal of the cannula—as it rested pale and unmoving on top of the bedcovers.
She looked so damned young, her face deathly white as she lay back against the white pillows.
Vulnerable.
Fragile.
All descriptions he knew this feisty and highly independent woman would deeply resent if she knew Leon had even dared to think of them in connection to her.
But Leon needed to know why Carla had thrown herself in front of him when the shooter raised his gun.
Carla claimed it was what people did. Leon knew it really wasn’t. Most people, when confronted with a gun, used their fight-or-flight response to run
