Tears blinded him but he had to keep pressure on the wound. “Who are you? Why have you done this? What’d she ever do to you?” He was babbling, losing his cool and his training, but he’d never held the woman of his dreams dying in his arms before and he lost all sense of objectivity. He was at a disadvantage. He could only hope that Kane could get to him before the man blew his head off, too.
“The entire Abelli line deserves to die for being the thieving liars they all are,” the man said with a thick Italian accent. “Her father stole my father’s work and passed it off as his own. Then pushed my father out of the company without so much as a penny for his vision. We lived in poverty while Enzo’s star rose. Enzo Abelli is a thief and a crook. His blood will run with his daughter’s but first, he must know loss.” He cocked the gun and leveled it at Rian with a dispassionate stare. “Goodbye, Mr. Dalton.”
A second shot rang out but when Rian expected to feel the rip of a bullet tearing through his flesh, the Italian dropped to the ground in a heap. Rian whipped his gaze around, shocked to see Warren with his smoking shotgun.
“Son of a bitch comes onto my land and starts shooting up the people I love? Not happening on my watch! Adeline, call 911, the girl’s been hit.”
Rian sagged with relief at not being dead but the feeling was short-lived as CoCo was still leaking like a sieve and growing paler by the minute. Good God, she was going to die in his arms. He saw Kane run out and do a quick perimeter search to make sure the Italian had been working alone.
Kane jogged over to Rian, concern in his eyes. “She’s going to make it, buddy,” he promised, though his eyes told another story.
Tears blinded Rian as he tried to keep CoCo from bleeding out, but there was so much blood. A gut shot... It was usually a game ender. “I don’t know where he came from. He just popped out of his car and shot her. I wasn’t paying attention. It’s my fault. It’s my fault!”
“Stop it!” Kane said sternly, getting his attention. “We don’t have details and in the absence of details we deal in facts. What we know is that he’s dead and he’s not going to hurt anyone else. Now we have to focus on CoCo.”
Rian jerked a nod and swallowed, getting a hold of himself. The sound of ambulance sirens splitting the air sent a wave of shaky relief through him. Kane waved the ambulance over and it stopped short of Rian and CoCo in a puff of dust as the sheriff deputies rolled in behind the ambulance. It was a three-ring circus but Rian only cared about CoCo.
Why’d he let her go off by herself into the barn? Why’d he go and do something as stupid as saying he wanted to end things? If he’d just kept his mouth shut, they would’ve been in the bedroom still, and maybe they would’ve seen the strange Italian pull up and they could’ve stopped him. Too many questions without answers. He climbed into the ambulance with CoCo, refusing to leave her. He didn’t care who the man was at the moment. He just wanted to make sure CoCo was going to be okay. They’d find the answers to everything else later.
Fight, baby. Fight.
23
COCO HAD NEVER truly believed in miracles until she’d somehow woken in a hospital, bandaged and alive after a twelve-hour surgery to put her guts back together. She wasn’t dead and that in itself, according to her doctor, was a damn miracle.
Being shot in the stomach was pretty much going to kill most people, unless the bullet somehow, by the grace of God, missed every vital organ and only nicked her liver on its way out. Yeah, talk about miracles.
Pain bloomed in her body as she tried shifting in bed, nearly blacking out from the intensity of the agony. Okay, so surviving a gut shot wasn’t all ice cream and rainbows. The pain would be enough to make her scream if it weren’t for that lovely morphine drip that came whenever she pushed a button. Today was the first day she’d felt up to talking to anyone and everyone wanted a little time at her bedside.
She had so many questions but she wasn’t sure if she was up to the answers. Even though she’d been losing consciousness, she’d heard what that man had said. Her father? A crook? What did that mean?