Page 2 of By Blade, I Love
I joined her a moment later, the two of us able to fit under both shower heads easily. I gently turned her and guided her into me, where her face sank into my chest. I circled her with my arms, and I held her under the flow of water, the blood turning the bottom of the shower bright red.
She started to cry…and then she started to sob.
I helped her dry off and get dressed in clean clothes—one of my t-shirts and a pair of her pajama bottoms. Her hair remained damp and she didn’t seem interested in blow-drying it, so I let it be.
She moved to the couch and took a seat, pulling her knees to her chest as her eyes remained both empty and full of despair. Once the adrenaline had passed, she must have been exhausted, but the sadness was so potent that it had a choke hold on her.
I’d never seen her like this. It was hard to watch.
I wanted to know exactly what had happened, but I didn’t want to make her relive everything when she was so delicate.
She and I were very different people. I’d watched my mother get her brains blown out when I was a kid, and while I was sad, I’d bounced back pretty quickly. The rage took over and became a permanent part of my character. Even once I got my revenge, I still carried that anger with me every day. But Francesca processed it differently, probably because the person who had betrayed her was her own family. “Baby?”
Her meek eyes shifted to me.
“What happened with the men in the car?” I’d followed her tracker as I’d headed down the road, knowing Warren was attempting to relocate her because of the way the dot moved away from the vineyard. When it came to a stop, I thought they knew I was ahead and had laid down spikes or grenades, but then I saw Francesca dragging a man twice her size out of the car.
She stared at me for several seconds, like it took her a moment to recall, like it was ancient history at this point. “They—they were supposed to take me to Warren’s. But I cut through my ropes and sliced their throats.”
“You had a knife on you?”
Her eyes flicked away momentarily. “Um, Leo gave it to me.”
Leo had betrayed her and then gave her a blade to escape? “Good job.” Despite my confusion, I was proud of her. She took out the guys but didn’t crash over a cliff or into a rock.
She swallowed as her eyes shifted away. “My father and I were both in the villa when they came. When I heard the gunshots, I ran upstairs to his office, and he already had the guns out of the safe. He wore a vest and asked me to put one on myself. At the time, we didn’t know who had come to kill us.” She crossed her arms over her chest like she was cold, her damp hair hanging around her face. “When they started to come up the stairs, we knew we were outnumbered. He—he told me to run…” Her eyes started to fill with tears. “He rained gunfire down on them from the top of the stairs and told me to climb on the roof and hide.” She suddenly sniffed and closed her eyes, squeezing the tears out before they streaked down her cheeks. “I said no, but he made me.” She took a breath and tried to steady herself. “I told him I loved him, and I left. But I couldn’t get on the roof and I couldn’t hide, so I took out as many as I could. My dad would shout down the hallway and tell me how many were outside the door and then get a beating for it. I was eventually overrun, and they dragged me to Warren.”
Leo had fucking lied to me. I’d asked him for an update on Warren, and he’d fucking lied to me. I silently berated myself for taking his word. I should have demanded to see Warren’s bodywith my own eyes. All of this would have been avoided if I’d taken matters into my own hands.
“If my arms hadn’t been tied behind my back…” She shook her head. “I would have killed my brother with my bare hands.” The sadness was slowly replaced by a blood-red rage that flushed her cheeks and sharpened her gaze. “My father wouldn’t look at him, because he was ashamed that Leo was his son. It was so obvious to both of us that Warren used Leo to get what he wanted, and he was dumb enough to fall for it. Then Warren put the gun to my father’s head…” She didn’t finish the ending to that story. “Leo protested, said Warren had agreed not to kill us, and Warren laughed.” Her eyes remained elsewhere instead of meeting my gaze. “My father didn’t react. Didn’t blink. Didn’t look scared. Just stared my brother down like the filth he was…then he was gone.” She inhaled a deep breath as the tears started in her chest once again. “I watched the whole thing. Felt his blood splash all over me. My ears rang, and I suddenly felt sick…and I hurled into the pool of blood.”
I could visualize all of this without being troubled because violence was a part of my daily life, but seeing it from her perspective made it far more emotional. I wished she hadn’t been there to see it. She was tough, but that was just traumatizing. I wouldn’t wish that kind of suffering on anyone, especially the woman I loved.
“Then Warren said he would make me his plaything, and Leo said they’d agreed to let me go.”
I knew Leo wasn’t the brightest, butCristo, he was naïve as hell.
“Leo followed me to the car and said he was sorry a bunch of times, and I spat on his face. He kinda tripped and fell into me, and that was when I felt the knife he slipped into my hands.”
If he hadn’t done that, it wouldn’t have mattered—because I would have taken them out on the road and gotten her out of there. But I supposed it was better than being a coward and doing nothing.
“I can’t believe I just said all that.” She dropped her voice to a sort of whisper. “I keep waiting to wake up from this horrible dream.” Her eyes welled up with tears. “But it’s not a dream. My dad is dead and my brother is a traitor and I have nothing.” She sucked in a deep breath and then started to cry in earnest, her bottom lip quivering as she came undone.
I watched her cry, watched this strong woman shatter into too many pieces for me to glue back together. “You don’t have nothing, baby. You have me.”
There was a pause in her tears as her eyes moved back to mine.
“And I’ll make them all pay for what they’ve done to you. I can’t bring your father back, but I can make them all regret the day they crossed you.” I would torture them all to the brink of insanity, and even when they begged for death, I wouldn’t give it to them. Make it slow and painful, give them plenty of time to think about their actions. “And I’ll get your vineyard back.”
She brought herself to calm, like my words made her feel somewhat better. “But how? It’s just you and me now.”
I didn’t want a partnership, but there was nothing I was unwilling to do to make this right. “Cosa Nostra.”
2
WOLFE
Francesca was a living corpse for days.
