Chapter 65 Chapter 65 - What Am I Going To Do With You?
Cedric's POV
The waiting room had emptied in under thirty seconds flat as everyone who had even a little self-preservation instinct ran for the hills as fast as their legs would take them.
The elderly man with the cat carrier was gone, and the couple with the Chihuahua was gone. Jenny the receptionist had disappeared so completely that Cedric suspected she'd crawled out through a ventilation shaft.
What remained was the ringing silence after gunfire, the smell of burnt plastic, and a very angry Gianni.
"What part," Gianni said, his voice dropping so low it was somehow more terrifying than a shout, "of we are not here looking for trouble do you not understand?"
Then his voice did become a shout, and it filled every corner of the clinic making Cedric cover his ears.
"Cosa cazzo stai pensando?!"
The pistol came down in a vicious arc and connected with the side of Dr Martinez's head again with a sickening crunching sound.
The vet went down hard, a streak of red painting down his temple, and hit the linoleum on his hands and knees, gasping with pain. A thin, pitiful sound escaped him, something between a sob and a plea, as he raised one shaking hand as if that might protect him.
"Madonna mia, you people," Gianni snarled, beginning to pace with the restless energy of a caged animal. "Figlio di puttana… do you think I came here for fun? Do you think this is how I spend my afternoons? Coglione."
Cedric winced. That had looked like it hurt. A lot.
Though honestly, and he felt more than a little guilty for thinking it, what exactly had Dr Martinez been expecting?
That Gianni Falcone's security detail were there for decoration? That whispering call the police to a trembling assistant while standing three feet away from the man in question was going to end well?
Still. The murder in Gianni's eyes was as real as anything. Cedric had learned to read that particular expression by now, and what it said was: I am calculating how much this will cost me versus how much satisfaction it will bring me, and the scales were tipping in a very bad direction.
He crossed the room, deciding now that Gianni had spent the last minute beating down on poor Dr Martinez, someone had to do something before he ended up dead at his workplace.
"Gianni." He kept his voice gentle, "Hey. Take it easy."
"Take it easy," Gianni repeated in contempt. "He was going to…"
"He was just scared." Cedric stepped closer, positioning himself just at Gianni's shoulder, next to his coiled, dangerous energy. "Please stop. Look at him. He's terrified. We walked in here with armed guards and you weren't exactly being polite. Anyone would…"
Gianni ignored Cedric, still fuming with righteous anger at being disrespected. He raised his boot, drawing it back to kick the shit out of the trembling, sobbing Dr. Martinez.
Without thinking, Cedric rolled his eyes, rose onto his toes and pressed a kiss to his cheek. "Please. For me."
It was soft, brief and barely even there at all, but it worked anyway, to Cedric's surprise.
Gianni went still, his boot still hovering a little in the air. His fury paused somewhere between intention and action, and Cedric watched something change in that hard jaw, the slight easing of tension around his eyes.
To Cedric, it was like watching a stick of dynamite get quietly pinched out.
After a long beat of stunned silence, Gianni crouched down slowly until he was eye level with the bleeding, trembling man on the floor.
"Look at me," he said quietly.
Dr Martinez looked up. His face was full of fear and blood and desperate, wordless pleading.
"The only reason you are still breathing," Gianni said, with a calm reasonable tone, "is because he asked me to spare you."
He didn't gesture toward Cedric because he didn't need to. "We came here to fix a dog. That is all. That is the only thing that was ever required of you."
He let that settle, driving the butt of his gun into the side of Dr. Martinez's head, watching as he bowed his head and whispered apology after apology. "Please, don't kill me. I have a wife and children. My family is… Please. I'm so sorry. Take whatever you want, just please don't kill me."
"But if you contact law enforcement, if you speak to a journalist, a neighbour, a priest in a confessional, I will find out." Gianni completely ignored the man's begging to continue with his ice-cold threat.
"I will burn this fucking place around your head. Do you hear me?"
Gianni cocked his gun, pressing it even tighter to the man's head with the safety off while Martinez nodded frantically.
Cedric watched with second-hand embarrassment as a dark patch slowly appeared on Dr. Martinez's pants. He'd pissed himself out of fear.
"I will pay a visit to that family of yours and make sure they watch as I rip you limb from fucking limb. And then, dottore, I will come for them. And there will be no Cedric to ask anything of me."
He straightened up and walked out, motioning for Cedric to follow after him.
Dr Martinez was a sobbing, shaking, bloodied mess, reeking of urine on the floor of his own clinic, grabbing at the side of his bleeding head and groaning in pain while Cedric looked down at him with pity.
The man had only been trying to do the right thing, in his way. It had just been a very, catastrophically stupid version of the right thing.
"I'm really sorry about…," Cedric said quietly, and followed Gianni out. "I didn't mean for this to… I'm sorry."
The convoy reassembled around them when they started to leave. Gianni opened the passenger door and Cedric got in, tucking the neon green chew toy onto the seat beside him.
He stared blankly at the partition in front of him, listening to the sound of the door closing, then the engine running, then the tinted glass sliding up to seal the world out.
Cedric lasted approximately forty-five seconds before he exploded.
"Gianni, what the fuck was that?"
Gianni looked over at him, eyebrows slightly raised, looking mildly confused. "Is that the thanks I get for saving your stray?"
"I mean… yes, thank you, genuinely, I mean that." Cedric pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose. "But you didn't have to beat him up and threaten his family, he was just afraid. Anyone would be afraid, you brought half an army into a veterinary waiting room…"
"That's not my problem."
"…carrying visible weapons…"
"Cedric."
"…and you wonder why a normal civilian…"
"He was going to call the police," Gianni said patiently, hoping he could make Cedric see reason.
"I would've handled that easily, but there would have been a scene. A confrontation, possibly a shooting, and your pleasant little family visit would have to be cancelled." He tilted his head slightly. "Would you have preferred that?"
Cedric opened his mouth to argue, but then he closed it.
"…No," he admitted.
"Good. Then we agree."
"We don't agree, I just…" Cedric exhaled. "What am I going to do with you?"
"I can think of a number of things I'd do with you," Gianni responded, his dark eyes glazing over with want as he slid a hand up Cedric's thigh. One second, they were both sitting separately, but before Cedric could even blink, Gianni lifted him very easily, and positioned him on his lap so he was straddling him.
Cedric's train of thought dissolved entirely with the sensation.
Whatever passive-aggressive clap back had been forming died somewhere between his brain and his mouth, replaced by a heat that crept up the back of his neck.
His misbehaving cock started to thicken when he realised just how close their bodies were, where both their erections met under very thin layers of fabric.
Now he couldn't get the imagery out of his mind, sucking Gianni off shotgun in a car like a horny teenager, swallowing his thick spunk down his throat and begging for more like his perfect little slut.
God, he missed car sex.
Wait! No! What about about poor Dr. Martinez getting mistreated?
"No, Gianni. I- I think you were being very rude today, and I don't like what you did to that man at all. I'm not going to reward your bad behaviour with sex, so if you don't mind, please let go of me." Cedric fumbled through his words, looking anywhere and everywhere except at the very hungry Gianni, fearing what he might do now that he had denied him again.
He tried to struggle and shift away from the bigger man's grasp, but he couldn't because Gianni's powerful hand didn't budge,
"I let you treat your rabies carrier," Gianni said, his voice dropping half a register, while he wrapped his other hand gently around Cedric's soft, pale neck. "Now it's your turn."
Cedric's pulse ticked fast as lightning, and he had to bite back an embarrassing whine of pleasure.
For someone who had spent so much energy despising this man, his body had apparently never gotten the memo.
"Your turn," Gianni continued, "to keep your end of our agreement." His dark eyes found Cedric's in the dim interior of the car, "Tell me what happened between you and Dante?"