Page 151 of The Enslaved Duet
“Madonna santa! Dante, what happened?” I demanded as he dropped his bunched-up jacket to the side table.
I stepped under one of his heavy arms to begin the process of dragging him into the house. He was over six feet five inches and quilted with dense muscle from his hands to his toes. It felt as if I was lugging a car behind me as I led him into the kitchen and propped him up on a stool at the island.
“Start talking,capo,” I ordered harshly as I took his white shirt between my teeth and ripped it cleanly in two.
“So eager to see me shirtless that you couldn’t wait to grab the scissors?” he asked drily, only a slight edge to his voice giving away the pain he was in.
I hissed as I saw the oozing wound in his left abdomen. “Cazzo, a bullet wound?”
He shrugged one shoulder, then groaned at the pain. “I’m an easy target.”
“Because you’re a fucking idiot?” I snapped.
“Because there’s so much of me to aim at,” he countered with a lopsided smirk.
I rolled my eyes at him as I snagged a clean dishtowel from the drawer and pressed it a little too hard against his wound. “Hold that tightly while I get some more supplies. You’re lucky I’m always prepared. Seamus taught me nothing if not how to stitch up a broken man.”
“My heart’s been broken for ages, and you haven’t seen to fixing that,” he muttered petulantly.
I lightly slapped his shoulder as I moved out of the room into my bedroom to grab the comprehensive first-aid kit I hid there.
“Cazzo, Dante, I don’t know why you don’t just—” I froze in my journey back to his side when I caught the look on his face.
“Cosima,” he purred, his Italian accent thick as mink pelt. “We have a visitor.”
My eyes shot to Giselle who stood in blatant shock at the entry to the kitchen. The tin kit dropped from my suddenly listless hands to the kitchen counter.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, too startled and defensive to curtail my tone.
“Um, I live here. What is a man doing in our kitchen with ableeding wound?” she countered with a previously unheard-of amount of sass.
Dante settled farther back on the stool, leaning his back against the wall as he made himself comfortable enough to enjoy watching our show.
I shot him a dirty look, then sighed as ran my hands through my hair agitatedly. “I…Listen, Giselle, I need you to leave. Right now.”
Both Dante and Giselle seemed bewildered by my demand.
“Are you kidding me right now? I’m not leaving here like this!” she cried out, her hand flying forward to indicate the wounded, highly amused mafioso sitting at our kitchen island.
“You are,” I said, channelling Alexander so that my voice brooked no argument. There was no way in hell I was making Giselle privy to Dante’s life and Made Man drama. We’d had more than enough of that growing up in the armpit of Napoli. “You are going to go out for the afternoon and enjoy the city, think about your show, and see friends. You will absolutelynotsay anything about this toanyone,and I will text you when you can return to the apartment.”
Giselle’s mouth opened and closed, useless with anger, before she finally found her voice and her forgotten Italian instincts. “Cosima!”
I crossed my arms, braced my feet apart like a general impatient with his given orders being flagrantly disobeyed, and waited for Giselle to yield.
It took longer than I thought it would, but finally, with one last wounded, confused look, she whispered, “Cosima…”
It was an entreaty to know more, to trust her with the weight of my secret so I could share the load.
She had no idea how heavy the weight of my many secrets was, and there was no way, if I had any say in it at all, that she ever would.
“Parta,” I ordered. “Go.”
I hated the wrinkle between her red brows as she backed away so much that I turned before she could, focusing on sorting through the med kit so I wouldn’t have to watch.
“So strong,tesoro,” Dante said quietly, his voice tender as the hand he swept down my back. “Do you ever wonder if one day, you’ll break?”
“Stai zitto,” I muttered at him, telling him to shut up.
