“I have to go,” she told me without looking up from the text glowing on her screen.
She shoveled the last forkfuls of food into her mouth, then raced to her green gumboots to tug them on. I watched bemused as she finally spun to me and granted me a brief squeeze.
“If I don’t see you before you leave, I’ll miss you,” she murmured into my hair.
“I will be back in three days. If it was any other brand, I wouldn’t be going at all.” I kissed her soundly on the cheek, then pushed her away. “Now, be safe and enjoy your day. Sinclair can be a charming bastard when he wants to, so I’m sure you’ll have a grand adventure.”
She smiled tremulously at me, then quickly ducked out the door.
I stood frowning after her for a long moment, trying to pinpoint why her expression had bothered me so much.
It was only hours later, after I’d showered, packed for England, and was reading curled up on my couch with Hades that I realized why her smile had resonated with me.
It was the same one I recognized from my own face whenever I thought about Alexander.
I tried to dismiss it as my own bias spilling into my perceptions, but I knew Giselle would never continue to pursue a taken man unless she was very much in love with him.
Which meant Elena’s future was looking decidedly grim. I resolved to spend more quality time with my eldest sister when I returned, as if somehow my love would buffer the blow of her upcoming heartbreak.
I was still distracted when a raucous knock sounded on my door, and someone cursed loudly in Italian from the other side.
My heart jumped into my throat as I pulled the door open and saw Dante leaning in the frame, his big body bowed with pain and his teeth gritted and gleaming from his sweat soaked face.
“Madonna santa! Dante, what happened?” I demanded as he dropped his bunched-up jacket to the side table.
I stepped under one of his heavy arms to begin the process of dragging him into the house. He was over six feet five inches and quilted with dense muscle from his hands to his toes. It felt as if I was lugging a car behind me as I led him into the kitchen and propped him up on a stool at the island.
“Start talking, capo,” I ordered harshly as I took his white shirt between my teeth and ripped it cleanly in two.
“So eager to see me shirtless that you couldn’t wait to grab the scissors?” he asked drily, only a slight edge to his voice giving away the pain he was in.
I hissed as I saw the oozing wound in his left abdomen. “Cazzo, a bullet wound?”
He shrugged one shoulder, then groaned at the pain. “I’m an easy target.”
“Because you’re a fucking idiot?” I snapped.
“Because there’s so much of me to aim at,” he countered with a lopsided smirk.
I rolled my eyes at him as I snagged a clean dishtowel from the drawer and pressed it a little too hard against his wound. “Hold that tightly while I get some more supplies. You’re lucky I’m always prepared. Seamus taught me nothing if not how to stitch up a broken man.”
“My heart’s been broken for ages, and you haven’t seen to fixing that,” he muttered petulantly.
I lightly slapped his shoulder as I moved out of the room into my bedroom to grab the comprehensive first-aid kit I hid there.
“Cazzo, Dante, I don’t know why you don’t just—” I froze in my journey back to his side when I caught the look on his face.
“Cosima,” he purred, his Italian accent thick as mink pelt. “We have a visitor.”
My eyes shot to Giselle who stood in blatant shock at the entry to the kitchen. The tin kit dropped from my suddenly listless hands to the kitchen counter.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, too startled and defensive to curtail my tone.
“Um, I live here. What is a man doing in our kitchen with a bleeding wound?” she countered with a previously unheard-of amount of sass.
Dante settled farther back on the stool, leaning his back against the wall as he made himself comfortable enough to enjoy watching our show.
I shot him a dirty look, then sighed as ran my hands through my hair agitatedly. “I…Listen, Giselle, I need you to leave. Right now.”
Both Dante and Giselle seemed bewildered by my demand.
“Are you kidding me right now? I’m not leaving here like this!” she cried out, her hand flying forward to indicate the wounded, highly amused mafioso sitting at our kitchen island.
“You are,” I said, channelling Alexander so that my voice brooked no argument. There was no way in hell I was making Giselle privy to Dante’s life and Made Man drama. We’d had more than enough of that growing up in the armpit of Napoli. “You are going to go out for the afternoon and enjoy the city, think about your show, and see friends. You will absolutely not say anything about this to anyone, and I will text you when you can return to the apartment.”