Page 80 of Under His Protection

Before I could inhale again to prime myself to heave harder, my body’s involuntary demand to throw up at the nauseating thoughts and cloying smell of death in here, I was hit.

The searing pierce of a bullet cut through my shoulder, and I cried out at the agony that instantly lanced through me. “Dante!”

I didn’t know if he could see me. I refused to open my eyes, keeping them closed to avoid anything dripping in them. Safer in the darkness of no sight, I whimpered and waited for him to find me in this hellhole of murder and killings.

“Nina!” He’d come to me. I felt the weight of his body as he dropped to his knees, shaking the floor. As soon as his hands touched me, urging me to roll over, I gave in to the pressure of his protecting me.

“Nina.” He couldn’t stop repeating my name, almost as though the more he said it, the more it would stick that I was here, that he’d found me.

“She’s bleeding.” Franco might have said it, but I couldn’t be sure. Pain filled my shoulder. It radiated down my arm and coursed along my back. The agony was so sharp, so intense, that all I had the energy to do was lie against Dante as he urged me to uncurl from the fetal position I’d tucked myself into.

Although the ache and sharp, stinging needles of inflammation claimed all my thoughts, deep down in my heart, I relaxed. With this man, with Dante championing for me, I would be all right.

He wiped at my face, cursing as he tried to clear the blood and other slimy substances from me, but I could not surrender to the urgency to see him, to look at him and trust in my vision that he was here and all would be well again. That he’d take care of me.

It felt like a dream, but as I accepted his careful hold as he lifted me, I kept my mouth shut and swallowed down the cries that I almost uttered. It hurt to move. It hurt to be repositioned. Vaguely, with the dizziness and lightheadedness that came with the loss of blood, I registered that Dante was carrying me and taking me out of this bloody room.

“You’re safe, Nina,” he told me as he carried me out. “You will always be safe with me.”

I know. I know I will be. It was one reason I loved him. It was a cornerstone of my trust in him. Ever since running into him that fateful night almost a month ago, I knew that he would do everything in his power to keep me safe and secure. Not as a fake girlfriend. Not because I was a young, clueless burden or obligation. But because he cared about me, truly. I heard it in his voice and felt it in the tremor of his touch.

I might have nodded, but I felt like I was separate from my body. Refusing to open my eyes or speak, to avoid that stuff getting in me, I couldn’t let him know that I heard and agreed.

“I promise you,” he said as he brought me outside. The air was clearer. Faint rain drizzled down, and the sensation of being rinsed off was cathartic.

“I promise you this, Nina…” He hurried, picking up his pace and jostling me that much more that I winced. Faster and faster, I grew sleepier, but I strained to listen, to cling to his words.

Dante hoisted me higher in his arms to match his quicker gait. “No one will ever dare to touch my wife again.”

31

DANTE

Dante

Eva moved to stand next to me as we looked in the window of the hospital room that Nina was in. I held my arm out to hug my niece close, and she rested her cheek on me. “Has she woken up yet?”

I shook my head. “No, but they’re not worried.”

“She hit her head so hard,” Eva said. “I was so worried when they took her away and I saw all the blood on the corner of the table.”

Sighing deeply, I nodded.

“She pushed me down, you know.”

I glanced at her.

“At the sound of gunfire, she pushed me down to safety. To protect me.”

I smiled slightly. “Nina is new to our world, to this lifestyle, but she doesn’t need training or experience to care. She likely acted on instinct.”

“I agree,” Eva said. “She’s a one of a kind.”

And perfect for me.

“They’re not worried that she’s asleep, though? For concern about a brain injury?”

“No. They’ve taken multiple scans and MRIs.”

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