“I won’t tell him anything.”
There was so much blood. His shirt was covered in it, and it was pouring down his stomach.
“You…you tell him when you get better.” I dug in his pocket, finding his phone, my fingers shaking as I tried to find someone to call.
Dimitri’s hand over mine stopped me. “Bella, they’re already coming,” he said, pulling me toward him. “Dino…followed us.”
“Dimitri …please don’t…”
“Couldn’t if I wanted to.” He quirked an eyebrow when Mateo reached for his chain, grabbing the crucifix, but I took it from him.
“It’s covered in blood,” I said, then gasped, wiping it clean on my shirt. “Look at this.”
Dimitri’s eyelids drooped when I held up the crucifix. It was bent in half, the Christ figure in the center missing and in its place was a slug from Alejandro’s gun.
Mateo leaned toward Dimitri, laying his head next to his. I felt my chest ache once again.
“Pop, pop,” the baby said, and Dimitri’s eyes went wide, a smile breaking out over his face.
“He didn’t…” He reached for Mateo, head shaking. “This one, Christ…” Twisting his head, he grabbed the crucifix. “Good luck, that’s what this kid is, Maggie…”
“And what does that make me then?”
“Baby,” he said, pulling my face toward his. “You’re…my everything.”
In the distance, there was the squeal of tires, then a bustle of slamming car doors. Dino and Ricky called Dimitri’s name and I heard their approach, tried to turn toward the sound, but Dimitri pulled my face back to him, his hand on my cheek. “I’m a selfish asshole and a greedy bastard. But I want you and the kid. Always. All the time. I’ll figure it out. I promise you I will. We’ll find a way to be safe and free from all this shit.”
“You said something about Liam Shane. Is he the one who wanted you dead?”
He nodded.
“Is he the only one?”
He shook his head.
“Then how can we be free?”
“We’ll be free because I’ll burn down the world to protect you both. No one matters more to me. No one.”
20
Smoke
Two weeks was too long to be in the hospital—since Maggie screamed at the doctors to get the one slug that had landed in my chest and not in the crucifix out of me.
The nurses came in at all hours to wake me up and check my vitals or wake me up to give me pain meds that would knock me out.
Made no damn sense.
The admin complained about my boys camping out at the door, but this was Cuoricino. They didn’t put up much of a fight, especially not when my Ma walked in with boxes of lasagna for the night shift and Pasticciotti tarts for the morning shift.
Still, the hell of it all was not getting enough time alone with Maggie or Mateo.
“He misses you. I can tell,” she promised, when Antonia snuck her into my ICU room, the day after surgery. She wasn’t family, the head nurse said. She couldn’t come in with my siblings and folks when I was done with surgery.
I’d been half out of my mind with meds, but still managed to catch what she said, grabbing her hand to bring it to my mouth.
“Dimitri…” She turned her face away from me then, hiding her wet eyes from me, but came to me when I pulled on her fingers.
“Bella…don’t. I’m…good. We’ll be good.”
“Promise?”
It was something I knew better to say.
Did it anyway.
“Promise, bellissima. Everything will be perfect.”
She’d been kicked out a half an hour later when the bitchy head nurse caught her leaning over me. She pointed to the door with her face screwed up in a scowl and a loud “he can’t get overstimulated” warning barking from her mouth as Maggie left.
Now I had her alone at my place, when my Ma and kid sister and half of the town wasn’t knocking on the door checking in or offering me well wishes. Nearly a month after my surgery and no one, not even Maggie seemed eager to let me get around on my own, no matter that I felt fine. I could walk and bathe myself. The doctor had given me the all-clear but try telling the women in my life that meant I was not some invalid.
And that shit was starting to piss me off.
Fuck, what I wouldn’t give to be overstimulated right now.
But my cousin Johnny called to check on me. Again. Third time since this shit all went down, but it was the first time I wasn’t doped up on meds or he wasn’t rushed to get through the call.
It was time to give him the news I’d been dreading to deliver.
I had to listen to him school me on all the shit he would have done if he’d ended up in that cottage with two assholes threatening his woman.
Then, I told him what I knew he didn’t want to hear.
“I get what you’re saying.”
He didn’t, but I wanted to give the man some room to breathe. “I know you’re disappointed. Believe me, I get it.”
Johnny didn’t answer; instead, I picked up the low grunt behind the sigh he released and felt like shit.
I delivered the news and he’d gotten quiet on me, but I caught the low mutter of, “For fuck’s sake.”
But it didn’t piss me off. It was the first time since I got shot that someone was leveling with me.
“It’s…inconvenient,” he finally said, releasing another sigh that he hurried to clear away. “Sammy’s pregnant.”
I blinked, letting his words sink in before I grinned, knowing he couldn’t see me. “Shit, man, you move quick.”
“Been catching up.”
He would be. Johnny had spent years apart from his woman, Sammy. When she got taken by that prick Liam Shane, shit got real for them.
Now they were married, barely seven months, and Johnny had already gotten down to the business of settling into the family life.
Through the earpiece I could make out the sound of liquid being poured and ice clinking in a glass and it made my mouth water. “Don’t worry about it,” he said behind the noise of his throat working. “I’ll figure this shit out.”
“You might not have to.” There was something I’d been working on right after Maggie and I started up our thing and shit got complicated.
Maybe I told myself back then what I planned had nothing to do with her, but now I knew what horseshit that was. I was planning a future with her even when I didn’t believe I wanted one.
“Why’s that? You gonna off everyone that wants me dead?”
“No, man. I’m gonna get us all out in a way that gives us peace and not the Pearly Gates kind.” I adjusted on my bed, elbowing my pillow when my back throbbed, and slid down, restless and wanting to stretch my legs. “I think I got a plan, but I need to work out a few things first. When I know more, I’ll come and see you, but don’t stress over shit. Not with a kid on the way.”
My cousin laughed, and I could practically see the smile on his face just from how loud, how happy that shit sounded. “Two, man. Try two.”
“Fuck me, are you serious?”