Chapter 4 #2
Before responding, before moving out of the doorway and letting him in, I let my gaze drift over his shoulder to the street. When I was sure there was nothing there but his driver and the normal neighborhood cars, I turned my attention back to him.
“Good to see you, Cosimo. Come on in.”
“It isn’t like you to keep me waiting,” he said as he shuffled past me into the blessedly quiet foyer. “Is everything okay?”
It took everything in me not to glance at the stairs. I doubted Clara would make this easy on me, but the lack of noises coming from the upper levels of my house had my skin itching and my mind spinning circles.
“Everything’s fine,” I lied. “Just woke a little late and haven’t had my coffee yet.”
Cosimo gave a hard laugh. “Coffee, hmm? My doctor told me to switch to tea.”
“Your doctor sounds like a wise man.” I motioned to the leather club chair in my living room. “A man with your health concerns would be wise to cut back on caffeine and alcohol.”
“You’re sucking the fun out of life, Zeno.”
His own warning, one he told me when I was just a child, rattled through my head. “Sometimes you have to make sacrifices if you want to survive.”
The old man’s spine stiffened, and he turned my way as I backed toward the kitchen door.
“Let me grab my bag and we can get started.”
Just out of Cosimo’s sight, I yanked open the cabinet where I kept a stash of my medical supplies.
The small mirror hanging on the door showed a haggard man who needed a good, stiff drink.
I snagged a hair tie off the hook below the mirror and tied my hair back at the base of my skull.
Then I grabbed my bag, swallowed down nerves I was too fucking old to have, and went back to where my patient sat.
Beginning with a cursory exam, I listened to Cosimo’s heart and lungs. He was quiet, right up until I secured the blood pressure cuff around his arm.
“We’ve been friends a long time,” he said, gaze directed toward the picture of my parents that hung on the wall near the front window.
I watched the needle on the dial tick down, counting off seconds in my head rather than spilling the thoughts running rampant in my mind.
“You’ve been a loyal soldier to the cause. ”
Rather than telling him we’d never been friends, that I was no longer a soldier but a lieutenant, and loyal to Paulo, not some unnamed cause, I told him, “One twenty-eight over seventy-eight,” before jotting it down in my notebook.
“Hmm.” Cosimo looked away, head raised as if he were unhappy with me for his elevated blood pressure.
I bent to put the cuff back in my bag. Before I could take a seat across from him in the other club chair, he spoke again, filling the silence I often gave to my patients. “Is there anything you need?”
“Need?” I needed a certain someone under control. Under my thumb.
Under my body.
Fuck.
“Surely there must be something. Something from the old country, perhaps?”
Old country. The way he said it made it sound like I came from there. That my father hadn’t come to the United States as a young child. That my mother and I hadn’t been born right here in this great city.
That, after my father died when I was seven, my mother had the time or the money to take me across the Atlantic to a country that she’d never been to before.
Old country.
Somewhere I didn’t have the time or money to travel to so frivolously.
“What are you getting at?”
“A wife?” Cosimo looked at me like I was dumb. “I’m sure we can find someone to catch your eye. To take care of your house and your”—his gaze dropped briefly down my chest—“needs.”
I huffed out a breath, shaking my head. “I have no need for a woman. They only get in the way.”
Get in your mind, in your house, in your bed.
Until you couldn’t go through a single damned appointment without thinking of the sweet pussy you’d glimpsed as she ran, naked, up the stairs.
Cosimo lifted his eyebrows. Pursed his lips. “A man, then?”
A scoff burst from my lungs. Not hardly. “Not my cup of tea. Speaking of tea, I’d like you to make sure what you’re drinking is decaffeinated. And keep it down to one or two cups a day. Your blood pressure is better than it has been, but I’m not comfortable with it just yet.”
“Zeno.”
“I’m serious, Cosimo.”
“Yes, yes.” He waved me off. “I’ll drink your stupid decaf. I’ll cut my intake, I’ll eat the blandest food I can possibly get and go to my grave an unhappy man.”
“That’s not what I mean—”
“I understand. You’re uncomfortable talking about yourself, so you’re turning this on me.”
“You’re not here as my matchmaker. You’re here as my patient, and I’m your doctor. I want you to take care of yourself.”
“And I’m trying to make sure your needs are met.” The old man scooted toward the end of his chair. “I want to make sure you want for nothing. That there’s no possibility what happened to Fahrid could happen to you.”
I narrowed my eyes at the man.
Fahrid Ahmad had been one of D’Angelo’s lieutenants until last year. He’d been won over by our enemies, had passed off information to them, and when he was no longer needed they’d killed him in order to tie up loose ends.
But I wasn’t like Fahrid. My loyalty lay with the man who’d gone to war against my father’s murderers. The man who’d saved my life before giving me and my mother a chance to live.
Paulo D’Angelo helped us get back on our feet and set aside his own grief to make sure we were taken care of. He put me through school. He gave me my career.
My loyalty would never waver.
“You don’t have to worry about me. I have everything I need right here.”
Something niggled at the back of my brain, and though I swear I saw movement on the stairs over Cosimo’s shoulder, I refused to take a look. I stared back into his eyes, as if doing so could prove my loyalty was unshakable.
His lips flattened into a straight line, and he gave a quick nod of his head. “So be it.” Then he rose to his feet and shuffled toward the door without a backward glance.
Following after, I peeked up the stairwell while he had his back to me. “Remember what I said,” I told him, though even I wasn’t sure if I meant what I’d told him about his health or the state of my loyalty and love life.
He gave me a final look, one foot in my house and one hovering over the front step. “If anything should ever change, you come to me. I’ll take care of it.”
“Of course.” I shut the door behind him, not bothering to watch as he made his way down the front sidewalk to his car waiting at the curb.
“Everything okay?” Clara’s voice preceded her down the stairs, and my shoulders tensed before I turned, bracing to find her half-naked or worse. When I forced myself to turn, I was sure she’d fallen right into the “worse” category.
She was fully dressed, and she looked like an entirely different person.
Like her mother.
Like the high-class women who bowed down at that woman’s feet.
Clara looked years older than her age in high-waisted, wide-legged, white linen pants and a billowy, white silk tank top. Her hair was pulled up into a bun and she’d done her makeup to perfection.
My mouth turned to dust as my heart stuttered, then pounded out a hard beat in my chest. Every hair on my body rose as my skin tingled, my fingers itching to touch this woman who no longer looked like the young girl I’d always known.
For the briefest of moments, I considered giving in. Touching her. Holding her in my arms.
But I knew, that was the last thing I could do.
I’d pledged my life to the Syndicate.
I couldn’t have her, too.