Page 43 of Forsaking All Others

Niccolo, I thought, would have done anything to get me back, but then, I didn’t think he ever would have let me be taken at all. My place would have been at his side, always, his wife and friend and lover. Not a stranger and colleague who he sometimes deigned to fuck when he got horny enough to succumb to his baser needs.

Suddenly, I felt very, very tired, bone deep in a way that was cancerous. An infection of exhaustion and loneliness I thought might have been terminal.

Just as I was rinsing conditioner from my long hair, there was a commotion in my bedroom and then bodies flooding into my bathroom.

“Fia,” a sweet, dear voice called out.

My heart stopped and started again on an aching beat.

Lily was there.

I turned off the water and nearly fell out of the shower into Lily’s perfumed, waiting arms. She was holding out a towel, wrapping it neatly around me as soon as I entered her embrace.

“My darling,” she murmured, scrubbing the towel over my shoulders in a comforting move that also effectively dried me off. “Oh, my darling girl. I am so sorry.”

I didn’t cry again because numbness had filled in the hollow ache in my chest, but I pushed my wet face into Lily’s silk, lilies of the valley–scented blouse and let myself be held.

A moment later, the clatter of high heels alerted me to the arrival of others.

I lifted my gaze to see Renata and Alessia careen into the bathroom, followed closely by Katya.

They all stared at me with wide, horror-filled eyes glazed with tears, their mouths trembling.

Renata, my brave widow, was the one to step forward first and wrap her arms around me. The others followed immediately, until I was enfolded in an embrace that was warm and safe.

This, I thought as I sagged into their bodies and was lulled by their collective cooing, was love.

The kind I had never known until I came to America.

This was what kept me sane when my husband’s hot-and-cold passions and neglect threatened to turn me inside out and upside down.

This was my version of the American dream.

They tended me to as if I was some pagan princess, combing my hair, then drying it with a soft bristled brush and hair dryer, moisturizing my chapped, bruised skin, especially the cracked, painfully raw flesh around my once-bound wrists and the swollen side of my face. Katya even applied perfume to my pulse points, and Lily found a woven cashmere matching set for me to slip into that was comfortable and chic.

I murmured, at one point, that I had women who were paid to help me with these things, but my friends ignored me, and Bonnie and Gertie were nowhere in sight. Idly, I wondered if they knew I needed the comfort of my friends more than their paid services, or if they knew I was angry enough with Dario not to want to see even the people who worked for him.

Either way, they made me more than presentable before ushering me down the stairs into the informal living room.

I should have been shocked to see my men waiting there, but I was only relieved.

Booker and Hank stood on either side of the mantel, affecting casual poses that directly contradicted the alertness of their bodies, poised to strike at any provocation. Walter sat at the coffee table, drinking coffee I had no doubt was laced with the open bottle of bourbon on the marble top.

Akira was pacing, a predator stuck in a cage, and he didn’t stop even when I entered, taking one look at me before his jaw clenched and his speed picked up. Elijah and Finn were pressed shoulder to shoulder, standing beside the couch as if they couldn’t be forced to sit down. They wore twin scowls as they took me in, and when Finn flinched as if to prowl to me, Elijah’s dark hand restrained him.

It was Hank who broke the standoff, stalking toward me on his slightly bowlegged gait, the chain on his belt rattling, the knife and gun in their holsters obvious on his person. He looked mean, scary enough for me to believe he was an active member of a notorious biker gang.

“You listen to me, missy,” he said in a rasping growl from smoking a pack of cigs a day for most of his adult life. I almost flinched when he raised his beefy hand to my face but forced myself to relax because this was Hank. A man who had been nicknamed for his resemblance to and love of Hank Williams. Walter told me once that Hank’s real name was Lloyd. “If you ever get in a spot of trouble like this again, you give those fuckers my name and number right fuckin’ away, you hear me? Not after four goddamn days. Not after they’ve taken their filthy hands to ya.”

I blinked at him, shocked by his vitriol.

“You hear me?” he repeated firmly, his fingers gently brushing my bruised cheek. “You got resources, girl, you use ’em.”

“You’re my friend,” I corrected automatically, but I was used to the idea of people as commodities. That was how the Mafia worked. “Not a resource.”

“A person can be both,” he rebutted. “And for you? Every person in this room would pick up a call the second you placed it and not fuckin’ hesitate to do what needed to be done to get you safe.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, my chest suddenly caving in under the pressure of what his gruff words meant. The love they conveyed. “I didn’t want their eyes on you, but Dario—”