Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty Two
Elsa
Much, much later, I’m half sunk into my bed like it’s a cloud cradling me for the night.
My skin is still very aware—too sensitive, too warm, every brush of my sheets against naked flesh a reminder that I’m not imagining what happened earlier.
Sleep keeps trying to pull me under in soft waves, but I keep hovering in that wonderful in-between state where everything feels slow and dreamy.
From somewhere in the apartment, I hear Antonio moving.
Not loud. Never loud. Just the faintest shift of weight, the quiet click of a latch, the low sounds of him checking things the way other people check their phones before bed.
I close my eyes and breathe, letting the sound of it soothe me instead of spiking my nerves.
Then the bathroom door opens, and he steps through, the light behind him briefly cutting a shape into the dark. He reaches back and locks it from this side with a firm little twist. Another click.
He crosses the room to the door that leads to the hall, and I hear that lock, too.
He turns back toward me.
“I locked the bathroom door from the hall too,” he says quietly, coming closer. “Just in case.”
My eyes flutter open, heavy-lidded. “Just in case,” I echo, the words slow and sleepy.
He stops at the foot of the bed, and the sight of him resets my pulse like a switch.
He’s wearing only his pants—low-slung, unbuttoned at the top, sitting on his hips, and they have no right to be that provocative on a man who just finished checking locks.
My mouth goes dry. I bite my lip, and I can feel a fresh wave of desire roll through me, lazy and inevitable as I look at the ‘v’ that starts at his waist and disappears into his pants where it narrows to his groin.
Will I ever get enough?
His torso is bare, and my gaze lands on the scar stretching across it—a pale line that interrupts the smooth stretch of skin over his torso.
Not that he doesn’t have other scars, but this one is different.
My stomach tightens at the sight, a squeeze of tenderness and fear I don’t like acknowledging.
Then I notice what’s in his hand.
A gun.
Sleep drains right out of my body in a single jolt.
Antonio sees my eyes land on it and pauses.
“For safety,” he says immediately, voice calm, steady. “That’s all. And everything’s going to be all right.”
I swallow. My throat is tight again, but not from panic this time. From the reality of him. The reality of what he is and why he’s here. What he’s been carrying this whole time.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he adds, and he says it like it’s a fact, like he’s just given me the traffic report.
He checks it with the kind of practiced efficiency that makes my skin prickle, then sets it on my nightstand. Like it’s no different than a glass of water.
For him, it probably isn’t.
Only then does he push his pants down and step out of them, unapologetic. He climbs into bed beside me, the mattress dipping with his weight, and then his arm slides around me, and he pulls me in against his side.
Heat. Solidness. That familiar, anchoring presence that makes my body relax before my brain consciously thinks of it.
I sigh and curl into him without thinking, my cheek against his chest. My fingers drift, as if drawn, to the scar.
I trace it lightly, the pad of my finger following the line.
He goes still for a beat, not flinching—just… bracing.
“Will you tell me what happened?” I mumble, my voice thick with sleep and softness. “What really happened?”
A slow exhale leaves him, and I feel it under my cheek.
Then, quietly, he starts.
“Nico, my nephew, and I,” he says, voice low, “we were meeting new suppliers at a warehouse. We’d never worked with them before, so I wanted to see the product myself before we made a deal.”
My finger stills at his ribs, then continues, gentler.
“It was just supposed to be the first meet,” he says. “But we’re not careless. We had a couple of other guys with us. Told them to hang back. We walk in. Everything looks normal. But something about it felt off. Wrong. Like it was all for show.”
My throat tightens.
“Something felt wrong,” he says again, and there’s a flicker of frustration in it, like he’s angry at himself even now for not realizing it sooner. “I wanted to back out, but it was too late.”
His chest rises under my cheek.
“They came out of the shadows,” he says. “First shot came from right next to us. Nico almost—”
He stops.
Silence drops into the room like a weight.
My hand is still on his scar, and I can feel his heart beating under my cheek, pumping just a little faster.
I lift my face just enough to look at him in the dim light. His jaw is set. His eyes are open, fixed on the ceiling, as if he looks anywhere else, it will pull him back into that night.
I finish the sentence for him, quietly, because he won’t say it himself. Antonio may joke around a lot, but when it counts, when it’s real, he wouldn’t think of painting himself as a hero.
Even when he is one.
“You took the shot for him,” I whisper.
Antonio doesn’t respond.
Not with words.
But the way his arm tightens around me is answer enough.
After a moment, he speaks again, voice rougher.
“Backup pulled up quickly,” he says. “But it was all… confusing after that. Nico dragged me out of there somehow. Bullets flying from both sides. He got us in the car. I have some flashes of the hospital. Then nothing.”
I swallow hard.
“Woke up a couple of days later, all stitched up,” he finishes.
My heart aches, sudden and sharp, for this man lying next to me. A man used to covering things up with charm or a joke. A man who holds a weapon as easily as other men hold briefcases.
A man who jumped in front of a bullet for his nephew. No thought, just pure love and instinct.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” I whisper, and I mean it in a way that feels too big for words.
I press a kiss to his chest, right above the scar.
A weak laugh leaves him, soft and tired.
“Me too,” he says.
I stay still against him for a beat, then ask the question that’s been hovering at the edge of my mind, the one I almost don’t want the answer to.
“Did you ever find out what happened? The people who did it?”
“Yeah,” he says, and there’s something final in it. “I was out cold for it, but… some rival assholes. Looking to make a name for themselves.”
That’s all he gives me.
And I feel it—the finality in his tone. The line he won’t cross in my bed, in my sheets, with my body wrapped around his.
I don’t push.
Now that I know what the Contis really are, it’s better not to ask questions I can’t unhear the answers to. Because I’m sure Luca Conti—don of an actual, literal mafia—didn’t let the shooting of his brother and the attempted shooting of his son go unanswered.
The thought makes me shiver.
Antonio feels it immediately. “You cold?” he murmurs, hand sliding over my side.
“A little,” I admit, my voice small against his skin.
“Come here,” he says, and he tugs the blanket higher, pulling it over us more securely and tucking it in around me.
I settle into him, my palm resting over the scar, my cheek on his chest again.
Safe, my body tells me, even as my mind tries to count reasons not to believe it.
His arm tightens around me, and in the dark, with the locks clicked and the blanket pulled up and his heartbeat under my ear, I let sleep take me.