Chapter 27 – Penelope
I woke up sweating. No…that wasn’t right. I wasn’t the one producing the heat. A furnace shivered next to me.
Mancini groaned in his sleep. That large body tensed, hands curling into fists. And then he muttered about blood and his father. It was another nightmare. Something from his past plagued his feverish sleep. This wasn’t the first bad dream he’d had. A few were about a woman named Elena, but most were about his father. Mancini muttered incoherently in Italian, making the details nearly impossible to piece together.
The only solid conclusion I’d come to was that, unlike me, the don hadn’t had a happy childhood.
Which made perfect sense. Only a terrible past would forge a man of cold, unyielding iron like the don.
I sighed. There was no asking him for details when he was conscious. We weren’t close enough for me to pry, but the names and details had me imagining the worst. Carefully untangling myself from the inferno, I padded to the bathroom. My own side ached from the meds wearing off. After popping a few more ibuprofen, I brought some to the very sick don.
Sitting gingerly beside him, I offered the pills. “Please take these. Not because you’re sick,” I lied—because the man’s logic was like a damn toddler. “But you need them, okay?”
“Okay,” he rasped.
It was painful to watch him try to gulp the pills down. The dim light from the bathroom fell across his features, showing the haggard figure.
“You want to take a shower?” I offered. “Might make you feel better.”
“You joining me?” he whispered hoarsely.
“I might,” I laughed softly. “But neither of us is in any condition to do more than let the water make us feel better.”
He tried and failed to climb out of bed. “I…can’t.”
I smoothed back his hair. “It’s okay, we can in the morning.”
“That offer will still be there?” he pushed.
What the hell was I saying? It was the lack of oxygen to my brain that stifled coherent thought. But…maybe he wouldn’t remember this.
“It will,” I murmured.
He flopped back onto the pillow. After I shut the light off and climbed in beside him, he rolled into me. My body’s natural reaction was to tense, which sent a shot of agony through my torso.
“Careful,” I gasped.
Mancini stilled. “Shit, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” The breathless quality of my voice was far from convincing.
“No, it’s my fault. I should have ordered my men to take care of the Morettis outside, instead of setting the trap for them in the jewelry store.”
I curled my arm under my head and studied the don through the thick shadows. “So you knew they were coming inside?”
Mancini nodded. “That was the phone call in the vault. You were supposed to go in there while we dealt with them. Instead….”
“Hey, don’t feel bad. I’m a mafia wife now. This wouldn’t be fun if I wasn’t dodging some kind of danger.”
He growled—dangerous and threatening.
That was the wrong thing to say. I reached out and pressed a finger on his lips to stifle his rebuttal.
“I’m fine, lupo. A bit worried they tried to assassinate you in broad daylight, but I’m fine.” With a groan, I rolled back over. “Look at us. Just a pair of gimps.”
Burrowing beside me, the don stayed quiet for a few heartbeats. “Life doesn’t faze you, does it?”
“Not much.”
After another long pause, this time, long enough that I thought, he was asleep he murmured, “This is why I wanted to marry you, Penelope. You can handle the underworld. It would have broken your cousin.”
His praise made my heart thump hard.
“Go to sleep, Mr. Don,” I murmured against his still-warm scalp.
He shook his head. “It’s Alessandro. Why won’t you use my name?”
I squeezed my eyes tight. Because then I’ll see you as a person.
When I didn’t respond, he didn’t push. We remained quietly lying there as the intricacies of our forced situation swirled around us. This, whatever it was, was easy. In the dark, I could pretend he was someone I wanted to know better, to spend my days with—someone to build a life with.
This wasn’t the enemy I married. And that thought scared me more than if he did something horrid to me. There was no way he was trustworthy. If I softened, if I saw him as a man instead of a monster, I might end up permanently in this life.
I need to learn more about the mob. See if it was something I would ever be willing to endure. Just because he thought I was capable didn’t mean I was up to the role.
With the big, bad don in bed, it was easy being nice to the mobster. He was really sick, but the doctor was a reasonable man. He didn’t want to throw narcotics at the situation, and antibiotics wouldn’t fix this since it was likely viral.
“You’re doing everything right. If you want, there are services that do vitamins as injectables. Might be easier than trying to make him swallow the pills,” the doctor commented as he left the afternoon of the second day.
“We’ll think about it,” I agreed.
The truth was, the chain of command was blurry. Did I make the call to inject the boss? Should that be Dante or Serena? There had to be a protocol for this kind of thing.
Before I could go seek out my sister-in-law, the click-clack of stilettoes announced her arrival.
Bracing myself, I turned with a smile. “He’s out of the woods, but not back to normal.”
Serena stopped short. “Really? That’s good to hear.”
Odd. She was taken aback by my statement.
“Why’s that so surprising?” I pushed, wanting to get to the bottom of her strange reaction.
“Oh, no, not that.” She waved her hand dismissively. “The fact that you would tell me. I didn’t even have to twist your arm.”
Her smile told me it was a joke, but the glint in her eyes made me wonder.
“Of course I would tell you,” I protested. “He’s your brother. You have every right to know how he’s feeling.”
“It’s just…you and I didn’t start off the greatest.”
And you’ve been avoiding me. I shrugged. “I’m not catty, and I hate women who are.”
“A straight shooter. I see why my brother likes you so much.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but she continued.
“I made soup. Do you think Alessandro would eat some?” She shifted.
I bit my tongue, fighting back the urge to ask what the prim and proper butler thought of her cooking, since he took such issue with me doing the same.
“We can try! And if he doesn’t, I’ll take some. Soup actually sounds great.” Padding after her on my bare feet, I followed Serena into the kitchen where a pot of rich, nutritious noodle soup simmered.
Pastina—I sighed, instantly transported to my childhood. “My mama said this could cure anything.”
Serena laughed. “Mine too.”
But she wasn’t smiling.
Whatever this truce was between us, I didn’t want to break it, but there was something there.
“What’s that?” a gruff voice asked from behind.
“What are you doing here, Minstrel?” Serena’s voice softened, and she smoothed back some of her perfectly styled hair.
Dante smirked. “Checking in that you aren’t poisoning my best friend.”
“Do you want some soup, Dante?” I asked, scooping a bowl for Mancini.
“You look the picture of health.” The number two gave me a skeptical once over.
I shrugged. “I’m taking high doses of the vitamins that you so kindly picked up for us.”
“And here I thought you two concocted some scheme to make the don sick, so you could take over,” he mused, but there was a menace behind his words.
Serena sashayed to the number two and leaned into him. “If we wanted to kill the don, we wouldn’t waste time trying to heal him.”
There was something there—at least on her part. It pulsed in the air. That girl had it bad for the don’s fixer.
Unfortunately for her, Dante didn’t look at her.
Wondering what they would do if left alone, I lifted the tray but set it back down. “Since you’re both here, I have a question. Who takes the chain of command in the don’s absence?”
“That would be his underboss, Antonio,” Dante responded cautiously.
I faltered. “So not you.”
Dante gave me a crooked grin. “Not me. I don’t want that power.”
“But you know Alessandro well,” I insisted. “I want to give him vitamins through shots and IV treatments. It will speed his recovery. But I don’t feel that I can make that call. What do you two think about it?”
“Me?” Serena’s brows shot to her forehead. “I’m the least qualified person to offer an opinion about my brother’s well-being.”
I sighed. Her answer was unsurprising. “Dante?”
“Sweetheart, you’re his wife.” Dante shoveled a spoonful of soup in his mouth. “He wouldn’t have married you if he didn’t want you in that position of authority.”
“But you joked about the soup being poisoned. Is he going to be mad if I let an outside company come in and inject him?” I insisted.
“You read too many novels,” the fixer muttered.
I jerked back in surprise. “How do you know what I read?”
Dante only grinned.
“You’re monitoring my phone,” I surmised. I suspected it after he told me he had my number, but to hear him admit it sparked that anger I was trying so desperately to keep in control. “Unbelievable.”
“ Mated to the Alpha. Really?” he countered.
I wasn’t defending my reading choices to him. They were mine, and mine alone. Tipping my chin in the air, I left.
But the mobster’s laughter followed me from the kitchen.
Oh, if we were back home, what I wouldn’t give to whip him into shape! Vengeful thoughts played through my head as I slowly climbed the stairs, breathing through the discomfort.