Page 20 of Taking Savannah
Gigi would have something to say about this. Something profane and wise and delivered with the casual authority of a womanwho survived sixty-three years in a world that wasn't built for her.
I can almost hear it.
Baby girl, you are in deep shit.
Yeah, Gigi. I know.
Chapter Seven: Emilio
I’mgettingfourstitchesabove my left eye from a medic named Russo who has the bedside manner of a corpse and the hands of a man who learned to sew using socks. He doesn't ask how it happened. Nobody in the medical wing asks how anything happened. They stitch and they bandage and they hand you ibuprofen and they send you back to work because the compound doesn't have sick days and sympathy costs extra.
The stitches sting, but I don't really care about the pain. I care about the fact that I can still taste Savannah, and feel her curvy little body against mine and hear the sound she made when I grabbed her jaw, and I'm sitting on a medical cot. All I can think about is going back to that corridor and finishing what the Castillos interrupted.
Which makes me a selfish prick, because four men just breached our east wing and I should be thinking about security protocolsand access codes and how the fuck they got keycards that aren't supposed to exist outside of our own men.
But I'm not thinking about that. I'm thinking about the way she said make me in a hallway full of impending death.
Russo finishes the last stitch and tapes a bandage over it and tells me to keep it dry for forty-eight hours. I nod, hop off the cot, and walk to the kitchen because the adrenaline crash is going to hit soon and I need coffee or whiskey or both before it does.
Charlotte is already there.
Of course she is. Charlotte exists in the kitchen at all hours because she’s developed a habit of baking or cooking for Claudio when she’s stressed, and since it’s Claudio, she’s stressed a great deal of the time. She's sitting at the counter with a mug and a plate of freshly baked cookies.
She looks at me, then at the bandage above my eye, then at my hands, which I washed in medical but which still have blood under the fingernails because blood gets into places soap can't reach.
"You look like shit," she says.
"Thank you, Charlotte. Always a pleasure."
"Sit down. There's coffee."
I sit. She pours. The coffee is hot and black and strong enough to dissolve the cup if you left it long enough.
"How's Alexandra?" I ask.
"Furious. Someone tried to walk into her office with a gun and she's taking it personally, which is the correct response. She's already helping Leone reprogram the security protocols for the east wing. Claudio didn’t want to help, but I told him if he didn’t, there would be no sexy-time for a week. So, she made him move her desk so it faces the door, which Claudio did without complaint because he does everything I tells him to without complaint and if you tell him I said that I'll deny it."
"Noted."
"Leone's with her now. They've been in the war room since the all-clear. Claudio and Carmelo are burning the bodies" Charlotte takes a sip of her own coffee and studies me over the rim. "How are you?"
"Four stitches. Bruise on my ribs where the vest caught the round. I'll live."
"That's not what I asked."
I look at her and roll my eyes.
"You kissed her," Charlotte says.
"Does everyone in this compound have access to the cameras in the hallways? Damn, you are all a nosy fucking bunch."
"You have a smear on your shirt collar that's too low to be from your own face, you smell like compound soap mixed with someone else's sweat, and you keep touching your bottom lip every thirty seconds. You kissed her during the attack, and you haven't showered because you're not ready to wash her off you."
I stare at her. "What the fuck? Are you a witch?"
"Claudio says the same thing. Drink your coffee."
I drink my coffee, grabbing a cookie and eating it in two bites, and Charlotte goes back to her laptop.
