The Woman in the Back Room (Costa Family)

"So my little baby injuries are nothing," I said, shaking my head as he grabbed a towel, wrapped it around himself, and went toward the door.

"If it makes you feel any better, I think they look awful," he said, shooting me a smile as he went into his bedroom.

As the days would stretch on, there was a lot of sleeping and recovering.

But nothing even close to resembling intimacy between Santi and me.

In fact, he seemed to be going out of his way not to be alone with me, or too close to me.

Salvatore took over my wound care whenever he was around.

My step-mom and Celeste helped me with other basic girl things.

I had a check-up. Then another.

"Don't need me anymore," Salvatore told me the day before Thanksgiving.

It didn't escape me that since he decided I no longer needed them, he stashed all the extra gauze and creams and saline tubes away for himself. For any future patients he might have.

The Surgeon was back in business, it seemed.

"Yeah," I agreed, looking at my shoulder wound which had sealed over, even if it still hurt on and off with certain movements. "Thank you, Salvatore," I said, giving him a small smile. "Really, I appreciate it."

"That's what Family does, babe," he said, shrugging.

"Speaking of Family, do you have somewhere to be for Thanksgiving?" I asked, figuring I could invite him to my father's place.

"Lorenzo is having me over. Sort of work/dinner thing. Brio too."

"Oh, good. That's good."

"I haven't had a proper Thanksgiving since before I went away," Salvatore said. "I'm looking forward to it. I hear Celeste is a good cook."

"She is. And I hear she likes to make up for all the years she missed with her family, so she goes crazy on holidays. I hope you have some roomy pants."

"Your brothers are coming to pick you up, right?"

"Right," I agreed.

"What? Not excited?" he asked, head tipping to the side a bit.

"I've had a lot of, ah, family time lately," I said, shaking my head. "Not sure I am up for getting ribbed by my cousins."

"For what?"

"Getting shot," I said, shrugging. They always did like to find fault in me, whether I'd genuinely earned the too close inspection or not. I was the outsider. They often liked to remind me of that.

"Getting shot means you put your life on the line for the Family," Salvatore said, shaking his head. "If they tease you about that, it's their own insecurity talking. Fuck 'em."

That tended to be Salvatore's attitude toward a lot of things.

Fuck them.

Fuck this.

Fuck you.

I appreciated that about him.

"You're right," I agreed, nodding.

"Usually am," he said, giving me a wink, then clamping a hand on my shoulder.

"Ow," I said, half laughing, half in actual pain.

"You want me to get Santi to come in here to take the pain away?" he asked, shooting me a wicked smirk.

"Hey," I said, moving forward. "I know you're just fucking around, but don't go saying shit like that, okay? It's not like that. I don't want people thinking it is. I have a hard enough time getting anyone in this Family to respect me. The last thing I need for them to think is that I'm sleeping my way to a more favorable position."

"Got it. Won't say shit. But know I haven't looked at it like that," he said, heading out.

Not long later, Gio, Ciro, and Elio came to get me.

From then on it was a blur.

Until I got home.

And something dramatically changed with Santi.

Chapter Thirteen

Santi

I spent Thanksgiving doing exactly two things.

One, was watching Avi to make sure he was handling his first real holiday—Halloween didn't count—without his mom.

In the past, Avi, Brit, and I always had quiet Thanksgivings at home. We had all the usual staples, but it had never been a big, loud, over-the-top affair like the Costa Family Thanksgiving was.

My mother had moved into Lorenzo's old lavish penthouse, a place with more than enough room for our party of assorted Family members. The ones of us who were core family members, sure, but also the guys like Brio and Salvatore who didn't have anywhere else to go.

It was a crowd of twelve, all in all, and something entirely new for Avi, so I was worried about how he would handle it.

From the looks of things, though, he was eating up the extra attention, was enjoying the guys letting him bet on the game, and playing cards.

Which left me with the other thing I did.

I thought about Alessa.

Like I'd been doing far too much since that morning I'd washed her hair.

I hadn't thought anything about it beforehand. It was a task that needed to get done, so she felt human again. I figured I could help her. That was all it was supposed to be.

But then she'd needed to drape over my lap. And it turned out she liked having her hair played with.