“As far as I know,” I say. “I haven’t heard back from Silvano’s team yet, but they were just doing recon while we distracted the Irish. I’ve got a first aid kit in my office.”
Alexis and I go upstairs, and I sit in my office chair while she hunts through one of the cabinets for the first aid kit. I watch her, searching for any sign of stress, but find none. I have just come home covered in blood, and yet it doesn’t seem to faze her at all.
“Doesn’t this upset you?” I ask.
“What?” Alexis grabs the kit and lays it out on the desk. She starts to ease the ruined shirt from my shoulders.
“The blood. The implied violence. The fact that you are patching me up while our son sleeps just down the hall.”
Alexis grabs a wipe from the kit and starts to swab at the slash on my chest. It’s not deep, but it stings like a motherfucker when the disinfectant hits it. I hiss in pain.
“Should it upset me?” Alexis asks, eyes trained on the task at hand.
“It would have before.”
Before what, though? When did Alexis first become desensitized to the realities of mob life? Was it when she was kidnapped? When the Irish hit man tried to kill her? Or maybe even before all of that?
Alexis glances up at me briefly. “Let me make this clear—I don’t like this. It worries me when you don’t come home, and it would worry me a lot more to see you come home covered in blood if I didn’t know that the alternative was so much worse. But I am a part of this now, and if I’m going to be a part of this, I need to toughen up.”
She finishes wiping the wound and quickly presses a bandage to it before it starts to well with blood again.
“Do you resent that?” I ask. “Do you resent that the only way for us to be a family is for you to descend into the underworld to join me?”
“How much blood have you lost?” Alexis jokes. “You’re getting awfully deep.”
I grab her chin and lift it to face me. I look deep into her blue eyes, my own expression deadly serious. “Answer me, Alexis.”
I think she might hesitate, but she doesn’t.
“No, I don’t resent it,” she says. “I thought I would, but I don’t. I never wanted this life, but I’m not ashamed of it. Your world exists in a dozen different shades of gray, but there’s good in it too. We’re the only people who can fight back against the Cartel and push purple heroin off the streets for good. Our charities help more people than I could have ever reached through other means.” She licks her lips. “And if you want me to be really honest, I find it all to be quite thrilling. I know I should be scared after everything I’ve seen, but I’m not.”
I smile and release her chin. She grabs another wipe and starts dabbing at the cut on my cheek.
“Good,” I say.
“Good,” she repeats.
I reach out and press a hand against her belly. “You know I will always keep our family safe, right?”
She rests her hand over mine. “I know. I trust you.”
Her words hang in the air between us, their sincerity surprising me.
I clear my throat, pulling my hand back. “So, what are you hoping for?” I ask. “Boy or girl?”
“I will be happy with a healthy baby,” she says. “Though it might be nice to have another girl around.”
“And what would you name the little princess?”
Alexis chuckles. “I don’t know. I think you should get to choose the name this time, since I named our firstborn after my father, who was secretly a sadistic criminal.”
I chuckle. “I’ve always liked the name Serena,” I admit. “It was my grandmother’s name.”
Alexis’ eyes meet mine, and she smiles. “I like that.”
A brisk knock on the door interrupts the moment, and then Antonio bursts into the room. His expression is like a brick wall.
“Sir, I’m sorry, but I have important business to discuss,” he says.
Alexis gathers up the bloody wipes and garbage from the desk, preparing to leave.
“Whatever you want to say, you can say it in front of Alexis,” I reply. “What happened?”
Antonio clears his throat. “Silvano’s crew was ambushed,” he says. “He’s downstairs. The doctor is on his way, but I don’t know if Silvano will make it until then.”
I shoot to my feet. “Show me.”
The three of us dash out of the office.
26
Alexis
Silvano is just as stubborn as ever, and I think that’s the only thing keeping him alive. The doctor has managed to stop the bleeding, but he has three bullet wounds, one of them where the bullet is still lodged inside, and has lost a lot of blood.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t take him to the hospital?” I ask.
Gabriel has told me twice before that Silvano will receive the same level of care in the mansion as he would in the hospital, but even though I can see the machines beeping and the doctor adjusting the bag of saline, I still struggle to believe it. After Gabriel’s near-death incident a few months ago, he had one of his spare bedrooms outfitted with enough medical equipment to resuscitate a small army. I only hope it will be enough.
“I’m going to be fine,” Silvano murmurs, eyelids fluttering. “I’ve never died before, and I’m not going to start now.”
His voice comes out thick. Groggy. I’m surprised he’s still awake.
Antonio’s bulky form hovers in the corner. He filled us in while the doctor was patching up Silvano’s various wounds. Silvano and four other men were meant to merely be providing a distraction while Gabriel’s team followed a lead on the location of Kevin Lynch. They attacked O’Neill’s, which should have been mostly empty at the time. Somehow Felicity knew about the attack, and she and a dozen men were waiting there when Silvano arrived. He was the sole survivor.
“Alexis,” Silvano croaks. His hand lurches over the side of the bed, searching for me. I grab it.
“Yeah?”
Gabriel watches the exchange suspiciously. In all fairness, Silvano and I are not friends, so I don’t understand why he’s addressing me on what could be his deathbed.
“Felicity said something,” he tells me. “She said something that you need to know.”
“What is it?” Gabriel demands.
I glare at him for his lack of tact. Gabriel ignores me.
Silvano’s eyes close, and his head drops to the side.
“Silvano,” Gabriel presses. “What did Felicity say?”
But Silvano is galloping away from consciousness, and he only manages to mutter two words before passing out entirely. “My angel.”
“My angel?” Gabriel repeats. “What does that mean?”
He looks at me, and I shake my head, though the words do pull at a thread somewhere in the back of my mind. I’m too overwhelmed with the evening’s attack to figure out why. Silvano’s whole team was killed. That could have easily been Gabriel.
Gabriel prods Silvano’s arm, and the doctor shoots him a sour look. “Sir, I need to start the surgery as soon as possible, and he needs his rest. He has lost a lot of blood.”