CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The harsh, industrial reality of the warehouse was much less forgiving in the cold light of morning.
Pale, gray sunlight filtered through the high, grimy skylights set into the corrugated steel roof, illuminating thick, drifting motes of dust in the cavernous space. Cassia woke to the distinct, uncomfortable sensation of a stiff neck and the smell of stale coffee and old concrete.
She blinked, her eyes feeling and dry, and found herself staring at the rough texture of the wool rug that had been meticulously tucked around her shoulders. She pushed herself up into a sitting position, the thick wool sliding down to pool at her waist.
A few feet away, standing by a bank of tactical monitors, Zoran Valente was speaking in low, rapid Italian to one of the perimeter guards.
As Cassia moved, the massive enforcer turned, his dark eyes catching the movement.
He tapped the guard’s shoulder, dismissing him, and walked over to the leather couch.
"Good morning, Doctor," Zoran said, his voice a low, respectful rumble.
He looked too awake for a man who had been fighting in an alleyway just hours prior.
"The morning patrols have reported in. The streets are clear. I have a car and two of Dante’s best men waiting outside the loading dock to escort you back to your apartment. "
Cassia let out a long, slow breath, running a hand over her face to wipe away the lingering exhaustion. She swung her legs off the couch, slipping her feet back into her sensible leather boots. "Thank you, Zoran."
"It is the least we can do," Zoran replied with a slight bow of his head.
Cassia stood up, reaching for her leather medical bag resting on the nearby wooden crate. She turned around to survey the space, her pale blue eyes instantly seeking out her patient.
Dante was sitting at a folding metal table a dozen yards away, a steaming cup of coffee in his uninjured hand, reviewing a stack of paperwork Marco had handed him.
He was wearing a clean black t-shirt that had undoubtedly been procured from one of the safe house's emergency caches.
Despite the deep, freshly sutured blade wound in his shoulder and the laceration across his ribs, he looked infuriatingly composed.
Cassia marched across the concrete floor, her boots clicking sharply, radiating the precise, no-nonsense authority of a senior attending physician beginning her morning rounds.
Dante looked up as she approached, a slow, incredibly warm smile immediately curving his lips. He set his pen down on the table.
"Did you sleep well, Cassia?" Dante asked, his voice a smooth, velvet hum that seemed out of place in a gritty warehouse.
"I slept as well as one can on a twenty-year-old leather couch in an active mafia bunker," Cassia replied drily, stopping in front of the table. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest. "Now, listen to me carefully, because I am only going to say this once."
Dante leaned back in his folding chair, giving her his undivided attention. The amusement was already dancing in his icy green eyes. "I am listening."
"You are to keep the bandages dry for forty-eight hours," Cassia instructed, her tone clipping along at a rapid, professional pace.
"If you shower, you wrap the entire left quadrant of your torso in plastic.
You do not lift anything heavier than a coffee mug with that arm.
You will take the antibiotics I left in the bag on the crate, twice a day, with food, until the bottle is empty.
And you will have your own physician check the sutures in three days for any sign of localized infection. "
She paused, narrowing her eyes at him, her exasperation boiling right back to the surface.
"Though," Cassia added pointedly, her voice sharpening with irritation, "by now, you really should know this routine by heart. Given how many times you have managed to get yourself sliced open or shot in the last month alone, you should be perfectly capable of managing your own postoperative care."
Dante couldn't help the chuckle that rumbled in his chest. He looked at the fierce woman scolding him in the morning light, and he felt that same, incredible surge of pure elation he had felt the night before.
"I will try my best not to get hurt again anytime soon, Doctor," Dante promised, his tone half-joking, laced with a teasing charm.
Cassia did not find it funny. She shot back immediately, her patience evaporated.
"Even if you do get hurt again, Dante, do not bother calling me," Cassia snapped, leaning forward slightly, her blue eyes flashing with defiant fire.
"I am a trauma surgeon at a major hospital.
I am not here to serve as your personal emergency contact every single time you manage to injure yourself. "
Dante watched her, his smile refusing to waver.
"It is genuinely ridiculous," Cassia continued, her hands flying up in a gesture of pure exasperation, comparing him to the most frustrating demographic of patients she treated.
"You are like a slow toddler wandering through traffic.
Do you possess any sense of spatial awareness at all?
Any concept of self-preservation? Or is it a requirement of your position to just walk blindly into every object in the city of Rome? "
In the middle of her rant, as the clinical insults spilled from her lips, Dante moved.
He didn't move aggressively, nor did he move with the speed he had used in the alleyway. He moved slowly, deliberately, his uninjured right hand lifting from the surface of the folding table.
Cassia was still speaking, mid-sentence in her lecture about his complete lack of common sense, when Dante reached out.
His long, warm fingers brushed lightly against her cheek. With a touch that was incredibly gentle, and unexpectedly reverent, Dante tucked a loose, stubborn strand of auburn hair securely behind her ear. His fingertips lingered for a fraction of a second against the soft skin of her jawline.
Cassia froze.
The words died instantly in her throat. The fierce, prickly momentum of her rant vanished into thin air, leaving her standing frozen in the middle of the warehouse floor.
She stared at him, her eyes wide, caught off guard by the breathtaking intimacy of the gesture.
It wasn't the touch of a mob boss. It was the touch of a man who cherished the very air she breathed.
A sudden, traitorous rush of heat flooded her chest, rising rapidly up her neck until a faint, unmistakable blush colored her pale cheeks.
Cassia’s heart gave a violent, chaotic thud against her ribs.
She was a woman who could stare down an arterial bleed without blinking, a woman who had fought off armed men in dark alleyways without her pulse spiking.
Yet, a single, gentle touch from Dante Fazzari had short-circuited her central nervous system.
Dante didn't say anything to break the spell. He didn't mock her silence, nor did he press his advantage. He let his hand fall back to the table, watching the flush of pink spread across her face. He smiled—a soft, genuine, devastatingly tender smile.
"I will try my best, Cassia," Dante finally murmured, his voice dropping to a low, whisper meant only for her. "I will see you soon."
Cassia opened her mouth, desperately searching for a retort, a sarcastic comeback, anything to reestablish the defensive armor she had spent her entire life building.
She found nothing.
Still visibly flustered, her mind blank and deeply annoyed by her own physical reaction to him, Cassia didn't argue the point. She snapped her jaw shut, spun sharply on her heel, and marched toward the steel doors of the loading dock where Zoran’s men were waiting.
She didn't look back.
***
By the time the sleek, black armored SUV carrying Dante and Zoran pulled through the towering wrought-iron gates of the Fazzari estate, the morning sun was burning bright and hot over the Italian countryside.
Zoran killed the engine in the circular driveway, and the two men stepped out onto the gravel.
Zoran couldn't stop grinning. From the moment Cassia had practically sprinted out of the warehouse, the massive enforcer had been highly amused by the entire sequence of events. He walked up the wide stone steps of the main house, occasionally glancing sideways at his boss.
Dante Fazzari was practically glowing.
There was no other word for it. The dark, brooding aura that had clung to him for the better part of a decade was gone. Despite the fact that he was moving a little stiffly, favoring his newly stitched shoulder, he carried himself with a lightness, an effortless buoyancy that defied his injuries.
They walked through the grand foyer and turned into the sunlit family parlor.
Concetta Fazzari was sitting in a high-backed velvet armchair by the window, a cup of tea resting on the small table beside her. She looked up from the leather-bound ledger in her lap as the two men walked into the room.
Her dark, observant eyes swept over her son in a fraction of a second. She took in the unfamiliar black t-shirt, the slight stiffness in his posture, and, most importantly, the brilliant, unguarded brightness radiating from his pale green eyes.
Concetta set her ledger down with a soft thud. She didn't panic. She didn't gasp. She crossed her legs and offered a knowing, slightly exasperated smile.
"Let me guess," Concetta said, her voice dry but laced with deep maternal amusement. "You managed to get yourself hurt again last night."
Dante walked over to the sideboard, pouring himself a glass of sparkling water. "It was a minor disagreement in an alleyway, Ma."
"And," Concetta continued, holding up a manicured finger, her eyes gleaming with certainty, "Dr. Cassia Thorn had to come and patch you up once more.
And that, apparently, is the reason you are walking into this house looking like a man who just won the lottery instead of a man who just survived an assassination attempt. "