Page 45 of Ruthless Sin
She doesn’t answer.
I press my face against the back of her neck, forehead against her hair, and breathe her in.
“Dio. You’re going to kill me. You know that? You’re going to fucking kill me and I don’t even care.”
She’s quiet.
I’m quiet.
Her body is warm against mine. Her pulse slows under my arm but mine doesn’t. The sun moves across the floor a quarter inch at a time.
Somewhere downstairs the back door opens and shuts. Nonna starting her morning. A man’s voice at the gate, the overnight shift trading with the morning shift. We don’t move.
We stay until the light changes, and I make it last, because I know it ends the second she sits up.
Her stillness changes. She sits up slowly. I lie with my arm where she left it and watch her cross to the door.
She stops in the doorway, her back to me, and holds there for a breath. Then she’s gone and the doorway is empty. Renzo’s door opens down the hall. His footsteps slow as he passes my door. My door is open, and my bed has a man in it at early morning who hasn’t been alone tonight.
His footsteps stop.
A low voice from the threshold. He doesn’t step in.
“Brother.”
“Renzo.”
He’s quiet for a long beat.
“I’m glad.”
I close my eyes.
“Grazie.”
His footsteps resume. Same pace. He keeps walking.
I do not get out of the bed for a long time. The warmth where she was is already going, and I keep my body in it until it is gone.
Nonna is at the moka pot when I come down the back stairs.
The smell of coffee reaches me first. The real coffee from the pot she won’t let anyone else touch. The last dishes are draining by the sink, including the good bowl she washes by hand because the machine doesn’t know how to treat old things.
She doesn’t look up when I cross the threshold.
“You look like a man who slept on a different floor last night,cher.”
She turns from the sink, pours, and sets the cup on the counter without looking at me.
“Mila was through here.”
I stop with the cup halfway to my mouth.
“When.”
“A few minutes ago. She didn’t look at me, but she came in. I gave her tea. Lemon and honey, the way Lucia used to make it for her girls when they were sick.”
“She drink it?”
