The nearer the elevator came to reaching the ground floor, the less Leon wanted to accept that.
He had anticipated seeing Carla again for weeks, and he’d enjoyed spending time with her tonight as much as he’d thought he would. He’d enjoy making love with her even more.
Even the elevator seemed to be conspiring against him as all too soon it came to a gliding halt and the doors swished smoothly open.
Leon really could have done without Jericho and Kieran standing outside in the hallway before instantly stepping in front of the open elevator, their backs toward them to prevent Leon and Carla leaving the elevator before they’d visibly checked the immediate area.
Carla’s face was pale. It became even paler when his men’s stance became one of alertness and tension as they turned their heads left and right to check for any sign of imminent danger.
For the first time in many years, Leon wished he wasn’t who he was. That he could just be an ordinary man attracted to a beautiful woman, and the two of them could walk down the street together, holding hands if they wanted to, and go out to dinner together, all without the shadow of his bodyguards.
Instead of which, Carla was right, he had enemies and rivals who wished him dead.
He lived with that threat day to day, so much so that for the main part, he had become inured to it. He would have become completely paranoid if he hadn’t.
Carla’s reaction to seeing those bodyguards in action was enough to remind him how alien the danger of his world was to the safety of hers.
It also acted as a reminder that showing his attraction toward her today and taking her up to the penthouse with him might not have been wise on his part. Not when he knew someone in his organization was acting against his explicit instructions and no doubt had an interest in taking Leon’s place as capo dei capi.
The sooner Carla left the capriciousness of his world and returned to the safety of hers, the better it would be for her.
Which didn’t mean Leon wasn’t going to enjoy these last few minutes with her. “Stand down,” he growled at the two bodyguards.
He waited until they’d stepped aside before taking a firm hold of Carla’s elbow, the two of them stepping out of the elevator together and turning in the direction of the mainly deserted lobby.
Leon couldn’t have said afterward what he became aware of first.
Carla crying out as a young man stepped out from behind one of the marble pillars brandishing a gun in his hand.
Or that she threw herself in front of him at the same time he heard the unmistakable whining of a bullet as it spiraled down the gun barrel and silencer.
Or Carla’s gasp, followed by the jolt of her body, before her knees gave way and she began to sink to the marble floor.
Chapter Four
“Lie still,” a man’s husky voice instructed as Carla’s attempt to move resulted in a sharp agony that began in the vicinity of her right temple before it fractured out and then exploded across and into the rest of her body. Even her fingernails were included in that splintering heat.
She gave a groan as the bone-deep intensity of that pain robbed her of breath and caused black spots to dance behind her closed eyelids.
“Where the fuck is the doctor?” that gravelly voice demanded furiously.
“He’s on his way, Papa,” a female voice soothed.
“It’s been ten minutes. He should fucking well be here by now,” he snapped.
“He was at the wedding and was driving home when he received our call.”
“I don’t care if he was on his way to fucking Mars, I want him here now!”
“You have to calm down, Papa—”
“Don’t tell me what I have to do. We wouldn’t have been down in the lobby at all if you hadn’t sashayed back in here behaving like a spoiled little—”
“Leon, stop,” Carla managed to say weakly, the pain having subsided enough for her to know the gravelly voice belonged to him and the female one to his daughter, Natalia.
“Carla!” Her left hand was taken in his tight grip. “Open those beautiful brown eyes and look at me, damn it,” Leon instructed gently when her fingers remained limp in his.
It was too much effort to even lift her eyelids. She simply hurt too much. Everywhere.
Instead, Carla became introspective as she questioned why she hurt. What the hell had happened to her? Where was she, and why?
She remembered feeling pain, followed by blackness.
The same pain that had hit just seconds ago and seemed to emanate initially from her right temple before spreading outward, but losing none of its velocity or impact when it did so.
God, this was the part Carla hated in movies. Where the heroine, who had been totally kick-ass up to this point, suddenly had a memory loss as to what had happened to her and who was responsible, and so making it impossible for the hero to go out and kick their arse.
The hero in this case being Leon?
That might be stretching it a bit, but she believed he was capable of it. Both being the hero and giving the arse-kicking.
So, back to deciding why she was in so much pain.
She remembered coming up to the penthouse with Leon. Kissing him and being thoroughly kissed back. Natalia interrupting them. Walking to the elevator together and then—
Nothing.
Carla couldn’t remember a damn thing after that.
The more she tried to remember, the worse her headache became, turning vicious so that it felt as if shards of glass were pounding against her skull, before the darkness took her once more.
Leon felt as if he was going quietly out of his mind.
Well…remembering how he had barked orders at his bodyguards downstairs, something he never did, then shouted at Natalia, something he also preferred not to do, perhaps he wasn’t going insane quite as quietly as he would have liked.
But some bastard had
