He’d snapped viciously at Evangeline as she’d lain in a pool of blood. He’d been so ridiculous, as if his anger would somehow make the terror go away. It was that feeling of helplessness. Feeling. Frozen sometimes was better. He knew he was never going to get the sight of her face covered in blood from his mind, not until the day he died. And it would never, ever, happen again.

10

JAKE Bannaconni had a tremendous amount of pull at the hospital. The men came together around a large table in a conference room. They left guards at Emma’s room and also the surgery entrance just in case a hit was planned against the women or Mitya. Timur and Gorya joined them, and they didn’t look happy.

“The alarm above the door and over the sidewalk outside had been tampered with. The bell inside the shop had also been tampered with. The lock had been systematically shaved until it didn’t work. That had to be done over a day or two or Evangeline would have noticed.”

“The cleaning crew?” Alonzo asked.

Timur shook his head. “It’s a crew the Arnotto family used for years. Same people. I doubt that it’s any of them.”

“Not my men from Borneo,” Drake said. “I’ve known most of them since I was a child and they would have no reason to betray us. Nor would any of them have time to build a relationship with another crime family.”

Alonzo sighed. “It isn’t Mitya or Sevastyan. They’ve been with Timur and Gorya for the last few years. Had they wanted to kill me they certainly had many opportunities.”

There was a small silence. Twice Elijah started to say something and then backed off. He ended by just shaking his head.

“Who put out the hit?” Joshua asked.

“The shooters are from out of town. They belong to a biker club from back East,” Elijah said. “It’s known the club has done hits for the Chicago mob.”

Alonzo kept his face expressionless. He didn’t make the mistake of glancing at Timur, even knowing his brother had to be as relieved as he was. In the back of his mind, he always had to remember that his uncles would someday track him down. If there had been a connection to the Russian mob, they would know that they’d been found. He wouldn’t run, but he would have taken the fight to them in order to better protect Evangeline.

“Any one of the bosses could use the club to carry out the hit,” Drake said.

“We need to look closely at Amodeo,” Elijah said. “He has an inflated ego, demands respect when it isn’t earned and has a huge sense of entitlement. Alonzo stepped all over his pride. I made him apologize and then we turned him down. I’d say he would believe he had every reason to order a hit.”