“Brenno and Fiore didn’t hurt me,” I said clearly. “Cesare didn’t either, not at first.”
He blinked, frowning, trying to understand. “I saw the video.”
“It wasn’t real.” Tears slipped from my eyes. “He’s really sick, Milan. He needs help.”
Milan took a seat beside me slowly, taking my hand and pressing it to his forehead as he exhaled deeply. “It was real to me.” I turned my palm, threading my fingers through his hair until he relaxed into my touch and whispered, “I was scared. It hurt me deeply to see you like that. I am sorry.”
Milan with emotions was someone else, a different kind of man, and though I loved him dearly, he still had a lot of healing to do, and I hoped that understanding his brothers would help him do that.
He paused, removing my touch and reaching out to my face tentatively, like he was testing what he was allowed to touch. “You said you wanted to take these off?” His thumb grazed the edges of the bandages.
I nodded, but the wordsI’m scareddidn’t come. They didn’t need to. He’d learned what fear looked like on my face, and he softened, telling me he felt it too.
He lifted my chin with his fingers, assessing. “Would you like my help?”
“Can you just do it?”
Milan paused. “It may hurt if I do it.”
I gripped his wrist, steadying the slight shudder there. “I trust you.”
He leaned forward, pressing a kiss to my lips before holding my cheek in his hand and peeling the edge of the bandage away. My breathing quickened, my fingers gripped the front of his shirt, and though it stung and burned at the stitches in my throat, the sight and feel of him acted like a buffer between me and the pain.
His fingers stilled when I winced. “Shall I stop?”
Tears prickled at the edge of my lashes as I whispered, “Does it look really bad?”
My heart sank as he frowned at it. I didn’t need to look flawless to be beautiful. I knew that. Milan was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. He had scars too, but this one would remind him every day of his past, of his brother who had hurt me, and his father who had hurt him first.
Milan pulled away the final stretch of bandage and stared.
It was bad. I could see it in his pained face. He didn’t want this reminder just as much as I didn’t. I was supposed to be the place that wasn’t his past, but now I was a living reminder of it.
My lip wobbled, and he paused it with his thumb, swiping along the dry, cracked skin there as he whispered, “You are exquisite, my angel.”
The tears still fell, but he caught them like he always did, pressing them into his skin instead of mine, taking everything for me.
“I don’t want you to look at me and think of them…ofhim.”
He reared back, frowning, like I’d slapped him. Milan closed his eyes as he inhaled deeply, and when he opened them, they were wet like mine. He stood abruptly, walking toward the bathroom to stand in front of the mirror. “Come here.”
I watched him go, my brows furrowed, and he nodded his head once, confirming that he wanted me to follow. My legs wobbled like a baby deer’s as I tried to stand, my back strained from the lack of movement. The hospital gown was the last thingI wantedanyoneto see me in, but Milan didn’t look away. He simply pulled me in front of him when I reached the bathroom, holding my shoulders as I shut my eyes, my stomach sinking at the thought of what I’d see.
Milan hummed like he was seeing something unexpected. “Why did you not tell me my hair was suboptimal?”
A small huff escaped me. “What does that even mean?”
“It looks like…Francesco’s.”
My lungs contracted tightly as I laughed, and it wasn’t until I opened my eyes and looked at his hair through the mirror that I’d realized that I’dlooked.My smile dropped as my gaze found the long, jagged scar that stretched along my throat.
Damn Milan Lucca.
The stitches were neat, but the scar was red and inflamed still. It looked burned, like the knife had been heated by a flame and my skin was still alight.
Milan wrapped a strong, sturdy arm around my waist, pressing his face into my neck like the scar didn’t bother him. “This does not change how required you are.”
“You’ll be sad when you look at me,” I countered, trying to hold in the next wave of tears.
