I ached to wake her up just to see those wintry ocean gray eyes flare back at me, to test the edge of her tongue against mine and know whether it was as sharp as her words or soft like the tender heart she was so careful to guard.
I wanted her, and I would have her, but Elena required a contrarian mix of forcefulness and care, my seduction a tightrope walk that could fail with even the slightest provocation. And I wasn’t more and more unwilling to fail.
I moved closer to her bedside in order to move a thick lock of deeply red hair out of her face, rubbing the silken strands between my fingers as I did so. I leaned over to press a slight kiss to the surprisingly small shell of her ear, unable to resist.
When I pulled away, the papers on the nightstand caught my eye.
I was a curious man.
And a criminal.
It wasn’t in my nature to refuse myself much, and I found I didn’t even try as I reached out for the folded pages and opened them to read. I wanted to know what Elena had been in the hospital for. As her host, I felt it was my prerogative to know so I could take the best care of her. As a capo, I felt it was my right to know anything that happened under my roof to someone in my circle.
I was not prepared for what lay in the neatly printed words.
Anorgasmia.
Cysts, fibroids, infertility.
I couldn’t take my eyes from the page even though I knew I was crossing a line Elena would never have given me access to herself.
Madonna santa, it was difficult to comprehend the life this woman had lived in her short twenty-seven years.
A scumbag father constantly in debt to the mafia, the poverty that plagued so many Napolitano families, every single one of her siblings taking off to greener pastures while she remained in the hellhole of her youth.
Then the new world, a boyfriend she respected, a job she worked hard for.
Only for the boyfriend to leave her for her fucking sister. Only for some asshole mafioso to threaten her job by forcing her to move in with him because it suited his needs.
And this.
Issues with infertility and even the simple ability to orgasm.
Tore always used to tell me not to judge someone before I knew what they’d been through to get to that point. Survivors came in all shapes and sizes, and not all of them came out on the other side of their trauma shiny and bright with hope and renewed optimism.
Some of them ended up like Elena, fractured and glued back together through sheer resolve and tenacity of spirit.
Was it any wonder the world thought this woman was a bitch?
With all she’d been through, it was a miracle she ever smiled.
I thought about the night with Aurora, when Elena had transformed before my eyes. It was like watching a bear emerging from hibernation, foul-tempered and faintly aggressive with the outside world, turn to her cub and suddenly become all warmth and love.
The smile she’d given Aurora, the way she’d made her feel strong just by bestowing a playful nickname.
That was the night I discovered the true, tender underbelly of my fighter and decided, irrevocably, that I needed to have her.
Not just have her to own her, because a woman like Elena couldn’t be owned and that was part of her powerful charm.
I needed to have her to understand her. To have the privilege of unwrapping layer after layer until I got to the heart of her. Once, I’d thought her soul would be frozen through, an icy vessel used only to pump blood through her body, but I was beginning to understand the truth.
Elena Lombardi had so much heart. She was overfull with emotion, and she had no idea how to hide that vulnerability from people unless it was behind a mask of icy indifference and cool disdain. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t trust others with that tender, swollen organ so much as she didn’t trust herself to use it.
What a fucking tragedy.
I stared down at her sleeping face feeling my own heart shift in my chest, the tectonic plates of my life fluctuating to accommodate a new presence there, one I didn’t intend to let go.
At that moment, I had no thought to my borgata, my responsibilities, or the risks associated with having a romance with my lawyer, a woman who hated so much of what I loved.
I considered only the magnitude of the challenge I was setting for myself and the eagerness I felt setting out to conquer it.
To conquer her.
Because I resolved in much the same way I resolved to solve my mother’s murder and resolved to save Cosima from the Order of Dionysus that I would show Elena Lombardi what it was like to live and love freely.