21. Cielo
— ? —
Cielo
Giovanni takes a bullet two days later.
It’s a small thing, as these things go - a graze to his upper arm, caught during a confrontation with one of Ludovica’s remaining contacts.
He comes home with his shirt torn and blood seeping through the makeshift bandage Beppe applied in the field, and he tries to walk past me like it’s nothing, like he’s not dripping red onto the terracotta floors I’ve started thinking of as home.
“What happened?”
“Minor setback.” He’s already heading for the stairs. “I’ll clean it up.”
“Giovanni.” I step in front of him, blocking his path. “What. Happened.”
“One of the Falcone contacts wasn’t as cooperative as expected.” His jaw is tight, his face pale under the stubble he hasn’t bothered to shave. “It’s handled.”
“Is it?” I look at the blood soaking through his sleeve. “Because it looks like you’re hurt.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“That’s not the point.”
We stare at each other for a long moment, and I see the exhaustion in his eyes - the toll that the past few days have taken, the weight of everything we’ve learned, the pressure of keeping us safe while hunting down the woman who’s been hunting us.
“Let me see it,” I say finally. “The wound.”
“Cielo-”
“Let me see it, or I’ll call Delphine and have her come inspect you like a horse with a lame leg.”
Despite everything, a ghost of a smile crosses his face. “Delphine would enjoy that far too much.”
“She would. So sit down and let me look.”
He sits.
* * *
The wound is worse than he made it sound - a deep graze that’s going to need professional attention, probably stitches, definitely antibiotics. But for now, all I can do is clean it and bandage it and try not to think about how close the bullet came to something vital.
“You should have told me,” I say, dabbing antiseptic onto the torn flesh. He flinches but doesn’t make a sound. “When you were going after the contact. You should have told me you were walking into something dangerous.”
“Everything I do is dangerous.”
“More dangerous than usual, then.”
“Would it have changed anything? Would you have asked me not to go?”
I’m quiet for a moment, considering. The honest answer is no - I understand, now, why this matters to him. Why finding Ludovica isn’t just about revenge, but about closure. About finally understanding the shape of the last five years.
“I would have wanted to know,” I say finally. “That’s all. If something happened to you-”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
“You don’t know that.” My hands are shaking as I wrap the bandage around his arm. “You can’t promise that. No one can promise that.”
He catches my wrist with his good hand, stilling my movements. “Cielo. Look at me.”
I look.
His eyes are dark and serious, but underneath the exhaustion, there’s something else - something that makes my breath catch.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “Not again. Whatever happens with Ludovica, whatever comes next - I’m not leaving you. I’m not disappearing. I’m going to be right here, annoying you, until you actually ask me to go.”
“And if I do ask you to go?”
“Then I’ll go - but only because you asked nicely, and only if you promise to call me the moment you change your mind.”
I laugh despite myself, a wet, shaky sound. “That sounds about right.”
“I’m stubborn. You knew that when you married me.”
“I did.” I finish wrapping the bandage and secure it with medical tape. “There. It’s not pretty, but it’ll hold until you can see a real doctor.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. I’m still angry at you for getting shot.”
“Grazed.”
“Whatever.”
He’s still holding my wrist, his thumb tracing circles on my pulse point, and the touch is doing things to me that I’m not ready to name.
“Cielo.” His voice is low, rough. “You’re shaking.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
“Because I was scared.” The admission comes out before I can stop it.
“When you came home bleeding, when I saw the blood on your shirt - I was terrified. And I’m angry about that, because I told myself I wasn’t going to care this much.
I told myself I was going to keep my distance and protect myself and not-”
I break off, unable to finish.
“Not what?” His thumb is still moving, still sending electricity up my arm.
“Not fall back in love with you.”
The words hang between us, heavy and dangerous.
“Back?” he says softly. “That implies you stopped at some point.”
“I tried to stop. Five years of trying.”
“Did it work?”
I shake my head, tears threatening. “No. God, no. It never worked. Not for one day.”
Gio is asleep down the hall, Delphine keeping watch in the chair beside his bed - she insisted, after the scare of the breach, and I was too grateful to argue. The doctor came and went an hour ago, leaving Giovanni with proper stitches and strict instructions to rest.
Now we’re alone in the bedroom, the door closed. Something has shifted since I finished his bandage - not desperate, not only hungry. The kind of closeness that comes after fear, when you need to prove to yourself that the person beside you is still real, still here, still yours.
I’m still holding his wrist. Or he’s still holding mine. The distinction has stopped mattering. His thumb moves over my pulse point in slow circles, and every circuit of it sends heat up my arm into places that have nothing to do with first aid.
“You’re still shaking,” he says quietly.
“I know.”
“Come here.”
I go. Carefully - aware of the bandaged arm, the fresh stitches under the gauze, the way he flinches when he shifts wrong.
I settle on the edge of the bed beside him, and he uses his good arm to pull me into his lap, straddling his thighs, my knees bracketing his hips.
The position puts us face to face. Close enough that I can see the gold flecks in his dark eyes.
Close enough that his breath warms my mouth.
“Your arm-”
“Is fine. Don’t you dare start treating me like I’m breakable.” His good hand slides up my back, under the hem of my shirt, palm spanning my spine. “I’ve had worse. I’ve had this conversation. What I haven’t had is you in my lap looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re deciding whether to kiss me or kill me.”
“Both feel reasonable right now.”
He laughs - soft, startled - and then I’m kissing him, because the alternative is crying again and I’ve done enough of that for one night. The kiss is careful at first. Tentative. Then his hand fists in the back of my shirt and he deepens it, and careful goes out the window.
“Shirt,” I murmur against his mouth. “I want - I need to feel your skin. But your arm-”
“Help me.”
I ease his ruined shirt the rest of the way off, mindful of the bandage, sliding the fabric down his good arm first and then carefully over the wounded one.
The body underneath is marked - old scars I know, new ones I don’t, and the white gauze wrapping his upper arm like a flag of everything that could have gone differently today.
I press my mouth to the skin just below the bandage. He inhales sharply.
“Does it hurt?”
“Not the way you think.” His good hand finds the hem of my shirt and lifts.
I raise my arms. The shirt comes off. My bra follows, his fingers working the clasp one-handed with a competence that would be impressive if I weren’t already so far past impressed.
“You. Touching me. That’s the thing that’s going to kill me. Not a fucking graze.”
My bare breasts brush his chest. The contact makes us both still for a second - skin on skin, the simple fact of it almost too much after everything.
Then his mouth is on my throat, my collarbone, the upper curve of my breast, and his good hand is cupping me, thumb stroking my nipple until I arch into the touch.
“Careful of your arm,” I gasp.
“Stop talking about my arm.” He mouths lower, takes my nipple between his lips, sucks gently. “Talk about what you want me to do to you.”
“I want-” My head tips back. His tongue is devastating. “I want your hand between my legs. I want you inside me. I want to feel you alive and hard and mine, and I want it carefully because if you tear those stitches I’m going to be furious.”
“So bossy when you’re scared.”
“I’m always bossy. You’ve just been gone too long to remember.”
“I remember everything.” He lifts his head, eyes dark. “Lie back. On your side. Facing me. I’m not putting weight on this arm and I’m not letting you do all the work.”
We rearrange - awkward, laughing once when his elbow catches the pillow wrong, then quiet again when we’re stretched out facing each other on the bed, my thigh hooked over his hip, his good hand free to roam.
He drags his palm down my stomach, under the waistband of my leggings, under my underwear, and then his fingers are sliding through the wet heat of me and we both exhale like we’ve been punched.
“Fuck,” he says against my throat. “Soaked. For me. After I came home bleeding and tried to walk past you like a fucking idiot.”
“Don’t remind me.” I rock against his hand. “Just - please-”
He pushes two fingers into me slow, watching my face, curling them until he finds the spot that makes my eyes flutter shut.
His thumb finds my clit. The rhythm he builds is unhurried, almost gentle - a man tending to something precious while his own body is still ringing from a bullet’s near-miss.
I clutch at his good shoulder and ride his hand, forehead pressed to his, breathing into the same air.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “Take what you need. I’ve got you. I’m right here.”
“Giovanni-”
“I know. Let go. Come on my fingers. Let me feel you.”
I come quietly - a shuddering, full-body release that has me muffling a cry against his mouth while his fingers work me through it. He kisses me through the aftershocks, soft and filthy, and when I open my eyes again he’s looking at me like I’m the only thing in the world that makes sense.
When I can breathe again, I slide down his body - careful, careful of the arm - and take him into my mouth. He swears, good hand fisting in the sheets, hips twitching like he’s fighting the urge to thrust.