Hot, red blood splattered Melina’s face.
Her captor’s grip on her loosened and she quickly moved in the direction of her husband. Mac hadn’t even looked at her. Melina turned. James Maccari Sr. lay eagle sprawled on the ground. A bullet hole between the eyes oozed blood.
The bastard was dead.
Mac had killed his own father.
Melina faced her husband and found him looking at her.
“Mac?” she said hesitantly.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner, doll. I’m so sorry.”
He put his gun into the side of his coat and reached for her. Hands still tied, Melina melted into her husband’s embrace and finally gave into the tears she’d been holding back.
“Oh, Mac,” she sobbed.
“Shh. It’s over.”
Melina stopped crying long enough to look up at her husband.
She didn’t like what she saw.
“It’s not really over, is it? This is just the beginning.”
Mac swallowed hard. “Yeah. We’re just getting started.”
Mac was, once again, sitting at his wife’s side as she rested propped up in a hospital bed. He knew this time, there would be no early release for her. The broken rib and wrist was concerning, and would keep her in the bed for at least a few days.
She could use the rest, of course, but Mac wished it wasn’t because of this.
Worse, was the detectives standing at the end of his wife’s bed, slamming them with question after question. It was unrelenting, and Mac could see that his wife’s patience was slipping, though she was doing her best to deflect as much as she could.
Melina had escaped her captor.
She’d made a phone call using a payphone on the corner.
Mac found her.
No, she didn’t know who it was.
No, she couldn’t lead them back to where she had been taken, it all happened so fast.
Or, that was the story his wife was telling.
The detectives had yet to connect the burning warehouse in lower Brooklyn to the fact his wife had apparently been “picked up” just four blocks away. Mac didn’t offer the information, either.
“You’re not being very helpful to this investigation, Mrs. Maccari,” one of the detectives said.
Melina looked fucking exhausted.
She couldn’t take strong painkillers to help with the pain she was experiencing because of the pregnancy. She hadn’t been able to sleep because the questioning had been going on for hours. The detectives had a job to do, as far as that went, but so did Mac and Melina. That was only to protect one another, and secondly, Cosa Nostra.
“I think that’s about all we’ve got for you boys today,” Mac said, standing from his seat.
The beady-eyed, shorter detective turned his gaze on Mac. “We’re not finished—”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, we have—”
Mac reached over and hit the red button on the wall that would immediately call through to the hospital security. If he had his way, he’d walk the detectives out of the hospital room with a goddamn gun to their faces as he chewed their asses out for making this fucking night even worse for his wife.
He couldn’t do that.
They had too much attention on them as it was.
Melina wouldn’t like Mac going to jail.
Those were the things he repeated to himself as he patiently waited for a security guard to make his way down to the room. Once the man did finally show, one of the detectives scoffed at the sight of him.
“We have an active investigation—she’s a victim and a witness. You can’t impede that, Maccari,” he told Mac.
Mac just shrugged. “Then come back tomorrow. Give us a date and time to be at the precinct. Shit, my wife is a fucking great cook, we’ll have you over for supper once she’s back home. But you will not ask her one more thing tonight. Get out.”
It took another few minutes before the security guard was able to escort the detectives from the room. Mac wasted no time closing the door to the hospital room behind them. Then, he was back at Melina’s side and falling into the chair beside her bed.
With her gaze down, locked on her fidgeting hands, Melina seemed overwhelmed.
Mac understood that.
Silently, he found her hand with his own, holding tight and letting their fingers tangle together.
“I’m so tired,” Melina murmured.
Mac reached over to cup his wife’s bruised cheek, angry because she was hurt, guilty because he’d let it happen, and wishing he could take it all away. “I know, doll.”
“They’re not going to leave us alone.”
The police, she meant.
Mac understood what she didn’t say well enough.
“We’ll handle them when we need to. Right now, we’re going to focus on getting you better, then bringing you home, and always making you happy.”
He’d spoil her rotten, or as much as she would let him.
He’d make her happy, just to see her smile every day.
“This is just a bump in the road,” Mac told her. “We’ll get over it soon.”
Melina’s gaze drifted to the closed door. “What’s going to happen now?”