“You will have to stitch her up yourself. You played this game and lost. You underestimated your opponent,” he drawled then left, leaving me standing there, fucking furious and fucking ecstatic.
I turned around slowly. Serafina was swaying but trying to stand tall. Her chin was covered in blood from the wound in her lip, from biting down on it to stop a scream. She didn’t give me a single one. My gaze dipped lower. Her nightgown was stained with the blood still trickling from the cut in her arm, which she cradled against her chest.
She was supposed to choose differently like all the other women always did. Instead, she’d caught me off guard, had taken the painful road, had forced my fucking hand. She hadn’t given me the triumph of offering her body to me on a silver platter in front of Dante fucking Cavallaro and her fiancé. Nino was right. I’d underestimated my opponent because I compared her to the women I’d dealt with so far, but Serafina was nothing like them. Proud and noble. I wouldn’t underestimate her again.
And I would get that fucking scream. I would get more than that.
My eyes were drawn to her arm. Why had she chosen that spot? When I looked back up, Serafina met my gaze with one of triumph. She knew she had won.
I stalked toward her, anger simmering under my skin. She tensed, swayed again but didn’t fall. I took her arm and inspected the wound. It wasn’t deep. I hadn’t put enough pressure behind the blade to cut deep. I hadn’t wanted to cut her at all, which was a new experience. Seeing the blood on her perfect skin didn’t give me the deep satisfaction it usually did.
“How did it feel to hurt me? Does it excite you?” she asked fiercely.
I leaned close, cupping her chin. She held her breath as I trailed my tongue over her lower lip, tasting her blood. I smiled darkly. “Not nearly as much as this.”
She jerked back and stumbled, but I caught her, because this wasn’t the fall she would take.
“We need to treat your wound.”
She didn’t protest and followed me silently back upstairs to the first floor, and my grip on her arm held her steady. I led her into my bedroom then my bathroom, where I kept the only medical kit in my wing. Nino was the one who usually handled this kind of shit. She leaned against the sink. “You should sit down,” I told her.
“I prefer to stand.”
I let go of her and she clutched the edge of the sink to steady herself. I bent down to retrieve the medical kit, but my eyes were drawn to the high slit in her nightgown revealing a long, slender leg. She shifted so her front faced me. I smirked up at her, but her skin was pale and a fine sheen covered her face. I grabbed the medical kit and straightened, regarding her more closely to judge whether she was going to pass out or not. She narrowed her eyes at me and straightened her shoulders with obvious effort.
The corner of my mouth twitched. I took out tissue adhesive. The wound wasn’t deep enough to require stitches. I couldn’t remember the last time a cut from me didn’t lead to stitches—or a funeral.
I took out disinfectant spray, and she stiffened but didn’t make a sound when the stinging spray hit her wound, but she did bite down on her lower lip again.
“If you keep doing that, the result will be twice as painful.”
She sent me a scathing look but released her bottom lip.
I began to put the adhesive on her wound, feeling a strange aversion to seeing the cut I had inflicted. I couldn’t quite define the feeling; it was foreign to me.
“So is this how it’s going to be? You cutting me open and stitching me back together?” she seethed.
“I’m not stitching you up. I’m gluing you together.”
She didn’t say anything, but I could feel her eyes on me. She tapped my forearm with my Camorra tattoo, brushing the crisscrossing scars there. “I wonder who inflicted those cuts,” she mused.
I froze and my head shot up. She held my gaze with the same look of triumph I had seen in the basement.
“I wonder who stitched you up afterward? Did you and Nino cut each other in some twisted brotherly ceremony and stitch each other up when you were done? You have the same cuts. Maybe I should ask him.”
I pushed her against the sink with my body, my hands clamping down on the marble counter as I shook with rage … and other emotions I would never allow.
Serafina looked at me, despite the fear taking over her perfect features.
“Never mention those scars again. And you won’t talk to Nino about this, not a single word, understood?” I growled.