4. Elio
CHAPTER 4
ELIO
“Motherfucker!”
My cousin Tina dabbed the bullet graze with antiseptic, the sting making me grit my teeth and think about hurling the bottle at the wall.
Anita and Estella were digging graves in the garden and tomorrow they would pick up seeds to sprinkle in the soil to disguise the bodies.
“Sorry,” Tina whispered.
“Not your fault,” I gritted out
“I think it needs stitches,” she said quietly.
Of course it fucking did.
“Let me get my supplies.”
She disappeared for a moment and returned with the very hefty first aid kit the family kept. Tina wasn’t a professional seamstress, but she had made so many clothes for the family that I trusted her hand with a needle. After waiting for the topical numbing agent to do some of its work, she started up and I stared at the curved suture needle as it glided through my skin. Tina made quick and tidy work of the stitches. When she was finished, she applied a little more antiseptic and then covered the whole thing with gauze before taping it down.
“All done.”
“Thanks.”
“Try not to get too rough with it for a couple of weeks at least.”
“I’ll do my best, but I can’t make any guarantees.”
“Get some rest. We can handle things for now.”
I didn’t argue, taking myself up to my broom closet of a room. What it lacked in size, it made up for in comfort. The bed was like a cloud and I sank into it, not bothering to strip off the rest of my clothing.
My dreams were haunted by lemon tarts. No matter where I turned trying to follow the scent, it vanished like smoke. It was ridiculous to call it a nightmare, even though I did wake up in a cold sweat just as the dream version of me was about to slide his cock into that slick omega body.
Sitting up with a sigh, I groaned and laid my hand over the gauze to feel the heat burning from my skin. Fucking fuck.
I risked a trip to the pharmacy and got some medication to head off the infection. Would it kill people to store their bullets somewhere clean? Maybe that was the fucking point. If you couldn’t take them out with a direct hit you could take them out with an infection.
I grumbled the entire walk home, my cock throbbing and completely at odds with the illness that had sunk its claws in. The fuck was this bullshit?
Once I was safely ensconced back at the villa, I showered away the sweat sticking to me, stroking myself to an unsatisfying completion beneath the water. When I was dry, I surveyed myself in the mirror, noting the plethora of bruises and scratches, including nail marks down my back. Apparently the omega had been feistier than I’d realized. I squinted into the reflective glass and hitched my leg up, Captain Morgan–style, on the counter.
What the actual fuck?
Was that a bondbite? I stared at it and dug out a hand mirror from beneath the sink and angled it so I could see better. Bites in general during sex weren’t at all uncommon, especially when they felt so fucking good on the scent glands, but the mark looked like it had already settled into a silvery scar. There was no way the omega had been in heat. I’d have lost way more than a few hours to her if she had been.
Which begged the question. How on earth did I have a bondbite when the only one who could’ve given it to me hadn’t gone into heat?
“Elio, come to eat!” Anita called up the stairs.
I took my surly attitude downstairs and sat down hard at the table.
“Did something crawl up your ass?” Anita asked.
“I just showered. Come smell me.”
“Ew.”
“Just do it.”
Anita walked over with a roll of her eyes and dipped down, taking a whiff of me. “You obviously didn’t scrub very hard. You still smell like a whorehouse.”
“But what specifically?”
“Delizie al Limone, if I had to guess.”
“Fuck.”
“Why?”
With an impatient sigh, I broke down the story of taking the fleeing omega to Rome.
“That doesn’t make any sense, though,” Anita said. “Heats aren’t that short.”
“I know that, but I have her bite on me and her scent is stuck to me, so what else is it?”
Anita shrugged. “I’m not a doctor. I don’t know what the fuck is going on.”
I’d have to wait until I got back to the States for any answers. I was stuck here for at least a couple more weeks while everything got resolved, which meant I would have to stew for that much longer.
The mob rivals left us in peace after losing three men, and with each day that passed, I wished more and more that they would show up just so I could shoot someone. Anita was ready to bury me in the garden right alongside the recently dead.
“You snap at me one more time and I’m getting the shovel. I don’t give a fuck if you’re family or not.”
As often as I was an asshole, I didn’t mean to be in this particular case. I was sleeping like shit. Every moment my eyes were closed, my brain was full of that omega, and I was stuck here . To their credit, my cousins did work as quickly as possible and they all found other places to go, but it still took time.
“You’d better have an appointment already booked with a doctor for when you get home,” Anita told me.
“And what would that accomplish?”
She snorted. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe they could remove the stick from your ass.”
I flipped her the bird.
“Seriously, though. You should make sure a bonding was what actually happened. Maybe it was some other weirdness.”
I guessed it was possible, but I wasn’t sure what else would make me crave someone with every molecule of my being and go damn near out of my mind to be separated from them. I’d been chafing my cock raw, taking care of myself a dozen times a day just to try to get my body to calm the fuck down. That never worked, at least not for long. I was pretty sure the only thing that would help would be sinking into the sweet little cunt that smelled like lemon tarts.
“I’ll talk to one of the physicians that comes by the compound,” I promise.
It was probably a lie, in all likelihood. I wasn’t even planning on going directly to the compound, even though that would be what Bianca would expect. I couldn’t go there, couldn’t take the risk that she would call me into her bed and I’d be able to do fuck all. The thought of touching her, which had been for many years a mixture of anywhere from a pleasant duty to a crushing obligation, was enough to turn my stomach now. I wouldn’t be able to fake it with her, and if she might kill me for the slight, I was going to make damn sure I had my fill of a mate before that happened.
My main plan was to lie about my flight date. Bianca wasn’t a babysitter by any stretch of the imagination. She trusted us to have our shit together and if I told her I was coming home a week later than I intended to, she’d have no reason to think I’d lied.
I paced the halls of the villa, hypervigilant and riddled with anxiety. Fucking hell, bonds were annoying. Who chose to inflict this upon themselves? Idiots, that’s who. The only recently bonded pair I knew was Marco and Gianna back at home, but that had been a bond under duress for both of them. Not exactly a choice, but it still resulted in the same outcome. Maybe I could talk to them about it.
I checked my gun for the hundredth time that day. If they weren’t about to sell the villa, I’d have suggested they install a shooting range so I could work out some of this nervous energy. Unfortunately for me, that, among the many other things I wanted right now, would have to wait.
I kept careful watch on the trucks that came by all through the next day to collect each of my cousins in turn with their essential belongings, transporting them to apartments in various cities throughout Italy, where they could pretend at a normal life. The last to go for the day was Anita, who’d stayed behind with me until all the others were gone.
“The sale on the villa just closed with the fuckers running us out of here,” she told me. “Generations of Angelos walked these halls and now it’s just the end of it.”
I sympathized with her to a point, but I’d long since shed my attachment to this place. Grateful as I was that the legacy of my family had existed somewhere , I preferred to think it was carried on in the people rather than the places they’d dwelled. With the Angelo matriarch buried in the churchyard, and too much blood soaked into the walls of the family home, we had no real reason to hold onto the villa. It was beautiful, as a great many buildings were in this part of the world, but its future was out of our hands.
“There’s no end to the family, Anita. Nonna would clock you for suggesting it. You and your sisters, our cousins, me… we’re the important part. As much as Nonna loved the villa, you know she would say the same.”
Anita snorted. “Eventually, maybe. I’m half-surprised we didn’t have her haunting us the moment we drew up the papers for sale.”
“Maybe she needed peace as much as the rest of you. She was no stranger to the bloodshed of this place.”
Anita sighed and leaned against me, the first sign of affection from her in days. “I know you’re right, but I’m still sad. And you’re leaving just when I started getting used to you.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “Well, if my boss doesn’t take kindly to me having a mate, maybe I’ll come straight back here and you can suffer through having us as roommates until we figure shit out.”
“You joke, but any of us would welcome you back.”
Some of the tension in my shoulders loosened. “I know. I appreciate that more than I can express. It’s so different here than at home. Family feels like it means something else to all of you, but at home it’s all about what I can give them while working for Bianca.”
“The Angelo men weren’t so different when they were still alive,” Anita said. “Luckily for you, the women are all that’s left, so you don’t have to put up with that bullshit on two continents.”
I laughed and hooked my arm over her shoulders. “You’d better take really good fucking care of yourself while I’m gone.”
“I will, but the demand goes both ways. Keep me updated on the mate situation, yeah?”
I nodded, and the two of us finally parted ways, her into the last truck, and me on the back of my bike. Now there was only the distance to the airport and a trip across the ocean that separated me from my goal.
As much as the wait would be agony, it would be over soon.
Amara Pesci. I turned her name over my tongue, walking my memory over her address. She’d better be ready because I was coming for her.