Chapter 4 Elio #2
“Easy.” I lower her back into the chair, supporting her head with my hand. “You’re all right. Just rest.”
“Something’s wrong.” Her eyes are wide, pupils dilating, fear cutting through the fog. “I can’t... why can’t I...”
“Shh.” I brush the hair from her face, and finally I’m close enough to catch her scent. Clean sweat and dust and a hint of floral perfume underneath it all. “You’re safe. I have you.”
“Elio...” she mumbles my name. Slurred and frightened, but mine.
“I have you,” I say again. “Close your eyes.”
She doesn’t want to. Every muscle in her body is fighting the drag of the sedative, trying to hold on to consciousness, to control, to the world that’s slipping away from her. But the drug is stronger than will.
Her eyes flutter closed as her body goes slack against me.
For a long moment, I simply hold her. The weight of her in my arms, the warmth of her breath against my throat, the steady thump of her heart beneath my palm. This is what I wanted. What I’ve been circling for weeks, months, stalking like a wolf who’s finally cornered something soft and breakable.
Mine. Finally, irrevocably mine.
Rosa bursts through the kitchen door, wiping her hands on her apron. “What happened? What did you—”
“She fainted.” I keep my voice calm, trying to sound concerned. It’s easy to wear a mask of a worried companion, not the predator. “The heat, I think. I’m going to take her to the hospital.”
“I call ambulance—” She reaches for the phone behind the counter.
“No need.” I’m already lifting Violet, one arm beneath her knees, the other supporting her back. Her head lolls against my shoulder. “My car is just outside. It will be faster.”
Rosa steps in front of the door. Sixty years old, five foot nothing, and she plants herself between me and the exit like she’s done this before. “No. You put her down. I call doctor.”
I give her the look that makes men twice her size step aside. She doesn’t flinch. Smart woman. Brave, too, which is worse for her.
“Rosa.” I say her name quietly, the way my father taught me. The way that makes a name sound like a threat. “The nearest hospital is forty minutes by ambulance. My car is thirty seconds away. Every minute you stand there is a minute she’s not getting help.”
I watch the calculation happen behind her eyes. She knows something is wrong. Knows it in her bones the way Sicilian women know when a man is lying. But she also knows who I am, and she knows what happens to people who get in the way of men like me.
She steps aside. Hates herself for it.
“You take care of her,” she says, and her voice shakes with the effort of not screaming. A warning, not a request. A promise that if I don’t, she’ll find a way to make me answer for it.
“I intend to.”
The street is empty when I carry her out.
Siesta hour, the shops closed, the residents behind shuttered windows.
No witnesses. No complications. Just the sun beating down on the ancient stones and the woman in my arms, unconscious and unaware that her life is about to become something else entirely.
The Maserati is parked in the alley behind the café. I open the back door and slide her onto the leather seat, arranging her limbs so she won’t wake with cramps. Pillow under her head. Seatbelt fastened, though she won’t need it for the drive.
She looks peaceful. Young, without the wariness that usually tightens her features.
I brush my thumb across her cheekbone, tracing the architecture of her face.
The seatbelt cuts across her chest, pulling her shirt tight.
I notice. Of course I notice. I’ve been noticing for weeks from a distance that felt like torture.
Now she’s close enough to touch, and the only thing stopping me is the knowledge that when I finally have her, and I will, she’ll be awake enough to feel it.
A flicker of something moves through my chest. Something that might be doubt in a lesser man.
What are you doing? She trusted you. She showed you her life’s work and laughed at your jokes, and for one moment you saw what it might be like if she chose you willingly. If a woman like that, good, honest, real, could look at a man like you and see something worth—
No.
I crush the thought. There is no version of this where she chooses me willingly. Not anymore. Maybe there never was. Men like me don’t get chosen. We take.
I climb into the backseat beside her. Giuseppe, my driver will be here in two minutes, I texted him as soon as Violet took her first sip. Everything arranged. Everything controlled. The way it has to be.
She makes a small sound in her sleep, a whimper, almost, and I stroke her hair without thinking too soothe her, the silk of it sliding through my fingers.
“Shh,” I murmur. “You’re safe, tesoro. I have you.”
I have you, and I’m not letting go.
The doubt flickers again. Her face, so trusting before the coffee. Her laughter, bright and startled, like she’d forgotten how. The way she touched her collarbone when she was nervous.
She’s going to hate me when she wakes. I know this, but there’s no turning back now.
I smooth her hair back from her face. Study the curve of her lips, the sweep of her lashes against her cheeks. She’s beautiful even like this. Especially like this, when she’s not guarding herself, not watching me with those sharp suspicious eyes.
Those eyes. I want them on me again. Want her looking at me the way she did in the cathedral, cautious, curious, and alive.
I almost regret the drug. Almost wish I’d taken my chances with her fear, let her fight and scream and understand exactly what kind of monster was taking her.
Almost.
I brush my thumb across her bottom lip. She doesn’t pull away, can’t pull away. I’ve thought about this mouth. What it would feel like. What sounds I could pull from it. My thumb presses slightly, parting her lips. Her breath is warm against my skin.
“You’ll hate me,” I murmur against her hair. “You’ll scream and cry and beg me to let you go. And I won’t. Because I’m not a good man, tesoro. I’m not even trying to be. I’m just a man who wants something, and you had the misfortune of being it.”
The car door opens. Giuseppe slides into the driver’s seat without a word.
“The villa,” I say. “No stops.”
The engine purrs to life. The city begins to slide past the tinted windows, ancient stone, narrow streets, and the Santa Maria della Luce, where she spent her mornings documenting beautiful things in their slow collapse.
She won’t see it again for a long time. Maybe never. That chapter of her life is over now, closed the moment she walked into Café Prima with me at her side.
I pull her closer. Rest her head against my chest. Count the beats of her heart against my palm.
She was always going to be mine.