Page 67 of Mafia Baby

“Only what everyone else in organized crime has been dying to do for years,” Will snaps back. “Ridding all of us of the ‘charms’ of the Reaper is important work, and I will get all of the credit.”

“Everyone watching this tawdry performance should know what they are looking at,” Gianna snarls.

She rises to her feet, and takes two quick steps toward her brother to rip the mask off his face. “The Cobra is William Bianchi,” she says loudly. “To anyone who would like to take care of my family’s most embarrassing member, go right ahead. He’s dead to me and mine now.”

I watch Will’s face contort with anger as he glares at his sister. A shocking range of emotions sweep over his face as he tries to decide what to do. Gianna glares at him, her feet planted wide, looking for all the world like she doesn’t have an arm in a sling and broken ribs.

Will’s face stiffens into an expression of pure fury, and as we watch, he slowly pulls the dagger from his side. He gasps as it comes free, blood pouring out after it. He toys with it, then looks at his sister with a curious kind of affection in his gaze.

“You know, I always did love you, sister,” he says menacingly, his soft tone making the clear threat in his words terrifying to hear. “I didn’t know that you would betray me like this.”

“Takes one to know one, maybe,” she shoots back as she takes a step away from him.

I want to warn her that he probably has other weapons hidden on his body, but I just can’t form any words with my thick tongue.

I try to reach for her, and the tiny movement challenges my balance too much. I topple to the floor with a loud clunk, and Gianna looks down at me with concern.

That’s the opening that Will was waiting for, and he lunges for Gianna, my dagger pointed right at her chest. I see my own hand lift toward Gianna, as if I can protect her in some way.

I feel broken inside. She’s going to die because she loved me. Our baby is going to be cheated out of the chance to be born. I feel like a failure.

But Will doesn’t stab her. He stops dead with a cry, his mouth going wide with shock. I blink furiously, trying to hold onto consciousness long enough to figure out what is going on.

“You…” Will mumbles out, wavering on his feet. “How could you do this? How could you betray me like this?”

I narrow my eyes and watch as Gianna steps away from her brother, revealing the knife that he stabbed me with, lodged in his chest, dangerously close to his heart. She must have picked it up off the floor when she was kneeling next to me. Will never even knew that she had it in her grasp.

“No,” she says to him forcefully. “You betrayed all of us. You disgust me. I hope that you rot in hell for shaming our family.”

Will tries and fails to say something else, blood spurting from his mouth instead. Gianna takes another step away from him, her face going pale as she watches him struggling to speak.

“Goodbye, brother,” she whispers, just before Will pitches forward onto his face and goes still.

The world around me is spinning, and I can barely focus on Gianna as she races over to me and presses a hand onto the wound on my side. I’m dimly aware of her yelling at people who have come into the room, and I see Vince’s face swim into my line of sight.

“Nothing but a scratch,” Vince says to me in his booming voice. “We’ll get that fixed up in no time, m’ boy.”

“I love you,” Gianna is chanting over and over again as I’m lifted off the ground and carried down the hallway. “Don’t leave me. I love you.”

“I…” I try to speak, but I can’t get enough air into my lungs to form words. I want to say that I love her. I want to tell her that she’s the best thing that has ever happened to me. I want to tell her to let Vince help her raise the baby and remember me when I’m gone, but I can’t get any of the words out of my mouth. I close one eye to look at her beautiful, pale face as she hurries alongside me down the hallway.

I smile at her as I feel myself losing grip on my consciousness. If her face is the last thing that I see before I die, I can leave this earth a happy man.

“I…love...you,” I manage to say, just before I pass out.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Gianna

If we were in any other aging beach community, there probably wouldn’t be anyone on staff at the local hospital with the experience necessary to deal with Dom’s injuries. However, since this is like a tiny Chicago, the doctors at the hospital seem very familiar with his injuries and they rush into a private room to start attending to him.

They don’t let me stay with him, ushering me away to get X-rays and to check on the baby. I know that I need to let them work, but some irrational part of me thinks that if I can’t see Dom, he will die.

I am probably driving the nurses crazy who are working on me as I keep asking them every ten minutes or so if they have heard anything about Dom.

“He’s going into surgery,” one of them finally tells me as she comes back into my treatment room. They have stripped me of my smelly, bloody clothing and gotten me into a hospital gown. Someone has put me back into my sling.

“Is it bad?” I ask stupidly.

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