Page 112 of Entangled

Gabriel took his drink, and swallowed it down without so much as a flinch before he said, “I trusted you, Elena.”

The man didn’t even look at his daughter when he spoke to her.

“You should have known better than to trust a snake you raised,” Gian told his father-in-law. “She learned from the very best, didn’t she, Gabriel?”

“Elena.”

Elena didn’t respond, but she did do as Gian had previously told her. She moved toward him, readying to leave the room so that she wouldn’t see what happened, or what came next.

“You could at least apologize to me, Elena!” Gabriel shouted at his daughter’s back. “After everything I did for you!”

“Why should I apologize, Daddy? You never apologized for making me this way.”

Gian waited until he heard the footsteps of his wife retreat to the second level of the wing, and then he pulled the trigger. He fired off three more shots, one with each step he took before he was standing over the dead body of Gabriel.

Just to make sure.

“Cazzo, Gian!”

Gian turned fast on his heel at the sound of his brother’s voice. Dom stood in the entryway, his gaze darting between his brother and the body on the floor. “What in the hell are you doing here?”

He hadn’t called for Dom. He hadn’t even seen his brother before he left the hospital.

“I … I thought—” Dom’s words cut off as his gaze cut to the side, looking at something down the hall before going right back to Gian. “Stephan said you had to handle something at the mansion, because of what happened to Cara and the baby. He didn’t explain more.”

“And what, you decided to follow behind me?”

“I thought you might need help.”

Gian softened his stance a bit. Things had not been good with his brother for a long while. Longer than he was willing to admit. From the day in the jail all those months ago when Gian had needed to put Dom in his place, there had been a heathy distance between the two. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. His brother became a better made man for it, a decent consigliere to his boss. Yet, the bond of what had been—between them as brothers—was seriously strained.

“If you want to help,” Gian said, tipping his head toward the body on the floor, “then an extra pair of hands tonight would be great.”

“Gabriel attacked Cara?”

“He did it. The bitch upstairs helped him along into it, but not much can be done for her.”

That was all Gian was going to say about it.

Dom could fill in the blanks.

“I’ll help,” Dom said quickly. “Just tell me where to start.”

“Find the bleach.”

“There was something else, too.”

“What’s that?” Gian asked, tucking away his gun.

“Chris didn’t make it through surgery. They put him on life support when his brain function failed.”

Well, fuck.

It was the pain Cara felt that woke her. It wasn’t deep, or even sharp. Instead, it was a pulse skimming her nerves, being chased away by something cold in her veins.

The beep of a monitor had Cara turning her head to find the unusual sound. An IV pole with a morphine drip, and another for what looked like antibiotics, it seemed. She lifted her hand to find the tubes attached there.

Her other hand?