Chapter 13
13
DOMENICO
F uck, this hurts .
My brain felt foggy, but I was definitely aware of the pain.
But I didn’t feel any burning.
I wasn’t hungry and only slightly thirsty.
Since I was lying on my back, that ruled out being face-down on the ground and weeping.
And if I was in bed…that meant an eternal marathon was out, too.
There didn’t seem to be any smoke filling my nose and lungs.
Despite how much it hurt, I dragged my eyelids up for a microsecond, just long enough to reassure myself that they weren’t sewn shut.
Six levels of purgatory ruled out.
That last one, though—didn’t Dante say they carried around heavy stones?
It felt like a massive rock was sitting on my chest every time I took a breath.
Well, fuck. Damn you, Dante. Damn your Inferno and your fucking rocks.
“It’s stones, and they carry them on their backs,” a familiar deep voice said in a dry tone.
Had I said that out loud?
Trying not to cause myself more pain than necessary, I pried my eyes open once again.
Rafa stood at the end of my bed, his arms crossed and dark eyes unreadable.
“You’re not in hell, brother,” Leo said before he walked to stand at the side of my bed.
“Yet,” Rafa said.
Shifting my gaze to my brother, I rasped, “I’m not so sure.”
Suddenly, my last memories came screaming back.
“Gabriella!” I bellowed as I tried to jackknife up in bed, only to be shoved back down by my cursing brother.
“Calm the fuck down, Domenico. Mamma will have my ass if you pop a stitch. Or die.”
Luckily, the bed was already propped up so it was easier when I tried to sit again, but I still didn’t have the strength to fight Leo. “I need to?—”
“She’s fine,” Rafa stated flatly. “Just a few bruises from where the bullet hit the vest.”
“You saved her life,” Leo murmured. “If it hadn’t hit you first, it probably would have penetrated the vest.”
“Leo, go tell the nurse to page Domenico’s doctors and let them know he’s awake. But keep everyone out of this room while I have a word with him.”
Leo glanced briefly at Rafa, then back at me. Guilt swirled behind his eyes, and I could tell he was torn, struggling with his loyalty to me and The Family.
I wasn’t about to let him jeopardize everything to support me just because I was his brother.
“You couldn’t have talked me out of it, Leo,” I grunted. “And even if you’d convinced me back at the apartment, I’d still be in this bed.”
He watched me silently for a moment, then placed his hand on my shoulder for a beat before turning and walking out of the room.
“You’ve made your point, Domenico,” Rafa murmured, his tone devoid of inflection. “But I already knew Leo didn’t support your decision or even know for sure what you’d decided.”
“How?”
He didn’t answer right away, as if he couldn’t decide how to respond. Then he wrapped both hands on the rail at the foot of the bed and leaned forward as though he was too tired to hold his weight up on his own.
“Because the only man besides my father and brothers who had my complete and unconditional trust was you. And I still don’t doubt that if someone was disloyal to me, you wouldn’t stop to think, you’d act. They’d either be dead or locked in one of our holdings before they knew what was happening. So I knew Leo wouldn’t have encouraged you in an act of betrayal. You wouldn’t have let him.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. He wasn’t wrong. I might not execute my brother for crossing Rafa, but letting him get away with it would never cross my mind.
“Before we get to anything else, you should know, we dismantled Oswald’s and Snyder’s operations.”
“Dismantled?”
Rafa cocked his head to the side. “Things tend to fall apart when most everyone in a syndicate is dead.”
“She’s safe,” I rasped, the relief taking away my aches for a moment.
“Yes. So now what? What are my choices when I am betrayed by the man I know—without a doubt—would never allow anyone else to do it?”
Rafa raised his head and met my gaze. The mask he usually wore had dissolved, and I was no longer looking at my boss, the ruthless Mafia leader. I was faced with my friend and surrogate brother.
With each breath I took, it felt like I had an ice pick in one of my lungs. But when I saw the deep hurt in Rafa’s eyes, the sadness there…it shocked me and intensified the pain I felt in my chest.
I’d always known he would be furious when he found out about my relationship with Gabriella. That he would feel betrayed. But I hadn’t expected it to cut so deep, as if I’d bruised his heart.
Rafa shook his head, and his mouth twitched. “In some ways, the perplexed expression on your face answers my question.”
“Pardon?”
“Sometimes, I forget that, unlike me, you don’t truly wear a mask. You have walls, but even those of us you’ve allowed past them don’t see a version of you that is completely different. You are not ruled by emotion, by your heart. You assign value to people based on their actions, and since there is no constant in that way of viewing things, people don’t know where they stand with you. It’s one of the things that makes you so fucking good at what you do. The only thing predictable about you is that you’re unpredictable.”
Again, I couldn’t disagree. “I know my mind and heart don’t work the way they should.”
Rafa shook his head and sighed. “Believing that about yourself is why it’s so hard for you to understand how your actions have cut me so deeply. It also helps me to understand why, instead of coming to me about your feelings for Gabbi, you fought them until they broke you.”
I wasn’t sure where he was going with all of this, and I was too fucking exhausted to try to puzzle it out myself.
“Can I see her?” I asked tiredly.
“I haven’t decided yet,” he replied with complete honesty.
“You know I won’t stay away from her,” I warned. “You’ll have to kill me if you want me to leave Gabriella.”
“Another reason you aren’t rotting in a trash dump.”
Again, said with complete honesty.
“Are you trying to make my head explode with all this cryptic bullshit?” I blurted, frustration coloring my tone.
Rafa silently studied me for so long that I’d nearly given up waiting for him to answer when he finally moved. He grabbed a chair and brought it over to the side of the bed. “Answer some questions for me, then I’ll make a decision and explain, affare ?”
“ Sì .”
“Do you love her?”
I didn’t know what to say.
Rafa scratched his chin thoughtfully. “You aren’t sure.”
“She is everything to me,” I told him fiercely. “I will always choose her first, and if that means that you decide to kill me, I will claw my way back from all seven levels of hell to be with her.”
Rafa rolled his eyes and shook his head. “That’s love, coglione . It looks and feels different to everyone.”
Well, fuck. How had I been this stupid? Damn, I’d loved Gabriella since the moment she’d returned from New York.
“You have to stop looking at the way everyone else sees the world. As if you’re broken for seeing it differently. Somehow, you can’t understand how anyone would have the same loyalty and respect for you that you have given to them. It shouldn’t surprise me that you didn’t think your actions would hurt me, rather than just infuriate me. But like I said…unpredictable.”
“Are you waiting for the poison to kick in and figured you’d pass the time by talking more in one conversation than you have in the decades I’ve known you?”
Rafa cracked a smile. “I’m insulted you think I would be that bush league when choosing how to eliminate you.”
I shrugged, then winced when pain shot through my chest. Fucking Snyder and this damn bullet hole.
There was a commotion out in the hall, and Rafa sighed.
“It seems my time is almost up.” He stood and moved the chair, returning to the end of the bed. “Look, fratello , the truth is, you knew I wouldn’t think you were good enough for my sister. And in some ways, I still do. But that has more to do with the life we lead than who you are and how you feel about her. If you swear that she is and always will have your love and complete loyalty, then I’ll give you my blessing.”
“Thank fuck,” I grunted, dropping my head back onto the pillow. I was really dreading having to kill my best friend for keeping me from the woman I loved. It definitely would have put a strain on my relationship with her.
“With some conditions,” Rafa added, making me mentally sigh.
When the fuck would he shut up and let me see my woman?
“I expect you to protect her with your life.”
“Agreed.”
“And marry her.”
“As soon as possible.”
Rafa’s eyes narrowed, and the Mafia King of the South was staring at me once again. “And there better be a fucking wedding before I hear about any babies.”
Shit.
The saints were on my side at that moment because I was saved from lying to Rafa—or admitting that she could already be pregnant—when Gabriella came bursting into the room.
“Mico!” she cried, racing toward my bed, tears streaming down her cheeks. I braced myself, knowing it would hurt, but I was more than happy to feel the pain if it meant she was in my arms.
She scrambled onto the bed and threw herself at me, pressing her lips frantically against mine.
I groaned from the agony radiating through my body.
“Oh, crap! Am I hurting you?” she asked tearily as she tried to back away.
“Don’t give a fuck,” I grunted, dragging her up until she was straddling me and I was sealing my mouth over hers.
A throat clearing made Gabriella jump, and I scowled at her brother when she stopped kissing me and looked at him with a sheepish smirk.
“Out,” I growled.
Gabriella giggled, and Rafa shifted awkwardly.
“I’ll come back later,” he mumbled. His wife, Vivienne, was waiting by the door, and when he turned and faced her, she shot a look at Gabriella that had them both breaking into peals of laughter.
I turned my attention back to Gabriella, pulling her close once more, but Rafa’s voice interrupted again.
“Domenico.”
I turned my head to see him glaring at me, then glancing meaningfully at his sister, who was basically plastered against my body. “Don’t forget that third condition.”
“What condition?” Gabriella asked as she sat straight up and looked at her brother warily.
“Nothing to worry about, sole mio ,” I murmured. “We just need to get married fast. Probably in the next few days.”
“What the fuck?” Rafa’s roar had Vivienne and Gabriella covering their ears while I just rolled my eyes.
“How far along are you, Vivienne?” I asked casually.
She blushed hard and yanked on her husband’s arm. “Let’s go, babe. I think I need something sweet and salty. The baby is hungry.”
Rafa’s attention was sufficiently diverted when he flipped around and hurriedly guided his wife out of the room, muttering something about the stubborn woman going hungry.
Gabriella laughed, then reached for me again, but I palmed her face and held her back to stare into her gorgeous brown eyes.
“I love you, sole mio .”
She blinked a couple of times as if in shock, then she lit up the whole fucking room with her smile. “I love you too, Mico.”
Before we could say anything else, the doctors bustled into the room. I refused to let Gabriella off the bed, but they stopped grumbling about it after one sharp look from me. Besides, the De Angelis family owned the pediatric wing of this hospital, and the De Luca’s owned the one I was currently stuck in.
They filled me in on the injuries, surgeries, and what came next until I couldn’t be patient any longer.
“Out!” I bellowed.
Gabriella turned tomato red, burying her face in my chest to hide her laughter.
When they were gone, I lifted her head to kiss her once more, but she stopped me with a question. “Will you tell me why you call me your sun?”
I brushed some flyaway hair away from her face and kissed her forehead, then her nose, following them up with a quick peck on the lips. “Because you’re the light in all my darkness, Gabriella. Without you, I’m not living. The only reason I have any humanity in me is because you’re bright enough to shed light on it for others to see.”
“Well…” She blinked rapidly, trying to keep moisture from spilling down her cheeks. “That was unexpectedly poetic and incredibly sexy.”
I grinned, sending her into a state of shock for a beat, then she returned my smile.
“ Ti amerò per sempre, sole mio ,” I murmured.
“ Per sempre , Mico.”