Never Cross the Mafia Don's Hidden Lover novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Bloat

Viola fakes a dog emergency to get Trent out of the clinic while Elio waits behind the kennel sheet, and Elio's men arrive to warn that Trent will be back before sunrise.

Elio Massaro tried to get off my table.

I put one hand flat on his good shoulder and pushed him back down.

"You've got fourteen stitches in you. Lie still."

"Where's my gun?"

Dina picked it up off the instrument tray with two fingers.

"Here. Don't shoot anybody in my surgery suite. I just mopped."

Outside, a car door slammed.

The clock over the sink said 2:51.

My scrubs were over my slip, and the slip was stiff with his blood.

"Dina. The kennel sheet."

She understood before I finished.

The kennel run in back had a canvas sheet we pulled across it at night so the dogs would settle.

We got Elio into a wheeled chair and rolled him behind it, into the empty run beside Biscuit.

Biscuit put his huge gray head through the bars and sniffed the stranger's ear.

Elio held the gun in his lap and looked up at me.

"If he comes back here, I'll have to use this."

"If you shoot a cop in my kennel, I'll take the bullet out and put it back in."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth.

The bell over the front door rang.

I stripped off my gloves and threw them in the red bin.

Then I walked out to the waiting room in my scrubs, with my hair still pinned up for a wedding.

Trent stood under the fluorescent light with rain on his shoulders.

He'd lost his tuxedo jacket somewhere.

"Vi." He crossed the room in three steps and pulled me against him. "Jesus. You scared me to death."

I made myself put my arms around him.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"You left the suite. On our wedding night. Without a word."

"Biscuit bloated," I said. "Dina called. His stomach was twisting. He'd have been dead in an hour."

Behind the kennel sheet, as if he'd been paid, Biscuit let out a long, miserable groan.

Trent looked toward the sound.

"The Great Dane?"

"He's a hundred and sixty pounds, Trent. I couldn't leave it to Dina."

Trent smiled at me, the warm, easy smile that had made me say yes on a pier a year ago.

"You're a saint, Vi. You know that?"

He kissed my forehead.

His hands were cold.

"There was a shooting at the hotel," he said. "Upstairs from us. And somebody cracked our balcony door. The manager says it was the storm."

"The storm," I said.

"I told them that's what it was." He pushed a loose pin back into my hair. "Come back with me. We've still got the suite till noon."

"I can't leave him yet. I need to watch his stomach for a few hours."

He didn't answer right away.

His thumb kept moving on my cheek.

Then I saw his cuff.

The white shirt had a thin brown line along the seam at his wrist.

I've cleaned blood out of a thousand coats.

I knew exactly what it was.

His hand slid down from my cheek to the back of my neck.

It stayed there.

"You've got blood on your neck," he said softly.

"It's a dog's."

He looked past me at the canvas sheet.

"Can I see him?"

"He's sedated. If you wake him up he'll thrash and the tube comes out."

Biscuit groaned again, perfectly on cue.

Trent looked at the sheet for a long moment.

His blue eyes were completely flat.

I had never seen them aimed at me before.

"Where'd you go after you got out of the shower?"

"Here."

"You took the van."

"I always take the van."

"In your slip."

"In my coat."

He smiled again, but it stopped below his eyes.

"My wife," he said. "Married six hours and already lying to me about a dog."

I made my voice bored.

"Go back to the hotel, Trent. I'll come home tomorrow. I'm too tired to fight on our wedding night."

He took my left hand and turned my ring with his thumb, slowly, one full circle.

"Tomorrow, then."

At the door, he looked back once at the kennel sheet.

I watched through the blinds until his taillights turned onto Mayfield Road.

Then my legs gave out and I sat down on the waiting room floor.

Dina sat down next to me.

"You married a man who shoots people at his own wedding."

"I know, Dina."

She took my hand and held it so hard my ring cut into her palm.

Neither of us let go.

When I went back to the kennel run, Elio had the gun on his knee and his phone to his ear.

I didn't know where he'd got the phone until Dina patted her empty scrubs pocket and swore.

"Ten minutes," Elio said into it, and hung up.

"Who did you call?"

"My driver."

"From my best friend's phone."

"Mine's in a planter on the seventeenth floor."

Ten minutes later, a black car rolled into the lot with its lights off.

A thick-set man with a shaved gray head and a gray mustache came in with two younger men.

The older one took one look at Elio in the wheelchair and closed his eyes for a second.

"Tino," Elio said.

Tino sneezed.

Pope had jumped onto the front desk to look at him.

Tino looked at the three-legged cat.

Elio was watching the window where Trent's headlights had gone.

"He saw your face, Doctor," he said quietly. "He saw your hands. He'll be back before sunrise, and he won't knock."

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