Page 116 of Desperate Desires

It was possession.

A silent vow that death wouldn’t dare touch me, not while he still breathed.

“Ono!” I called him, and then he moved, dropping the gun and coming for me.

He took his knife from his pocket, slicing through the telephone wire holding me captive, and then I was in his arms.

“I got you,” he whispered in my ear as I sobbed against him.

“Ono?”

“She’s okay. Take care of this,” he told someone, Sammy I thought. But honestly, I wasn’t paying attention.

I just wanted to go home with my husband.

Epilogue 1-Ono

The bathwater sloshed around us as I held Michelle on my lap, kissing her temple and rubbing my hands over her warm, smooth flesh, making sure she was whole and safe. With me.

“Are you sure you don’t need a doctor?”

“I am a doctor,” she said, smiling softly.

Fuck. She was beautiful.

So precious and fragile, and I almost fucking lost her.

When I realized it was that fuck, Carmine D’Angelo, who’d been behind all this I could have slapped myself for discrediting the weasel too easily. Apparently, old Carmine had champagne dreams and beer bottle pockets.

He’d been building up debt with the bigger players. Guys like the Vipers. And he’d been operating under the false assumption that he was entitled to anything I made because of my father’s association with his father.

But like I’d told Carmine Sr. ten years ago, I wasn’t my father, and I didn’t owe him or anybody anything.

My father's dying wish was for me to bring our family back to its glory, but I did him one better. I rose above his dream of me being some smalltime hood. But money wasn’t the important thing.

It wasn’t what redeemed me.

No, that was something else. Love brought our family back to honor.

Loving Michelle was my real salvation.

“I love you,” I told her, holding her tight.

“I love you too,” she said, and turned in my arms.

I’d been so careful with her, taking her home and showering us both off, allowing the blood of our enemies to wash down the drain.

Then I ran a bath, determined to check every inch of her for injury. I didn’t want to think about what Carmine and Rico had done and tried to do before I’d arrived.

But if I did, I just might try to bring those bastards back to life so I could kill them all over again.

After it all happened, I waited for my wife to scorn me. For her to push me away. Or feel repulsed.

It killed me to imagine she might hate me for this. That she might feel revolted by the mere idea of me.

But so far, she hadn’t done that.

So far, she seemed content to sit on my lap and let me hold her.

---