Page 273 of Cara & Gian: The Guzzi Duet

Cara had just set a sleeping Marcus into his wicker moses basket when she heard the familiar ding of the penthouse elevator ringing out in the hallway. She figured it was probably just Gian coming back, considering how long he had already been gone. Setting the wicker basket on the middle of her bed, where the baby was safe, she headed for the attached bathroom, slipping out of her robe as she went.

A hot, nearly-overfilled bubble bath was waiting.

After her morning, she deserved it.

“Cara?”

Shit.

Apparently, the bath was going to have to wait.

She had wrongly assumed the person coming into the penthouse was Gian. It sounded like Domenic. She quickly shrugged her robe back on and left the bedroom, tying the sash securely at her waist as she rounded the first corner leading out of the hallway.

“Cara, are you home?”

The buzzing of her cell phone echoed from the bedroom—she always put the ringer on silent when Marcus was sleeping. Surely, Dom could wait a second.

Cara nearly spun back around to go to the buzzing phone, but it stopped. Then, it started right back up again.

What the fuck?

“Yeah, just give me a second,” Cara called back.

“Gian here?”

“No, he had something come up this morning.” Cara was one step away from reentering her bedroom when Dom appeared at the end of the hallway. “I’ll be right out. Did something happen?”

Dom shrugged. “Nothing you need to worry about.”

Her heart stopped for a split second. “But something did?”

He didn’t answer. In the bedroom, her phone continued buzzing away. Persistent and wanting her attention, clearly.

“Let me grab my phone,” Cara said to Dom, “before it wakes up the baby.”

Dom’s strange, cold expression didn’t change a bit, but he waved her off anyway. Cara didn’t think it was entirely odd, considering Gian’s brother was one of the few people she hadn’t gotten close enough to that she considered him a friend of sorts. The man was always respectful and polite, but he didn’t go out of his way to be friendly with her at all.

She hadn’t minded. She understood some people—some of Gian’s men or family—wouldn’t be comfortable with her or her relationship.

Cara turned her back to Dom and headed into the bedroom, only to realize that was probably the biggest mistake of her life. She hadn’t even taken a single step inside the room, before Dom was suddenly behind her. For such a big man, Cara barely heard him make a sound.

He had a fistful of her hair and was dragging her to the floor in an instant. The pain that radiated through her scalp and down her spine shot through her nervous system like a thousand needles. Dom didn’t seem to mind her first struggle, easily overpowering Cara with his size, forcing her to her back, and then smashing her head into the floor.

Her tears were already starting to form in her pain and confusion. Those emotions were nothing compared to her fear. She had done nothing to Dom, nothing to justify his fists raining down on her body, or his mocking laughter as she begged for him to stop.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Don’t talk,” he snarled.

Why?

What?

While Cara had never felt close to Dom, or even friendly with him, the man above her now was not one she had ever seen before. It was like his entire face had changed, his expression—nearly dead looking—was one of a monster.

It was as though he wasn’t seeing her at all. It was as though his eyes weren’t looking at the mother of his nephew, or a woman who had never spoken badly about him or any of his family. He didn’t care who she was, because she was just something to deal with.

Something to dispose of.