CHAPTER 18
FIORELLA P.O.V.
Angelo kicked open the rotting, salt-eroded door of the hidden shack, the wood splintering inward with a sound like a gunshot.
He didn't politely usher me inside. He practically threw me through the frame to clear the doorway, his eyes already scanning the pitch-black tree line behind us for the telltale glint of a thermal scope or the mechanical hum of a drone.
I tripped hard over the threshold, my hand slapping against the damp, moldy wood of the doorframe to catch my balance.
A jagged splinter sank deep into the meat of my palm, but I was so numb I didn't even feel the sting.
"Inside. Now."
"I can't," I choked out, my teeth chattering so violently my jaw actually ached. "My leg won't—"
"Move or I'll drag you by your hair, Fiorella."
I stumbled the rest of the way in, breathing in the suffocating smell of rotting pine, sea salt, and the metallic tang of my own fear.
The freezing Sicilian mist was a physical weight crushing my lungs, but the invisible threat of my brother’s thermal snipers was infinitely worse.
Every second I spent tangled in that doorway was a second Angelo risked his head being blown off for a woman he repeatedly claimed was just a walking debt.
I collapsed against the far wall, my breath coming out in thick white plumes.
Angelo stepped in right behind me and shoved a heavy, rusted iron bar across the door.
The screech of metal on metal echoed like a scream in the cramped space.
He immediately moved to the single broken window, using a shard of loose glass from the sill to blindly trim a piece of old, oily tarp.
He jammed it over the gap, plunging us into a darkness so complete it felt like a physical blow.
The silence in the room was heavier than the chase.
It left me entirely alone with the lingering, bruised memory of his hands on me in the woods just an hour ago.
He checked the floorboards for stability, his heavy tactical boots making the wet wood groan as he paced the perimeter like a caged wolf tracking a scent.
"Stay away from the window."
"Is there anyone else out there?" I asked, my voice cracking.
"Only the dead and the ones who want to join them."
I slid slowly down the rough wall until my ass hit the floor, my ruined silk dress hiking up around my thighs as I inspected the damage.
The adrenaline that had kept me running on a shredded foot was gone, evaporating into a hollow, throbbing agony that made my stomach pitch.
I pulled my left foot toward me, gasping.
The skin was raw, caked in freezing mud and torn open.
The shredded silk of my slip was practically fused to the bark scrapes covering my back.
Every breath I took was a sharp, localized sting.
I tried to pick a sharp piece of gravel out of my heel with my fingers, but I was shaking too hard. My hands were vibrating, completely useless. The sheer audacity of my body failing me right now pissed me off more than the pain.
"Don't touch it."
"It hurts, Angelo."
"Hell, I know it hurts. Stop making it worse."
He dropped his tactical gear. The heavy clatter of ceramic plates hitting the floorboards vibrated up through my legs.
Angelo shed his vest and his rifle, his movements shifting from the jagged aggression of a cornered animal to the heavy, deliberate efficiency of a man who had patched himself up in holes exactly like this a thousand times.
He wiped a streak of sweat and grime from his forehead, his broad chest heaving beneath his black shirt.
He finally looked down at me. Not as his hostage. Not as leverage. As a casualty.
He rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. The 'Ferraro' crest tattooed on his right forearm stood out dark and mocking in the absolute gloom.
"You're a mess, Silvestri."
"Your family's mess," I snapped back, my pride completely feral and refusing to die.
"No." He stepped closer, his voice dropping an octave. "Tonight, you're mine."
I flinched as he reached for me, my spine hitting the freezing wall, but I had nowhere to retreat.
He dropped to his knees in the dust right in front of me, not asking for permission.
His hand shot out and caught my ankle, hoisting my bleeding foot straight onto his thick thigh.
The contrast was shocking. His hand was massive, calloused, and radiated a furnace-like heat against my ice-cold skin.
His thumb pressed firmly into my arch, locking my leg in place.
My immediate instinct was to kick him in the throat, scream bastardo, and drag myself into a corner.
But the warmth of his skin was a drug I was already entirely addicted to.
I hated myself for it. I hated that I wanted him to look at the wound, fix it, and acknowledge I was a living, breathing human being and not just a piece of collateral.
He brushed a clump of dried mud off my shin with the edge of his hand. The touch was unnervingly gentle.
"Stay still."
"Are you going to hurt me again?"
"If I wanted to hurt you, you wouldn't be breathing."
He dug a small, battered field kit out of his cargo pocket. He popped the cork on a small bottle of iodine with his teeth and, without a single warning syllable, poured the dark liquid directly over the raw, open cuts on my foot.
My back arched so hard my spine popped. I let out a strangled, breathless cry, my fingers flying out to dig directly into his shoulders as I tried to rip my leg away. The pain was a blinding, chemical fire.
"Cazzo, let go!" I shrieked, my nails biting through his shirt.
He held my ankle in a vice grip, immovable. "Breathe, Fiorella. Just breathe."
"I hate you. I hate you so much." I bit down on my own lower lip so hard I tasted the hot, metallic tang of blood, mixing in my head with the sharp, medicinal stench of the iodine. He let the dark liquid stain his dark trousers, completely unbothered by my thrashing.
When the worst of the burning subsided, Angelo stood up, towering over me. His voice was a low, sandpaper rasp.
"Take it off."
I stared at him, my brain stalling. "What?"
"The silk. It's wet. If you keep it on, the damp is going to drop your core temp and kill you faster than a bullet." He wasn't asking. He was stating a biological reality.
Stripping naked in front of this man in a freezing, rotting box felt like the final frontier of my dignity.
If I took it off, I wasn't Fiorella Silvestri anymore.
I wasn't the untouchable princess of a coastal empire.
I was just a desperate bitch trying not to freeze to death next to the man who burned my life down.
My fingers fumbled uselessly with the thin, torn straps of my slip. My knuckles were white, stiff, and completely uncooperative.
"No. I won't."
"Then die of hypothermia. I'm not burying you in this dirt."
He didn't even blink. His eyes weren't lustful. They were cold, calculating, and focused entirely on survival. That lack of desire almost pissed me off more than if he had leered at me. I finally surrendered. My pride was a luxury I literally couldn't afford right now.
I grabbed the hem of the shredded, mud-soaked silk and peeled it up and over my head.
The freezing air hit my damp skin like a physical assault, making my lungs seize in my chest. I sat there naked, shivering so violently my joints were popping, dropping the wet ruins of my multi-thousand-dollar slip into a pathetic pile at my feet.
I wrapped my arms tight around my chest, digging my elbows hard into my ribs to trap whatever pathetic spark of heat I had left.
"Done."
"Don't move yet." Angelo turned his back to me, giving me a sliver of darkness.
"It's... it's so cold, Angelo," I stammered, my voice sounding incredibly small.
He didn't answer with words. He unbuckled his belt, the heavy leather snapping in the quiet room.
He stripped his own clothes off, standing tall and entirely unashamed in the center of the shack.
I stared at his back, my eyes glued to the violence carved into his skin.
He had a jagged exit wound on his back shoulder, puckered white cigarette burns scattered across his ribs, and a long, thick blade scar running from his hip bone straight to his spine.
Every single mark was a testament to the war my family started. He didn't just survive the Silvestris. We forged him.
Then I saw it. A small, perfectly circular scar on his lower back. A bullet hole.
"My brother did that to you?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper over the wind outside.
Angelo paused, his back muscles flexing. "Alessio was too much of a coward. This was your father."
"He never told me."
"Your father didn't brag about the ones who lived."
Angelo turned around, fully exposed. He didn't try to hide himself.
He was heavily built, thick with corded muscle, his arousal half-present but ignored in the face of sheer survival.
He walked past me and grabbed the edge of a dusty, moth-eaten mattress shoved into the far corner of the shack, dragging a heavy, scratchy wool blanket out from an old wooden crate beside it.
He shook the blanket out. A massive cloud of dust rose into the air, catching the faint slivers of moonlight leaking through the tarp like tiny, dead sparks.
"There's only one blanket."
"Then you'd better get comfortable with the man you hate," he deadpanned.
"Stronzo."
He sat on the edge of the mattress, the rusted springs groaning in protest under his weight. He held up one side of the heavy wool, his dark eyes locking onto mine. "Get in before your heart stops, Fiorella. Move."
It was a command. If I walked over to that bed, if I crawled into his space willingly, whatever boundary still existed between us was going to disintegrate.
But I was literally dying on that floor.
I took a tentative, shaky step forward, my injured foot leaving a faint, dark smear of blood and iodine on the floorboards.