Chapter 9 Marcello
Marcello
The bathroom door shut, and I was left staring at a slab of wood like it owed me answers.
I didn’t sit. My body wouldn’t let me. I paced the narrow hallway—three steps one way, three steps back. I’d fought men in tighter corners, but somehow this felt worse.
Because behind that door was a woman I’d broken without meaning to.
The drug wasn’t supposed to do this. It was supposed to calm her, ease the panic, help a person sleep. A temporary escape. I hadn’t meant to steal her voice or blind her.
Every time I heard Tone’s soft instructions—“Step here, sweetheart… hold onto me… I’ve got you”—my jaw knotted tighter.
I leaned my shoulder against the wall, palms pressed flat to cool plaster. I forced slow breaths, the way I used to when rage got too close to spilling.
It didn’t work.
I saw the alley every time I blinked. Her small body cornered. Her scream trapped behind a hand. Four men who’d thought they were wolves. They’d died like vermin.
But it wasn’t their blood bothering me now.
It was the guilt—another weight tipping my already overfilled cup of regret past the point of spilling.
I scrubbed a hand over my face. “Get a grip, Marcello,” I muttered.
There was a soft hiss as the shower turned on. Then Tone murmured something gentle. Samira answered with her silence.
Silence. Because she couldn’t speak. Because of me. And I had no idea how long the effects of that stupid strip would last.
I pushed off the wall and started pacing again.
The water was still running when the door opened and Tone stepped out. She shut it behind her, arms crossed, eyes sharp. Her jaw was set in that way that meant I was in trouble. The kind of trouble only family could deliver.
She didn’t speak right away. She let the silence build until it was something jagged. Then she exploded.
“What the hell did you do, Marcello?”
I held her stare. “I stopped four men from destroying her.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.” She stepped closer. “Did you do something that caused this? She’s in shock. Is she naturally mute and blind?”
I looked away for half a second. That was all she needed.
“Oh, my God,” she breathed. “You hurt her.”
“Not intentionally.”
“That doesn’t make it better,” she snapped. “What the fuck did you do to her?”
Her voice echoed down the hall, but she didn’t care. She was furious—protective in the way these women always were of each other. The way I wasn’t equipped to be.
“I gave her something to help her sleep. She was terrified. I couldn’t—” I cut myself off before the words edged into something softer. “She must have had a bad reaction to it.”
“You think?!?” She shrieked.
She exhaled sharply, pacing now like she needed to burn the anger out of herself. “Marcello… you can’t just drug people not knowing what they’re capable of tolerating. You could have killed her!”
“She was in shock.”
“She was assaulted,” Tone corrected, eyes blazing. “She needed medical help, not you to control the situation. The way you thought it needed to be. This is serious, Marcello.”
“I didn’t have time for a hospital,” I bit out. “I didn’t think—I just reacted.”
I realized how lame that sounded to my own ears. I was second in line to the Cavalho mafia empire, and I didn’t have time to second-guess my decisions.
“So you brought her here?” she threw back. “To your place? To the one man in this family who doesn’t know what to do with a houseplant, let alone a traumatized woman?”
My teeth ground.
“She’s safe here,” I told her.
Tone studied me for a long moment, anger giving way to something else—disbelief, maybe. A little pity. And something like understanding she didn’t want to accept.
“What are you doing, Marcello?” she asked more deliberately. “Why did you drag a poor defenseless woman into your self-destruction?”
I shook my head because I didn’t have an answer. I could have stepped in after seeing her in that alley. I could have helped her, then sent her on her way. And that would’ve been the end of her story. But instead, I’d had to make it better. By making it worse.
“She was distressed ,” I explained. “I couldn’t leave her like that.”
Tone swore under her breath. A soft, pained sound.
“I hate that for her,” she murmured. “But compounding one wrong with another is not right, March. I understand your anger. I understand your need to lash out at the world. Because Alessio…”
Her voice cracked. And suddenly, I realized that my anger wasn’t mine alone.
Alessio and Tone, though not related by blood, had been like brother and sister in every way that counted.
They’d been inseparable. And I’d made the past few months about my grief, without thinking about anyone else.
Because my grief, my guilt, was too heavy to carry.
“Alessio deserves our anger. The world owes him that. He deserves our grief and our violence. But innocent people don’t.
Samira, whoever she is, didn’t ask to be attacked in an alley.
She didn’t ask to be blind and voiceless.
She’s just a victim of an unfortunate circumstance.
” She looked back at the bathroom door, then at me.
“It looks like she trusts you, more than she should. Don’t make me regret this, Marcello. ”
Something in my chest stuttered—annoying, unwelcome.
Tone noticed. Of course she did.
“Oh, don’t start imprinting,” she warned, pointing at me like I was a misbehaving dog. “You are not equipped for imprinting.”
I lifted a brow. “I’m not imprinting.”
“You’re hovering,” she fired back. “You hover over nothing.”
I didn’t dignify that with a response.
She sighed. “Look… I’ll stay with her for tonight. She shouldn’t be alone. She shouldn’t wake up blind and mute with only your grim face looking at her—even if she can’t see it right now.”
“I’m not leaving the villa.”
“Wasn’t suggesting you should,” she muttered.
The water stopped running and Tone started to turn back toward the bathroom, then paused.
“You need to be gentle with her,” she warned me. “More gentle than you’ve ever been with anything in your life, March. Because you did this to her, and it’s up to you to make it right.”
My throat tightened.
Tone nodded once, seeing something in my face she didn’t comment on.
“I’m going to help her dress then bring her out,” she said. “I need you to go and get us some decent food while I talk to her alone.”