Helping Mr. Gang Leader . Chapter 108: Maddox .“Gia!”Gianna was jarred away from her conversation with Rio as Giovanni nearly barreled into her side, exclaiming, “This party is awesome!”“You just like it because of the food,” Gianna accused, but she gave Giovanni a playful nudge to the shoulder. “Go ahead and eat as much as you want. I hear that the person who’s supposed to be looking after your eating habits hasn’t been doing a good job.”Giovanni made a surprised squeak, damaged eyebrows going high. Rio scoffed.With the speeches over the floor was quickly becoming a small dancing area, music playing softly. It was a sure sign that the night was starting to conclude.Giovanni dashed back to the food table and Gianna turned to Rio, asking, “Do you want to dance?” She would have loved if Dante had been able to come. Truthfully, Gianna was a bit desperate to finally be able to show off the person who held her heart. But Dante had been extra busy with Axel lately, and she was tryi
Helping Mr. Gang Leader.Chapter 109: crying for the rest of my life .Maddox was in the apartment.Maddox was in a personal, private space that was supposed to be safe. And if he’d gotten past the men standing guard outside …Wiggling her toes a little against the water, Gianna asked quietly, “What are you doing here?.”She didn’t want to wake Dante. She couldn’t. If Dante came out here to where Maddox was with a gun, it would only put him in danger. Gianna couldn’t risk that. She wouldn’t.“It’s all gone,” Maddox eased out, moving forward fully into the light, gun raised to Gianna’s chest level. “It’s gone and it’s your fault.”“My fault?” Gianna questioned. She shook her head a little. “No. I …”“Clyde,” Maddox said morosely, more like a sad wail than anything else. “Clyde. He’s gone.”Gianna took that as confirmation that Clyde was likely dead.“I didn’t kill him,” Gianna said evenly.Maddox looked … worrisome. From where Gianna was standing she could see that Maddox’s eyes wer
Helping Mr. Gang Leader .Epilogue: Time to start living .If six months ago, when Gianna had been worried that her father would pull funding for the clinic, and that they’d have to close their doors to an ailing public who needed them, anyone had told Gianna that not only would her clinic be surviving, but also thriving and expanding, she would have laughed and then likely wept.But with the summer heat beating down outside, Angelo sending post cards regularly, Harry a fulltime practitioner at the clinic, and full community support, the clinic was now officially relocated to a building that was three times its original size.It was a surreal moment for Gianna, walking through the front doors of the new clinic that was set to open in less than two days, looking around at what her hard work and dedication had finally landed her.Infinite being flushed out of the area, regardless of how it had happened and the part Gianna felt she played in it, was the best thing that could have happe
Helping Mr. Gang Leader.Chapter 1:.On the day Gianna’s life changed drastically and irreparably, she endured a particularly painful luncheon with her father.Gianna, for the most part, considered herself to be a respectful and obedient daughter.She was, to the best of her ability, the perfect daughter.But her father was a particularly hard man to please, and nothing Gianna had ever done felt like enough.Gianna had an ulcer by sixteen, hair falling out by seventeen, and by eighteen she went away to college to save herself more than anything else.“—could have been something special. Wasted opportunity, that’s what you are.”Gianna tapped a finger gently against the condensation on her water glass.“--paying attention, Gianna?”She straightened up. “Yes, of course.”“Oh?” Her father asked, a gray eyebrow raised.“I believe you were lamenting on my poor career choices,” Gianna told him, a little too flippantly if the way her father’s eyes narrowed, meant anything.“Watch yourself,
Helping Mr. Gang Leader .Chapter 2: a brother's love. “Do you need an ambulance?” Giovanni demanded, and it certainly sounded like her brother.“Hurt?” Gianna managed to get out, but thankfully she was starting to feel a little better. Her chest wasn’t so tight and she didn’t feel as if she were seconds away from a heart attack. “You …hurt?” She could only see the blood on her baby brother’s face.“No,” Giovanni was quick to tell her, tugging her into a much more confident hug. “Gia, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t think this would happen. I didn’t think about your heart at all.”“Is she a doctor or not?” the man with a gun demanded.As Gianna steadied further, she saw Giovanni give a confident nod and say, “My sister is the best doctor I know. Get Cypher to one of the examination rooms and I’ll have Gia there in thirty seconds.”“He better be good,” The man with the gun said, but then he was darting away to follow orders.Gianna grabbed hard to Giovanni’s sleeve and demanded, “
Helping Mr. Gang Leader .Chapter 3: .Rio shouted, “I’m talking to you!”“Don’t snap at my sister like that!” Giovanni’s own voice rose.And then the new comer, whoever he was, interjected, “Stop fighting, all of you!”Gianna turned to Rio and looked him straight in the eyes. “Do you know why you have thirty seconds to get out of my operating room?”“Go ahead and tell me.”“Because,” Gianna said, muttering a thank you to Zeke when he deposited the tools at her side. “Because you’re the idiot who pointed a gun at me. You’re the idiot who, instead of asking nicely if I could save his friend’s life, demanded that I do so. Because I don’t like you. Because I don’t like violence. And because this is a clinic where I treat people and take care of them, and you are making it very difficult for me to want to do that. Now, your friend is laid out on my operating table, bleeding out from a gunshot wound. Do you want to stay here and be an ass, or do you want to leave now and let me work? Fif
Helping Mr. Gang Leader .Chapter 4: .Giovanni rushed out, “Gia! The police are here!”Gianna whipped off her bloodied gloves at once, giving a worried look down to Dante’s still body. “Figures they’d pick tonight to be the one time they make it here within an hour of an emergency.”Uncertainly, Giovanni asked, “What are we going to do?”There was a lot implied in that simple sentence. Gianna knew at one that whatever her brother was mixed up in, whoever Dante or Cypher was, it wasn’t good. And the police were a complication that could possibly endanger everyone.Gianna was certainly going to rip her brother a new one at the first chance she got, but she wasn’t going to let anyone else hurt him. She wasn’t going to let Giovanni be in danger, and she wasn’t going to expose him to the police.And then there was Rio to consider, with his gun. The clinic couldn’t afford a shootout, and Gianna couldn’t let anything happen on her watch that endangered people, including her patient on th
Helping Mr. Gang Leader.Chapter 5: . “Talk,” Gianna demanded, and she wasn’t going to let Giovanni go until she had all the answers.“You’re not going to like it,” Giovanni warned.Gianna told him plainly, “Somehow, I already figured that.”“Don’t you think instead we should talk about how you almost had a heart attack tonight?”Gianna narrowed her eyes at her brother. “You’re attempting to distract me.”But then she wasn’t so sure, because Giovanni looked absolutely serious and worried as he insisted, “Oh, we can talk about all the things you want to know in a second. I’m fully prepared for that lecture, I have readied myself. But Gia, you almost … it looked like …”“Your friend,” Gianna said tersely, “the one with the gun, he startled me.”“We almost lost someone we’d do anything for.”Gianna sighed. There was never an excuse for bringing a weapon into a house of healing. But instead of fighting the matter, she told her brother, “I can tell all of you care very much for each ot