Once and for all.
I’m holding her coffee tight in my grip as I enter the hospital once again, giving Angelo a quick nod. I want to make her feel better, but I don’t know how I can. She’s just lost her father, the only man she’s ever loved. The man that raised her and gave her the world. There can be no way to fix that for her, but I’ll start with roses. I call a florist on my way back up to Frank’s floor and arrange for twelve dozen roses to be delivered to the house, and then I phone the house and tell the maids to arrange the flowers in her room.
Angelo is following behind me and I’m deeply aware that he can hear every word I say, but he makes no comment.
The roses will be a nice surprise for her, but I know it isn’t enough, and I’m thinking of what else I can do as I stop at the end of the hallway and see all of Frank’s security is missing. I immediately place the coffee down by my feet and pull out my gun before slowly making my way down the hallway toward his room. Angelo is right behind me, his own gun in hand.
When I get to the room, I see a deathly still Frank in his bed but there’s no one else around. I briefly worry that she will have left. I did just tell her that she wasn’t my prisoner after all. I’d never assumed that she would take that as her right to leave me though.
Angelo taps me on the shoulder and points towards the stairs and I nod. The doorway to the stairs is on one side of the hallway and there is an office on the other. Angelo heads into the office, his gun at eye level. I push open the stairway door and immediately hear voices, and I quietly close the door behind me, taking the steps down as silently as I can.
“Don’t get too comfy,cara mia, you’ll be back where you belong soon enough,” Alfonso snarls.
I look down and see he has my Natalia against the wall, his face an inch from hers. She’s whimpering as he presses himself against her, and I see red with rage.
“Make sure you save yourself for me. I’ve waited a long time for this.” He presses his hand between her legs and I watch as she winces—whether it be from his mere touch or because of Sisco’s cock last night I’m not sure, and I don’t care. Natalia is mine,ours, and I’ll kill any man that lays a finger on her.
“You’ve given it to them already!” he snarls in her face, his anger making him deaf to my steps as I storm toward him, my gun raised. “Never mind, instead of having a princess for a wife, now I’ll have a whore to keep my bed warm.” Alfonso leans in and presses a brutal, unforgiving kiss to her mouth, and she cries out in pain just as I reach them.
I slam the barrel of my gun into the back of his head and he releases her and turns on me. His hand goes for the gun at his waist, but mine is already out and from the look on my face he knows he’s seconds away from dying. Natalia is crying, tears pouring freely down her cheeks.
“Come,” I say, and gesture for her to move away from him.
She comes to my side automatically, pressing herself against my back.
“I should kill you where you stand,” I growl at him.
He’s glaring at me, his hand still itching to go for his gun. I almost want him to. It would certainly make things easier. But this isn’t the time or the place for death. Natalia is fragile, she’s just seen her dead father, and this hospital doesn’t need more dead bodies than it already has.
“Go on then,” he taunts, his neck corded with barely contained rage. “If you think you’re man enough to do it.”
“I think we both know now that I’m man enough,” I say with barely contained rage.
His face, if possible, turns even redder with rage as he glances at Natalia. He doesn’t need to know that I’ve barely touched the girl yet. That I allowed my brothers to defile her, yet I’ve never even seen her naked. He makes the assumption all on his own and I allow his thoughts to run wild.
“Such a dirty whore,” he seethes.
I click off the safety and his gaze comes back to me. “You don’t look at her, Alfonso. You don’t even think about her.”
“Or what?” he yells.
Angelo has come and joined me, and I see from my peripheral vision that he has his gun aimed at Alfonso too.
“Your time is coming, mark my words,” I say between ragged, angry breaths. “But not today…not like this.”
Alfonso takes one last look at Natalia, and there’s no denying the longing he still has for her. The jealousy he feels that I have her. “I’ll be back to collect what’s mine,” he says to me, and then turns and leaves.
I want nothing more than to shoot him in the back of the head as he walks away and damn the consequences, but I hold my temper. His time is soon, and I’ll take great joy in his death.
When he’s gone, I turn back to Natalia, seeing the blood on her lips from where he kissed her so hard that her lip has split. I put my gun away and reach down, scooping her up in my arms easily and then I march back up the stairs with Angelo close behind. She leans her head against my chest, sobbing quietly against me.
“Where are your fathers’ men?” I ask as we pass Franks room.
“I don’t know,” she whispers between sobs.
I carry her all the way back to the limousine, even holding her on my lap once we’re back inside it. It’s only then that she mercifully stops crying. I don’t even know what’s making her cry anymore—her father’s death or what that bastard just did to her. All I know is that I’d do anything to make her stop. Hearing her in so much pain is fucking killing me.
I stroke her back gently all the way back to the house, kissing the top of her head gently. Once inside I carry her up to her room and place her on the bed. I unbutton my jacket and go to her bathroom and run her a bath before returning for her. She’s staring around her in amazement, gazing at the roses on every surface. I swallow apprehensively. I didn’t expect to be here to see her reaction, but now that I am, I pray that she’ll like it.
