Chapter 18 Cassio
Cassio
Fire.
My veins are pumping liquid fire.
The pain in my chest is a living, breathing beast clawing its way out of my ribcage, tearing at the muscle and bone from the inside out.
Every shallow, ragged breath I draw feels like inhaling shattered glass.
But the physical agony is nothing compared to the suffocating, boiling darkness pressing down on my brain.
I am burning alive.
The fever drags me under, a violent riptide pulling me away from the surface of reality. I lose my grip on the world
I am in the Maybach.
The smell of rain and expensive leather fills my lungs. The car is swerving. The engine is roaring. I hear Noemi’s breath catching in her throat as the armored plating takes a hail of bullets. I am holding her, caging her, keeping her safe.
Then, the blinding white flash erupts from the ridge.
Sniper. I move, but the air has turned to wet cement. My muscles won't obey me. I am too slow. I lunge for her, reaching out to drag her down to the floorboards, but my fingers pass through empty air.
The deafening CRACK of the high-caliber rifle shatters the night.
The ballistic glass of the passenger window explodes. I watch in agonizing, horrifying slow motion as the massive armor-piercing round tears through the cabin.
It hits her.
"No!" I scream, the sound tearing my throat apart, but no noise comes out.
The impact throws Noemi backward. The dark crimson silk of her dress blossoms with a newer, brighter red. Her dark eyes go completely blank. She slumps against the ruined leather seat, her head falling to the side, completely slack.
I scramble across the blood-slicked seats, pulling her into my arms. Her skin is already freezing. "Noemi! Baby, look at me. Look at me!"
She doesn't blink. She doesn't breathe. The blood pours over my hands, slipping through my fingers, a dark, unstoppable river that stains everything I touch.
You were supposed to protect her, a voice whispers in the darkness. It sounds like Orlando Genovese. It sounds like Don Salvatore. It sounds exactly like the monster inside my own head. You locked her in a cage just to watch her die.
"Cassio!"
A voice pierces the nightmare. Hands are on my chest, pressing down with agonizing force.
I thrash wildly, throwing a blind punch into the darkness. "Get the fuck off me! I have to kill him! I have to—"
"Hold him!"
The voice distorts. The hands multiply, pinning my shoulders, pinning my arms. A cool, damp cloth presses against my burning forehead.
"Cassio, please," a softer voice begs, cracking with tears. "Please stop fighting. Stay with me."
I chase that voice. I try to open my eyes, try to fight my way through the thick, suffocating smoke of the fever, but the darkness drags me back down by the throat.
The scene shifts.
The rain is gone. I am standing in the center of my penthouse, completely unharmed. The sun is shining, catching the dust motes dancing in the air.
Noemi is standing by the floor-to-ceiling windows. She is wearing the white silk wedding dress she walked down the altar in.
"Noemi," I breathe, a crushing wave of relief buckling my knees. I take a step toward her. "You're alive."
She turns slowly to face me. The relief instantly turns to ash in my mouth.
Her face is carved from ice. There is no warmth, no defiance, no fire. The woman who kissed me with such desperate, consuming hunger just hours ago is gone. She looks at me with an indifference that cuts far deeper than any sniper's bullet ever could.
"Alive?" she hallows. She looks down at the white silk of her dress. "Is that what you call this, Cassio?"
"I saved you," I tell her, reaching my hand out. My fingers are trembling. I am the Don of the Vellutini family, a man who commands an army, but right now, I am begging a ghost to let me touch her. "I took the bullet. I kept you safe."
She steps back, recoiling from my outstretched hand as if I were diseased.
"You didn't save me," she whispers, her eyes dropping to my hands.
I look down. My hands are coated in thick, dried blood.
"You locked me in a vault and waited for the monsters to come," Noemi lashes on. "You told me you owned me. You treated me like a piece of territory. You don't know how to love anything, Cassio. You only know how to conquer."
"No," I choke out, panic seizing my lungs. "That's not true. I need you."
"I am going home," she states flatly.
She turns her back on me and begins to walk toward the heavy oak doors of the penthouse.
"Stop!" I roar, lunging forward, but my feet are glued to the floorboards. I can't move. I am paralyzed by my own sins. "Noemi, don't walk out that door! You belong to me!"
She doesn't even look over her shoulder. "I belong to no one. Especially not a monster."
She opens the door. Dario Lombardi is standing on the other side, smiling that weak, pathetic smile. He reaches his hand out. Noemi takes it.
The door slams shut, the heavy deadbolt sliding into place with a sound like a guillotine dropping.
"NOEMI!" I scream, tearing my own vocal cords.
I am left entirely alone in the gilded cage I built, drowning in the silence, suffocating on the bitter realization that I pushed her away because I was too fucking terrified to admit she had become my entire world.
I fight the paralysis. I fight the darkness. I tear at the fabric of the nightmare with everything I have left, clawing my way upward through the suffocating heat of the fever.
Wake up. Wake the fuck up.
Light pieces the darkness.
A sharp, jagged spike of physical pain rips through my right shoulder, anchoring me violently to the physical world. I gasp, my chest heaving, my lungs dragging in air that tastes like antiseptic and copper.
My eyelids flutter open. Everything is a blurred, spinning mess of gray and white. I blink rapidly, fighting the heavy, drugged sluggishness weighing down my brain.
The ceiling comes into focus. The modern, minimalist light fixtures of my penthouse bedroom.
I try to shift my weight, and the agony in my chest flares so brightly my vision whites out for a split second. A harsh, broken groan escapes my lips.
"Cassio."
The voice is real this time. It isn't a phantom of my fevered brain. It’s breathless, frantic, and right next to me.
I slowly turn my head against the sweat-drenched pillow.
Noemi is kneeling on the floor beside the mattress.
She is a complete, beautiful wreck. The emerald silk dress is torn and heavily stained with dark, dried patches of my blood. Her dark hair has escaped its elegant twist, hanging in chaotic tangles around her face. Her makeup is smeared, dark streaks of mascara tracking down her pale cheeks.
But her eyes.
Her dark eyes are wide, glassy with unshed tears, and locked onto my face with a ferocity that steals the breath straight out of my lungs. She is gripping my left hand in both of her, holding onto me like a lifeline.
"You're awake," she whispers, a jagged sob tearing through the words. She presses my knuckles against her forehead, her shoulders shaking violently. "Thank God. Thank God."
I stare at her, my mind struggling to separate the horrific nightmares from the reality in front of me. She isn't dead. She isn't walking away with Dario. She is here, covered in my blood, anchoring me to the earth.
"Noemi," I manage to rasp out. My throat feels like it’s been scoured with sandpaper.
"Don't move," she orders instantly, her head snapping up. "You tore the packing when you were thrashing. The doctor is on his way, Matteo finally got through on the radio, they have a secure route, but you have to stay perfectly still."
I look down at my chest. It is tightly bound in thick white bandages, though a fresh, dark red stain is blooming over the right side. The green metal trauma kit from the armory is sitting open at the foot of the bed. Blood-soaked towels are piled on the floor.
"You..." I swallow hard, trying to summon saliva. "You patched me."
"I stopped the bleeding," she corrects. She refuses to let go of my hand, her thumb stroking frantically over my skin. "Matteo didn't know what to do. They were just watching you die. I had to pack the wound, Cassio. I’m so sorry, I know it hurt, but I had to."
She is apologizing. The woman I dragged into a warzone, the woman I forced to save my miserable life, is apologizing to me.
"Come here," I whisper roughly.
"Cassio, you need to lie still—"
"I said, come here," I repeat, my voice lacking its usual volume but carrying a desperate intensity.
I pull my hand free from hers and pat the small, clean space of the mattress near my uninjured left side.
Noemi hesitates for a fraction of a second before she pushes herself off the floor and carefully crawls onto the bed. She lies down on her side, facing me, keeping a careful distance from the bandages on my chest.
She looks so fragile, yet she is the strongest thing I have ever encountered.
I reach out with my left arm, sliding my hand around the back of her neck, my fingers tangling in her messy, blood-matted hair. I pull her forward until her forehead rests gently against the curve of my neck.
She lets out a shaky breath, her warm breath washing over my collarbone. Her small hand comes up to rest lightly on the center of my chest, right over my furiously beating heart.
"I thought I lost you," I confess.
I have never admitted fear to anyone. Not to my father, not to Matteo, not to the Capo dei Capi. Vulnerability is a weapon you hand to your enemies.
But Noemi is not my enemy. She is my salvation.
She lifts her head slightly, looking into my eyes. "Cassio, if you hadn't moved—"
"No," I interrupt thickly. "In the fever. I kept dreaming. I kept seeing the sniper’s flash."
My chest tightens, the phantom terror still clawing at my throat.
I stroke her cheek, smudging a smear of dried blood on her skin.
"I saw the bullet hit you, Noemi. I held you while you bled out in that car.
And then, I dreamed you survived, but you hated me.
You looked at me like I was a monster, and you walked out that door. You left me."
Her breath hitches, fresh tears spilling over her dark lashes.
"I was terrified," I admit, stripping away the final layer of my armor, laying my soul completely bare before her. "Not because I failed to protect a piece of my territory. Not because the Don lost his wife. Because I lost you."
Noemi stares at me, her chest heaving. I am entirely, helplessly dependent on her.
"You didn't lose me," she whispers fiercely, pressing her palm flat against my chest. "I’m right here."
"I need you to know," I force the words out, ignoring the burning agony in my shoulder.
"I don't just want to own you, Noemi. I need you.
You are the only thing in this godforsaken world that makes me want to be something more than a butcher.
If you had died tonight... I would have burned this entire city to ash and walked into the flames myself. "
A jagged sob tears from her throat. She leans forward, pressing her soft, trembling lips against mine.
It is a gentle kiss, mindful of my injuries, but it is infinitely more powerful than the dominant, bruising claims I’ve staked on her before. I kiss her back, tasting the salt of her tears, letting her warmth seep into my freezing, exhausted bones.
She pulls back just enough to look at me, her dark eyes fierce and uncompromising.
"You aren't dying tonight, Cassio Vellutini," she orders. "You don't get to tell me you need me and then bleed out on this bed. You are going to fight this. You are going to let the surgeon fix you, and you are going to heal."
I have spent my entire life fighting for control. I have killed men just for challenging my authority. I trust no one. I yield to no one.
But as I look at the woman who plunged her hands into my open wound to keep me tethered to this earth, the need for control completely vanishes.
I let out a long, ragged exhale, letting my head sink heavily into the pillows. I drop my hand from her neck, letting my arm rest limply at my side.
"Okay, moglie," I whisper, a faint, exhausted smile touching my lips. My eyelids are growing heavy again. "I’m yours. Do whatever you have to do."
"Just rest," Noemi murmurs, her fingers gently brushing the hair away from my forehead. "I’ve got you. I’m not letting anyone through that door unless they have a medical bag. I’ll keep you safe."
I close my eyes, slipping back into the darkness. But this time, there is no fire. There is no panic. The fever dreams cannot reach me, because the last thing I feel before unconsciousness takes me is the protective weight of my wife’s hand resting perfectly over my heart.