Page 20 of Protected By the Mafia

He vibrated with a chuckle, then pointedly scrolled the list down and up again. “I don’t want another argument like we had earlier. Go through my contacts list and ask me about any name you’re curious about. If there’s still someone in there I’ve fucked before, I’ll delete them.”

She scrunched up her nose and pushed the device back at him. “Could you do that first? I didn’t like the way it felt to be jealous of names on a screen and then find out one was a child.” She didn’t like being jealous at all. It made her question how crazy she was for even getting so worked up over him and whatever they were building in the first place.

Cristiano held up his hand, refusing the phone. “I’m almost positive there aren’t any,” he said. “If I’m wrong, I want you to see me delete them.”

She wasn’t convinced. But he was obviously not going to cooperate, so she made sure her disapproval showed in her eyes and then shifted her focus to the list. Of course, she had no context for most of the names. A few she recognized, like his De Salvo cousins, and some she was almost positive were male-oriented, like Ernesto. Several could easily have been unisex, or were most likely nicknames, and she found herself asking about many names that turned out to be men of varying rank within the De Salvo family.

Yet, even then, Cristiano answered her. When she asked about the name Benny, he explained it belonged to a man named Benito who was currently assigned to Dante’s restaurant, The Dragon’s Roast. When she asked about the name Mo, he explained it was short for Mauro and that Mauro was Romeo’s right-hand-man. When she came upon the name Grace Mariner, which she thought was interesting in itself because most of the entries were only a first or last name instead of both, Cristiano calmly explained that Grace was Dante’s Personal Assistant at DS Industries. He added that he’d actually never spoken to the woman, but being close family, he was expected to have her contact information.

Felicity felt confident in the sincerity of his answers, so she scrolled back up after having gone through the entire list and asked about the entry that had most intrigued her. “And this one,” she said. “Who’s ‘Foxglove’?” It sounded more like a military codename than a person’s name.

Cristiano grinned, hooked a finger under her chin, and said, “You.”

She blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You’re ‘Foxglove’,” he repeated. “I can’t exactly have you listed in my phone as ‘Felicity.’ Even using your initials would be risky. So I needed an alternative. I think I’m going to use this for you moving forward, too.” He leaned in and grazed his lips over hers. “My foxglove.”

Felicity closed out of his contacts app and handed back his phone. “Did you make that up? Does it mean something?”

His grin widened and he swiped his thumb over the phone a couple of times before turning it around again. “Do you know what these are?”

She dropped her gaze back to the screen and her mouth popped open, but she wasn’t sure what the right response was. He was showing her a picture of the painting on her living room wall, the one she’d purchased on a whim on discount shortly after moving into the apartment. He’d taken a picture of the painting in her apartment.

At her non-response, he tapped the screen and zoomed the image in on a portion of the flowers depicted. The clarity was so good she could even kind of make out the little white specks that dotted the inside of the blooms. “The flowers, baby. Do you know what they are? Do they mean something to you?”

Slowly, she shook her head. “I just thought they were pretty.”

“They’re foxgloves,” he said. “I looked them up.” When she snapped her gaze back up to his, he continued. “It turns out they’re highly toxic.”

Felicity gaped, not sure if she wanted to laugh or be offended. “You think I’m toxic?”

Cristiano set his phone aside and pulled her into his lap, one arm around her waist and the other curving behind her neck to cup the back and side of her jaw. “To anyone but me, baby. If someone touches you, I’ll fucking slaughter them.”

She shouldn’t have laughed. She was positive he was serious. In her defense, the laugh that escaped her wasn’t any kind of amused, entertained, lighthearted laughter. The sound that gurgled up from her chest and slipped past her slightly parted lips in the moment before she bent forward to lean against him was different. It was more of a sarcastic, even disbelieving laugh. This man…. He wasn’t strictly the first who’d ever spoken about protecting her. But he might be the first who ever meant it in a non-manipulative, non-threatening way.

Cristiano threaded his hand into her hair. “Felicity? What’s the matter?”

She shuffled closer to him. Seeking his strength, she closed her eyes, and didn’t fight the words inside her. “Are you going to kill my family?”

He pushed out a breath. “It won’t necessarily be me,” he said, “but I can’t promise to save any of them.”

She swallowed. “What if I … don’t want you to? Save them, I mean…”

The arm around her back tightened. “That’s not the first time you’ve alluded to a hard home life, baby. What do I need to know?”

Her chest tightened with a surge of undesirable memories and Felicity burrowed closer to him in an effort to escape them. “If I ever made the mistake of referring to my mother’s husband, the man who raised me, as my stepdad or anything like ‘father,’ he would pick up a belt or a switch and strike me with it. Across the face, across the butt, across my back or chest—it didn’t matter.”

Cristiano rumbled in a low growl of displeasure and she only wished she were done.

She wished that wasn’t the best of it.

“Manny hated me.” Her throat tightened. “It’s not really … a surprise. He was old enough to understand Mom had done something wrong, and he was such a daddy’s boy. Naturally I became his punching bag when his temper grew out of control, until he had to be taught—” She licked her lips, old words scratching through her mind. “He had to be taught not to hit me where teachers would see when it bruised. And not to cause major injury.”

Cristiano’s breathing had become deep and almost hard. As if he were taking controlled breaths.

Felicity wound her arms around his neck and lifted her head to press a kiss to his jaw. “I can’t say it’s a surprise he’s in prison now,” she whispered as she resettled. “But he’ll be out someday…”

“No. He won’t.” Cristiano held her head a bit tighter, pulling on her hair slightly. “I’ll make sure of it.”

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