Chapter 7 - When I almost lost her

On my way to the hospital, my mind was all over the place going from one bad thought to the other as my Maserati flew by the other cars on the road. What if someone actually just walked through my security and into my house like everyone else did and attacked Mia? I was going to kill Carlo who was supposed to be in charge of today's shift. And the fucking idiot who worked the gate is also a dead man. In fact anyone of my men who was not doing their jobs needed to be dealt with. This has gone on for long enough. It is high time that they realise who signs their pay checks. Too many times before did I let them go when listening to my brother and my mother, but now it needs to change. The circumstances changed! Mia and Madelain was now living with me. They needed to be kept safe.

If someone had laid their hands on her because of me I would most probably put a fucking bullet through my own head as well, but I am going to rip their hearts out first. I will torture every part of their family until their whole generation has ceased to exist. No one remotely related to them will walk this earth when I was done.

No one can just pass the security. The rational part of my brain reminded me, but my irrational, monstrous blood pumping organ wouldn't budge.

Something bad happened on my property, in my house and it wasn't by my hands. It was by the hands of someone else. That someone else who should be counting the last seconds of their miserable life.

Why the fuck haven't I heard anything from my men? I hit the dial button on the stereo and it almost immediately started to ring to no avail. "Fucking idiots!" I slam my fist onto the steering wheel causing the horn to attract unwanted attention. Goddammit. I flatten the pedal at the sole of my feet, increasing the revs on the clock all the while working the motor faster to increase the speed.

"Where is she?" I question Martino who is standing at the back of the black Urus parked in the hospital's parking lot when my car comes to a halt, still idling. I throw the keys at him which he catches in the air.

"Second floor, room three. The second door on the right." He yells as I make a run for the entrance of Lake Side med Hospital.

Deciding against waiting for the elevator, I run up the stairs taking two steps at a time. Trying to outrun the sickening thoughts in my head, because in my type of life-style there is only worst.

"Thank god you are here." Mia gasps the moment I enter the door crashing into me. Her arms flying over my shoulders and around my neck, her lightweight pressing against my torso. My body relaxed for a second taking her in, realising that she was fine. Mia was alive and unharmed. That was all I could ask for. I open and close my eyes trying to rid of the burning pictures that imbedded my eyes. I quickly snake my arms around her back to keep her from collapsing to the floor as her body lose balance. "I didn't know what to do..." She starts to cry into my chest. "There was so much blood and I... I knew they weren't going to..." She gasps for air. "I didn't mean to... I just... God, it was awful." She sneered through sobs and pants.

My heart felt a little lighter at her touch, but her words had me worried. Mia seemed stressed and terrified. I didn't want her to feel like this when she was around me and it seems that the harder I tried not to scare her, I only did the opposite. She was scared and panicked, but apologizing at the same time.

"What did you do?" I grab both her upper arms in my hands tightly as I pulled her away from me so I could look at her. Her eyes were red and swollen, dark stains ran across her cheeks from too much crying and her hair was a beautiful mess around her head. Blood covered her hands, her chin her clothes. She looked broken as those dark almost black eyes stared at me. "What the fuck did you do?" I repeat my question giving her a little shake, my voice laced with anger. Not directed at her, but at the thought of anyone hurting her. She seemed fine, where was the blood coming from. What did she do? This perfect, hard boiled women that I am constantly turning into her worst part.

"I am so sorry." Her red lips mouthed with no sound coming out. I wasn't going to get anywhere with her so I pushed her away from me turning to the only other conscious person in the room. Carlo.

"You better fucking start talking." I stomp over towards him. "What the fuck happened?"

"It was a suicide boss." He quickly exclaims just before I could put my hands on him. His words made my body come to a halt. Suicide? What the fuck was he talking about? Who tried to kill themselves... My thoughts blurred at the realisation. But why? She seemed so much more composed and at ease with the situation. She was used to much worse circumstances than living with me.

"I mean she tried to commit suicide, but Mia caught her just in time." He starts to collaborate when he realizes that I wasn't going to rip him into pieces. Then why the fuck was Mia apologizing? "Mia came running out the back door with Madelaine in her arms."

"And you decided that the best thing to do was bring her here?" To a fucking public hospital where hundreds of people walked the floors. This is going to be great for the tabloids. 'Succesful businessman caught keeping two girls hostage.' I could almost read the headline myself. "Instead of calling Doctor Dainelli?"

"Everything happened so fast." His eyes dart between me and Mia. Why was he looking at her? Should she confirm his story? I need my men to be honest and trustworthy and if it wasn't for us being in a fucking public hospital surrounded with a lot of sick bystanders I might have taken out my gun and shot him right between his lying eyes.

"How is she?" I turn to Mia still standing in the same spot I left her in, her arms crossing her chest like she was hugging herself. She didn't answer, she just stood there staring at me through wide eyes. Fuck it. I push past her to find a doctor, but as soon as I reach the door it flies open revealing a familiar face.

"Ben? I thought this sounded like a Damian case, although I was a bit confused when I heard it was a fifteen year old?" Doctor Sofia Dainelli frowns.

"I will explain later. How is she?"

"She is doing good for now, but we can't tell for sure before she wakes up. If they brought her in five minutes later the outcome would have been far worse. She lost a lot of blood which caused hypotension. We gave her blood, but there is no telling if there is any damage to her brain. We also need to observe the cuts on her arms for infection."

"But she is doing good?"

"So far it looks like it."

"Thank you, Sofia." I nod as she leaves the room giving us some privacy. I turn to Mia who is still frozen to the spot. "Hey," I whisper as I tuck a lost curl behind her ear. "Madelaine is going to be fine." I wasn't sure if I was trying to soothe Mia or myself or both. "Let's go home." I wrap my arm around her shoulder, but she doesn't move. "We will just go clean up and then we can come back." I offer but still no movement.

I was never good at begging and not at all used to someone ignoring my orders so I took another approach. The only one I knew. I took both my hands and placed them softly on her wet cheeks lifting her head up so that I could look directly into her eyes before I whispered the next words for only her to hear. "If you don't come with me willingly I will be forced to knock you out and carry you over my shoulder."

"You strangled me?" This was the first words Mia uttered as she entered the kitchen where I was seated, her hand touching the skin around her neck. I took a shower and released my feet from the agony of Tomasso's terrible shoes before I came to the kitchen and poured myself a cup of coffee waiting for Mia to finish up.

"I didn't strangle you," I muttered looking at her face about to start crying again. "It is called a choke-out. I basically tricked your brain into thinking that your blood pressure has risen just to realize that it didn't and that made you pass out. If I didn't know what I was doing I wouldn't have done it."

"So you choked me?" Nothing I was going to say was going to make this better.

"Yes. You didn't do as I said and that led to doing what I promised I would if you didn't listen." A flash of anger flickered in her eyes so fast that if I wasn't paying enough attention I would have missed it. "Make yourself a cup of coffee and then you can tell me what happened." This time she did as she was told without any question.

"After you left I finished cleaning up the kitchen and went to take a shower, but it was getting late and Madelaine was still in her room so I went to check on her. She wasn't in her room and that was when I saw that her bathroom door was shut." Mia takes a sip of her coffee and places the mug on to the counter, her hands started to shake.

"I knocked on the door, but she didn't answer so I tried opening it, but it was locked from the inside. I then expected that something was wrong so I took the nearest object, which was a chair that stood next to the door, and I started to bang it against the door as hard as I could. Carlo must have heard the noise because shortly thereafter he came running onto the room. He broke the door down and that was when I saw her." Her eyes start to fog up, but she fought hard against the tears.

"I screamed for him to take her to the hospital, but he wouldn't and that was when I realized that I had to do something." She stopped talking as her teeth lashes onto her bottom lip. I could see that she was scared to tell me what she did just like earlier in the hospital.

"You can tell me." My voice came out softer than intended. "I promise I won't get mad." I promise her, but her eyes told me that she didn't believe me so I had to show her. I slowly move my hand to my waist unlocking the little clip that kept my gun in place. "I am going to remove it," I warn as her eyes follow my hand as I slowly withdraw the gun and pull the slide back with my other hand. "I am going to hand this over to you now, but remember it is loaded." She nods as she extended both her hands. "Be careful of the trigger." I remind her as her fingers close around the piece of steel. "If you pull the trigger now I will be a dead man." Again she nods. I help her to point the gun at me placing her one hand around the grip safety and stock before I slide her forefinger straight against the slide stop. Then I move her other hand to support its twin.

"Now you can tell me and if it even remotely looks like I am going to hurt you, you can pull the trigger." I really needed to stop letting Mia play Russian roulette with my life. The last time I gave her a gun she almost killed me.

She pushes the gun against my chest. "If I pull the trigger now you will die..." I wasn't sure if she was telling me or asking me, but I answered anyway.

"Yes."

"Okay..." She breathed as she kept the gun in that position that felt like hours, probably contemplating if she was going to shoot me when suddenly she pulled the gun away from me and placed it onto the counter next to her mug like the steel burned her. "I know that I am not allowed to snoop around or that I am not allowed to enter your office unless you requested me." That was part of the rules, yes. "But I just thought that maybe I would learn more about you..." She pauses before rephrasing. "About me and Madelaine's fate if I could just see what you did for a living. That was when I saw the gun in your desk drawer." Her eyes search my face for a hint of anger, but I fought against it with every fiber in my being. I wasn't going to get mad I promised her and what kind of man would I be if I broke my word?

"When did this happen?" I question her keeping my voice low and my anger at bay.

"After you left before I took a shower." She winched like I was going to hit her or something, but I kept still watching her come to the realization that I wasn't going to do anything. "Carlo has the gun now." She breathes.

"Why?"

"Because he refused to take Madelaine to the hospital so I pointed it at his head." She smiles at the memory like she was now proud of her decision. A smile exactly like the smile on her phone that night at the hotel. This was the first time she smiled like that with me and I would never admit this out loud, but I liked it.

"So my men couldn't disarm you?"

"Actually they didn't try. I was really going to shoot Carlo." She informs me as her confidence returns. "The thing I don't get was why they didn't just shoot me?' Her eyes narrow as she waits for me to answer, but continues when I don't answer. I couldn't answer, because I didn't know. "They didn't even pull out their weapons." Strange.

"And all of that at the hospital was because you were scared that I would find out you were snooping around in my office?" I question brushing my fingers through my long hair.

"Have you met you? Besides, there might be a little more to it?" It sounded like a question. She was testing the waters to see if I was about to explode by now. I wasn't. For some unknown fucking reason, I was as calm as a crocodile on marijuana. I didn't care what she did as long as she keeps smiling like that. "I might have told them that I have hidden a note in your office accusing them of horrible things and threatened them with it if they shot me."

That was when I started laughing. Full out, on the top of my lungs laughter. It bubbled up from my stomach and rumbled through my throat letting loud sounds past my lips. "You are worse than me."

"They say if you can't beat them join them." She joined in my laughter, but the humor was gone as I soon as I saw pictures of her joining the mafia invaded my sight.

"We should go." I take my piece from the counter emptying the chamber and pushed it back into its place.

"Let me cut your hair?" She pouts, but I could see the regret as she cocks her head to the side.

"It is fine." I decline her offer.

"I can see that it is bothering you, besides how hard could it be?" She smiles.