29. Sicily
SICILY
Fiore, Bella, and I had spent an hour finalizing what we needed to do to end this feud between the Luccas and Feras. Elena and Matteo had helped, and Matteo had even offered to support in the bloodier aspects of it all.
Everything was in place.
Everything except my body.
It felt like someone else’s, like I was pretending to be whole inside of a skin that wasn’t.
The bandages around my throat itched as I swallowed, and I wanted to rip them from me, but the white, sickly, thick material made me question what they were hiding.
“You okay?” Bella asked from the armchair next to the bed, squeezing my hand.
I smiled in response. “I just want these off.”
Fiorella stopped her pacing from across the room. “They’ve been on for a while. Just take them off for a bit.”
I swallowed.
“Cily?”
“What if it looks really bad?” I blurted. “What if I look really…messed up?”
Just as my words tapered off, the door pushed open. My heart stitched itself back together again only to rip apart at the sight of Milan’s face. He looked clean and healthy, unscathed in every way, but it was his eyes that looked hurt.
Hollow.
He was exhausted.
“Nothing about you could be messed up, Sicily.” He stepped into the room and immediately halted at who he spotted with me.
He regarded Bella and Fiorella with a sternness that hadn’t been there before, at least for Bella.
I knew what he was thinking before he said it, and it was exactly why we had to go through with this plan.
“It’s not their fault, Milan,” I said before he could say anything, but he wasn’t listening.
“Get out.” His nostrils flaring as he seethed the words.
I closed my eyes. “Milan—”
“Get the fuck away from her!”
Bella stood instantly, reaching for Fiore and tugging her out of the room. They dashed past Adriano and Francesco, who were standing in the open doorway with expressions that matched my shock.
Milan was breaking at the seams.
“Shut the door,” he barked, his voice hoarse as he panted.
A beat of silence passed between us before the door clicked closed.
“That was unkind,” I said softly.
He stepped forward, his shoes clicking against the laminate floor. “Her husband slitting your throat was unkind.”
I tapped the edge of the bed, shuffling over, but he didn’t sit down. He stood there in his tight shirt and smart pants like this was business where it was safe and unemotional.
“Milan, please.”
“Why are they here? Why is Cesare’s wife here?”
“It’s not her fault!” I said with an exasperated sigh. “Is it my fault you kidnapped her and she almost miscarried?”
He looked to the ceiling, clenching his eyes closed as he said firmly, “No.”
“Brenno and Fiore didn’t hurt me,” I said clearly. “Cesare didn’t either, not at first.”
He blinked, frowning, trying to understand. “I saw the video.”
“It wasn’t real.” Tears slipped from my eyes. “He’s really sick, Milan. He needs help.”
Milan took a seat beside me slowly, taking my hand and pressing it to his forehead as he exhaled deeply. “It was real to me.” I turned my palm, threading my fingers through his hair until he relaxed into my touch and whispered, “I was scared. It hurt me deeply to see you like that. I am sorry.”
Milan with emotions was someone else, a different kind of man, and though I loved him dearly, he still had a lot of healing to do, and I hoped that understanding his brothers would help him do that.
He paused, removing my touch and reaching out to my face tentatively, like he was testing what he was allowed to touch. “You said you wanted to take these off?” His thumb grazed the edges of the bandages.
I nodded, but the words I’m scared didn’t come. They didn’t need to. He’d learned what fear looked like on my face, and he softened, telling me he felt it too.
He lifted my chin with his fingers, assessing. “Would you like my help?”
“Can you just do it?”
Milan paused. “It may hurt if I do it.”
I gripped his wrist, steadying the slight shudder there. “I trust you.”
He leaned forward, pressing a kiss to my lips before holding my cheek in his hand and peeling the edge of the bandage away.
My breathing quickened, my fingers gripped the front of his shirt, and though it stung and burned at the stitches in my throat, the sight and feel of him acted like a buffer between me and the pain.
His fingers stilled when I winced. “Shall I stop?”
Tears prickled at the edge of my lashes as I whispered, “Does it look really bad?”
My heart sank as he frowned at it. I didn’t need to look flawless to be beautiful. I knew that. Milan was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. He had scars too, but this one would remind him every day of his past, of his brother who had hurt me, and his father who had hurt him first.
Milan pulled away the final stretch of bandage and stared.
It was bad. I could see it in his pained face. He didn’t want this reminder just as much as I didn’t. I was supposed to be the place that wasn’t his past, but now I was a living reminder of it.
My lip wobbled, and he paused it with his thumb, swiping along the dry, cracked skin there as he whispered, “You are exquisite, my angel.”
The tears still fell, but he caught them like he always did, pressing them into his skin instead of mine, taking everything for me.
“I don’t want you to look at me and think of them…of him.”
He reared back, frowning, like I’d slapped him. Milan closed his eyes as he inhaled deeply, and when he opened them, they were wet like mine. He stood abruptly, walking toward the bathroom to stand in front of the mirror. “Come here.”
I watched him go, my brows furrowed, and he nodded his head once, confirming that he wanted me to follow.
My legs wobbled like a baby deer’s as I tried to stand, my back strained from the lack of movement.
The hospital gown was the last thing I wanted anyone to see me in, but Milan didn’t look away.
He simply pulled me in front of him when I reached the bathroom, holding my shoulders as I shut my eyes, my stomach sinking at the thought of what I’d see.
Milan hummed like he was seeing something unexpected. “Why did you not tell me my hair was suboptimal?”
A small huff escaped me. “What does that even mean?”
“It looks like…Francesco’s.”
My lungs contracted tightly as I laughed, and it wasn’t until I opened my eyes and looked at his hair through the mirror that I’d realized that I’d looked. My smile dropped as my gaze found the long, jagged scar that stretched along my throat.
Damn Milan Lucca.
The stitches were neat, but the scar was red and inflamed still. It looked burned, like the knife had been heated by a flame and my skin was still alight.
Milan wrapped a strong, sturdy arm around my waist, pressing his face into my neck like the scar didn’t bother him. “This does not change how required you are.”
“You’ll be sad when you look at me,” I countered, trying to hold in the next wave of tears.
Instantly, like my words had switched him on, he spun me to face him.
My chin was gently tugged upward, and his lips found my new scar.
“When I look at you, sadness is not an emotion I feel,” he whispered, the words skating over the surface of the uneven skin.
“I feel joy. I feel intrigue. I feel obsession. I feel as though I should not be looking at your face as much as I do. I feel…love. Yes,” he said, affirming it. “I feel love.”
Love?
I knew Milan had always felt some semblance of love for his family, that he’d always felt even when he didn’t understand that he did, but to feel love required him to feel the way I did.
It was knowing that the combustion of emotions within wasn’t our love, but that the quiet, creeping sense of calm was instead.
Loving Milan didn’t look like huge bouquets of flowers and cried confessions of love in the rain—and not only because he hated plants and especially the rain, but because our love was knowing that he thought navy socks were bad luck, and how he brought me coffee in bed with the exact combination of milk and creamer I liked, as if he’d measured it.
It was knowing what limited us and having an extra pair of hands to break it down.
It was remembering what the demons looked like, but knowing that they couldn’t hurt us here.
“I love you,” I whispered, capturing his wide eyes and making them understand too. I pressed his hand to my chest. “Every part of you.”
His fingers touched my face slowly, dusting over my jaw, my nose, my temples as if that would make him trust me.
His mouth opened, and though I expected no sound to come, he stated proudly, “All I am is what I feel for you. I love you in every part of my body, even in my mind. I love you in ways I cannot understand but feel. The world where you are is my favorite place.”
I kissed him deeply, forgetting the scar and my unsteady bones and limbs, and hoped that he would still love me after what I was about to do.
“Milan?”
“Sicily?”
“It wasn’t Bella and Fiore’s fault.”
“I am aware.” He sighed, a sheepish expression crossing his face. “I said that word.”
“Say it again.” I laughed.
His lips twitched. Milan leaned in close and whispered, “Fuck.”
With what Fiore, Bella, and I were about to do, I had a feeling he would be repeating it over and over in a mere few hours.