ELENA
“You, bitch. You did this!”
I blinked at the short, slight man who was suddenly in my face yelling at me.
“Jaco,” Tore snapped, wrenching him away from me and lightly slapping his face. “Do not accuse anyone without foundation. We do not know what happened.”
“He was clearly fucking poisoned,” Jaco cried, pointing at Dante’s pale, sweaty form passed out on the couch. “She was the one dancing with him.”
“Oh? And you think I poisoned him with a kiss?” I asked venomously. “Don’t be an idiot.”
“Both of you, quiet,” Tore demanded in a voice that brooked no argument as a large man with a dimpled chin, thick gold hair, and blue eyes pushed through the gathered crowd. “Dr. Crown, I thought you were here somewhere.”
“You’re lucky I bring my bag with me everywhere,” was his grim reply as he knelt beside the couch and removed a stethoscope and blood pressure cuff from his leather bag.
“Party is over, people,” the man I knew was named Frankie called out as he stepped up on a marble side table to address the crowd. “Get out.”
“Is he going to be okay, dottore?” a beautiful woman in her mid-to-late thirties appeared over the couch, bending to sweep a sweaty lock of black hair out of Dante’s face.
Dr. Crown knocked her hand out of the way without looking at her. Instead, he addressed Tore. “Get everyone the fuck outta here.”
Instantly, Tore transformed from the suave and debonair Italian host to the mafia boss I’d heard rumors about since my youth in Naples.
Unbending, vicious, and controlled.
“You have five minutes to get out!” he ordered, his voice carrying without him having to yell the way Frankie did.
I remained where I stood as everyone quickly gathered their things and left, ushered out by a group of men who were no doubt Camorra soldiers. No one told me to go, and Yara hovered by my side, so I stayed where I was.
The sight of Dante’s massive body pale and slick with sweat was oddly impactful even though I told myself I didn’t particularly like the man. He was just so potent, so vivacious and full of passion that to see him depleted felt absolutely wrong.
I was shaken as much by his sudden illness as I was by my lapse of judgment in dancing with him. My only defense was flimsy at best, but true enough, I had to admit it to myself. I’d never known a man who exuded such raw, palpable sexual energy. Being around him, with the full glory of his attention pinned only to me in a room full of nearly a hundred affluent and beautiful guests, was heady. The walls I’d erected between myself and the male species felt battered and war-torn against the force of his charm, and before I’d known it, I was dancing with him.
Dancing like I hadn’t in years.
Dancing like sixteen-year-old Elena in a piazza in Sorrento with a man I’d thought was my soul mate.
I hadn’t even danced like that with Daniel because somehow, I’d forgotten how much I loved it.
A shiver rippled down my spine, threatening to spill my emotions all over the floor for any of these people to rifle through. I sucked in a deep breath and cleared my mind, focusing on Dante, who still lay pale and seemingly passed out on the long leather couch.
Dr. Augustus fitted a portable oxygen mask to his face, then pricked his finger with some handheld blood monitoring device.
“You think it is poison,” Tore surmised grimly from where he stood at the head of the couch hovering over Dante like he could protect him from invisible enemies.
The doctor grunted. “Most likely cyanide. Easy to get your hands on and fairly difficult to detect.”
“Treatable?” the same beautiful Italianate woman who’d worried about him before asked.
I peered at her, something ugly churning in my gut at the sight of her sitting on the back of the couch to be closer to the capo.
They looked ill-suited, I decided. The woman was too blond, northern Italian for sure, with the olive skin and flaxen hair of the border regions near Switzerland and Germany.
Dante wouldn’t look good with a blonde.
The doctor, too, didn’t seem to like the woman because he ignored her again as he pulled a jar of black tablets from his endless Mary Poppins-like bag and then a full IV bag. He glanced over his shoulder, catching eyes with me.
Wordlessly, I extended my hand to hold up the IV bag for him. He nodded curtly as he handed it off then efficiently inserted the needle into one of the thick veins on the back of Dante’s hand before taping it down.
“He will be fine,” Dr. Crown asserted as if he had a direct line to Death.
I knew about cyanide poisoning because one of my first cases as an associate at Fields, Harding & Griffith had been defending a woman who poisoned her abusive husband over the course of a few months until he died. We’d plead guilty for a reduced sentence of five years with the possibility for parole at three.