Page 72 of Promised to the Don of Naples
And for the first time in my life, I didn't think of the Madre Superiora.
I didn't think of my father.
I didn't think of Matteo in the cellar.
I didn't think of Bianca, or the dagger, or Francesca's letter, or the Mondello key.
I thought of one thing only.
Of the man holding me...
CHAPTER 22
"There are bodies we spend our whole lives waiting for, without knowing the name until we find it."
VALENTINA ROSSI
He carried me down the family corridor with both my legs wrapped around his waist.
I didn't look at anyone; I don't know if there was anyone to look at. The house had just come out of a shootout, and someone was still shouting downstairs, someone calling for a doctor—but for the two of us, in that corridor, in those sixty-five feet of old marble, all that existed was the sound of his breathing close to my ear and the weight of my arm gripping his neck hard.
He kicked his bedroom door open.
He didn't put me on the bed right away.
He set me on my feet, slowly, sliding my body against his—I felt every inch of how much he wanted me, and I felt no shame. I didn't feel the convent's shame, didn't feel the capo's-daughter's shame, didn't feel the shame of the Valentina of three weeks ago.
His mouth found mine again in the middle of the room, more slowly now.
He pulled back an inch or two, his eyes close, the scar through his eyebrow nearer than I'd ever seen it. I saw the dried blood on the side of his jaw, saw the torn shoulder of his shirt, saw the exhaustion of a man who'd driven three hours and killed at least one man on arrival.
"Bella," he said softly, with a small smile. "I'm not going to bed with you with other men's blood on my face. I need to go to the bathroom. Five minutes."
"I'll go with you."
Without a word, he took my hand and led me into his bathroom.
The bathroom was white marble. A large glass shower. Black towels, folded. A scent of nothing but sandalwood and something of cedar.
He stepped back. He took off the torn white shirt—slowly, carefully over the wounded shoulder. For the first time, with nothing hidden, I saw Luca Moretti's chest.
I'd imagined it, but it didn't come close.
The Latin tattoo ran from his right shoulder to the middle of his chest—a phrase in old lettering that I couldread now: Mors potius macula. Death before dishonor. Another tattoo on the ribs on his left side, the famiglia's symbol. His abdomen defined, without being cartoonish. A long scar crossing the left side of his ribs—an old bullet, I recognized it from convent pictures, a nun who used to show us saints pierced by arrows.
He saw me looking but said nothing.
He opened the shower and turned on the water, then looked at me, seeming to wait for something.
I put my hands behind my neck. I found the dress's zipper and slid it down, slowly.
My mother's moss-green fell to the marble floor like a curtain.
What was left was me—a white silk slip, my mother's emerald earrings, knee-high boots. The dagger still inside.
Luca looked at me, and his black eyes traveled down slowly, and came back.
"Madonna."
