Page 46 of Forced Arrangement

Sophia looks over her shoulder at me. “Shit,” she says. She sounds annoyed and I grin. I love when she’s bossy. I love seeing her act like a don.

“Agreed,” I say.

“You should come to the clinic later,” Doc says. He steps back from Gianni, then gestures to the men hovering at the edge of the room to pick him up and take him to the elevator. “I can take a couple of X-rays and get you fixed up.”

I shake my head. “I’ll just go to the ER,” I say. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Your choice,” Doc says. “You know I don’t mind.” He nods at Sophia, and she inclines her head in reply. We watch him hustle after the group of my men who are carrying Gianni’s unconscious body to the elevator.

“Will he be okay?”

We both glance over and see Justine hovering in the doorway of Sophia’s bedroom. She’s white as a sheet.

I lift a shoulder in a shrug. “I hope so. Doc’s great at what he does. He couldn’t be in better hands, but it’s a terrible injury.”

Sophia utters a string of harsh curses, staring down at her bloody hands. She jerks into motion and grabs a roll of paper towels to start soaking up the blood that is everywhere. I realize that I should help and I gesture to her to pass me the roll so that I can help out.

“Why the fuck would anyone do something like that?” Justine says. Her voice is hoarse and I can barely hear her.

“Guiseppe is a bastard who will stop at nothing to steal my legacy,” Sophia says snappishly as she jerkily soaks up the blood with the paper towels. “He’s trying to scare me…us.”

“Well, it’s working,” Justine says softly. She wraps her arms around herself as if she’s cold.

Sophia looks over her shoulder and something seems to unravel within her. Her expression softens as she looks at her friend.

“We should send you back home,” she says to Justine. “You don’t belong here. You shouldn’t be tangled up in this.”

“Neither should you!” Justine says, suddenly angry. She glares at me and I feel a twist of regret in my chest. She’s not wrong, really. Sophia should be safely living her life as Sarah Lacey in England, going to the pub with Justine, watching football matches, riding the tube to work each day. She shouldn’t be caught up in any of this.

“You should both go,” I hear myself say. I hadn’t planned to say it, but it’s the truth. Neither of them deserve this. “I can get you both on a flight to the UK within a few hours. You can go back to your lives.”

Sophia shakes her head. “I’m not going anywhere, Angelo. I don’t disagree that Justine should go home, but what in the actual hell do you think I will do in the UK? You think they won’t find me? You think they won’t track me down to try to get to you?”

I wince. She’s not wrong and I hate that she’s making sense. I brought her into this mess. I made her come home to take her rightful place in her father’s seat.

It just never occurred to me that Guiseppe would handle her presence like this. I had known he was a bad man, but I would have never expected him to be willing to go so far just to scareSophia into submission and to make me realize that he meant business.

Two of my men, maimed beyond repair. Two bold, aggressive and horrifying statements. I honestly wanted to crawl into a hole and hide, but Sophia seemed ready and willing to fight tooth and nail to stop him. I wonder where she’s getting her strength from. I’m envious of it at the moment.

“If Sophia’s staying, I’m staying too,” Justine says, joining us in the kitchen. She starts helping clean up the mess. She’s still a bit green around the gills, but she has spunk, I’ll give her that.

“I told you that this would happen,” Franco says as he steps out of the elevator. He brushes past me to go wash his hands at the sink. He looks down at his slacks, which are stained with Gianni’s blood and he frowns.

“I know,” I say. He hadn’t predicted Guiseppe would go to such lengths, but he had predicted that things would be ugly. I hadn’t listened. I had just gone to fetch Sophia as if this would all be a cakewalk.

“You need to step things up,” Franco says abruptly as he turns to look at me again.

“What?” I say, confused.

“You two need to get married, and fast,” he repeats. “Guiseppe’s ability to hit us where it counts is going to start making waves. We can’t afford to take chances with anything now. If you two get married, the consequences of killing either of you escalate. The decision to harm either of you when you are married would mean an all-out war. It would call in reinforcements and demand that allies unite.”

Sophia has gone very still, her gaze on my face, but her entire being turned inward. I don’t know what she’s thinking. It could be good, or bad, or it could be nothing.

“Goddammit,” she says quietly, pinching the bridge of her nose with her fingers.

“We don’t have to do that,” I say. “At least not for real. We can pretend, say we got married, but not do anything official. You don’t have to be stuck here.”

Sophia is still standing in front of me with her eyes closed. She finally opens them and her expression is stark, hopeless. I hate seeing her like this. I hate my part in all of this.

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