Page 53 of Total Obsession

Before I even had the mind to call my guy off, a shot rang out around us. The scene that followed was one of absolute and utter chaos. We all watched the daughter fall to the floor, blood spilling out of her right arm. Abelardo pulled a gun, thinking it was Giovanni who had somehow shot his daughter.

I lunged for Giovanni, trying to push him out of the way. Another shot rang out, which was bad. One shot might go unnoticed, but not two in succession.

"Policia!" Abelardo shouted and all three of us turned to look at the patrol car that drove by at the very worst of times.

In absolute cowardice, Abelardo got up and ran, leaving his injured daughter to bleed out on the floor. Giovanni shoved me off, ran over to the girl who was all but hyperventilating on the floor, picked her up, and ran to the car that was waiting for him.

"On the roof!" I heard one of the cops shout. I turned to look up and saw Primo standing on the rooftop where I'd positioned my own guy.

"Bastard," I cursed under my breath, suddenly realizing what was going on. Primo had never intended to show. He'd intended to off his brother, which he'd almost been successful in doing.

With the cops distracted, I hurdled myself toward Giovanni's car and managed to get inside the passenger side door.

"Get the fuck out!" he shouted at me. I turned around and watched him apply pressure to the girl's wound.

"Here," I said, handing a business card to the driver, who wasn't waiting for further instruction but was pulling away from the area at rapid speed. "Drive to this location."

"Don't you fucking dare do what he says," Giovanni all but spat.

"Do you want her to die?" I roared back at him. "We're going to a doctor in the area that is discrete."

Giovanni was silent after that, the only sound in the car the distant sirens that seemed to get further and further away and the labored breathing of the girl in the back seat.

"Drop me off over there," I said, pointing to a pull-off area when we'd gotten sufficiently far enough from the scene.

"Like hell, you're just going to leave me to deal with this mess," Giovanni said.

I sighed. "It's better if we're not seen together," I replied.

"Just get the fuck out," he said to me.

The driver slowed down the car, and I opened the door.

"I considered you a brother at one point," he said to me. "I'll never make that same mistake again."

I closed the door, his words hanging thick in the air between us. I watched the car drive off into the distance. I pulled out my phone and arranged for a car to arrive at my location to take me back to the house.

The car arrived within five minutes. The drive was silent, as it always was with my drivers. I scanned the news reports on my phone.

"Shooting in Miami. Police looking for suspects."

I grimaced as I read the article. Abelardo had been apprehended, which made sense. Why that man thought he could outrun the cops was beyond me. Primo had also been identified as a suspect, likely because Abelardo had already spilled everything in the hopes of getting some leeway.

Everyone on the outside thought that there was some code on the inside, but that was bullshit. People were rats, especially when it came to other families.

The only reason that my or Giovanni's name wasn't in the papers was because Abelardo didn't know them. The last thing that the Maldonado family needed right now was another one of its members in jail, but that looked to be about where things were headed.

I winced as I started looking at the pictures of the scene that the police had been able to grab from their dashboard camera. Naturally, I'd done a sweep of the area to make sure that there were no active security cameras, but I couldn't help the ones that were brought to the scene.

They managed to get a very blurry shot of me. You could make out my suit, but not much else. I needed to ditch these clothes and fast. Just ten minutes until I reached the house.

I also needed to calm myself down. If I walked in frantic and agitated, Zoey was absolutely going to suspect something. That on the heels of her little stunt last night when she listened in on my conversation was not going to bode well for her sticking around.

And for some reason, Ineededher to stick around.

Had any other woman tried to pull what she had pulled on me last night, I would have dealt with it in a potentially permanent way and fast. However, when Zoey did it, I brushed it off, and I certainly went in the opposite direction in terms of what occurred afterward.

Zoey had this effect on me.