Page 100 of Daddies of the Underworld

He blinked, his head pulling toward the doors as they opened and the surgeon walked out. “She surrendered. I heard from Paolo an hour ago.”

That was enough for now. Rosa was a problem we could deal with later. I’d just needed to know she was no longer a threat.

The surgeon wore impressive lines in his forehead and dusky circles around his eyes. He pulled off the cap covering his gray hair. “He’s alive. We repaired the worst of the bleeding, but he’s not stable enough for me to say he’s out of danger. We may have to go back in if the pressure drops.”

I swallowed, but even that did not clear the lump from my throat. “Can we see him?” My chest squeezed, the pressure building as tears burned my eyes and nose. I was so close to falling apart that I wrapped a hand around my throat and squeezed, trying to contain the fear. The move reminded me so much of Dante, that I almost lost it.

He nodded. “One at a time.”

“I’m going first.” I followed the doctor through the doors and down a short hallway to a sterile white room. My breath locked, a refusal to believe the sight in front of me bombarding my entire body. Dante was supposed to be too big for rooms, too quiet for comfort, too aware of people around him to lay so still and pale beneath a white sheet.

Machines beeped his vitals, numbers I had never needed to understand but suddenly wished I did. Tubes ran from his arms, and bandages covered his side. His skin had gone gray beneath the stubble on his jaw. I stopped two steps from the bed because my legs locked. A sob stuck in my throat. I swallowed it down.

He was alive. Focus on that.

I sat beside the bed and took his hand, avoiding the IV taped to his skin. His hands had always been warm, and I flinched away from the iciness of his fingers when I curled them around mine. “You scared the hell out of us.” My voice cracked, and I hated the weakness in it, but I kept talking. He needed to know everything, and silence hurt worse than the sound of my voice. “Sofia is okay. She’s asking about another pony even though she hasn’t gotten the first one yet.” It had been a single sentence spoken in the car on our way here, but it stuck in my mind. “You found her.” I lowered my forehead to his knuckles. “You found our girl.”

His fingers twitched. Maybe it was the medicine or nothing at all. I didn’t care. I lifted my head. “Dante?”

Nothing. I pressed his hand to my cheek. “I’m staying. I don’t care how long this takes. You will not wake up alone.”

It was the only promise I could give him, and I kept it. We all had to keep our word. We’d given up too much, sacrificed too much, for me to give up on this one thing. The hospital wing became my world. Every minute they would allow me to, I sat beside him, his hand in mine. I talked to him about my life. About the summer we spent together at Villa Belladonna. I told him I loved him and begged him to heal.

I learned the sound of every machine in his room. I learned Matteo could go terrifying still for hours and then leave the room in five seconds to make grown men regret their incompetence over the phone. I learned Luca could make Sofia laugh with a spoon puppet while tears shone in his eyes.

Sofia visited Dante in short bursts because the machines scared her. But she came anyway, bringing him pictures and telling him stories. One picture showed Dante with a cape and enormous muscles. Another showed her riding a dragon over a castle, with Dante on another dragon beside her.

“He’ll love it,” I promised her while she sat in my lap and kicked her feet.

“He better.” She scowled at the machines and set the picture beside his bed. “I worked hard.”

Dante opened his eyes on the third day.

His fingers twitched first, and I thought I’d imagined it. Then his thumb shifted against my palm, and my whole body jerked forward. “Dante?”

His eyelids lifted slowly.

Relief hit so hard I almost fainted. His eyes were glassy and unfocused, but they found me. “Don’t talk.” I leaned closer, crying for the first time since he’d gone down. “You’re safe. Sofia is safe.”

His lips moved. “Sofia?”

“She’s right here.” I used the button on the bed to lift his head enough he should be able to see her sleeping in the chair with Matteo’s jacket over her.

“Sofia.” He said her name with a wince, his fingers tightening around mine.

She sat up at the sound of her name and scrambled from the chair. “Daddy!”

Matteo caught her around the waist and brought her close enough to touch Dante’s hand. “Careful.”

Sofia patted Dante’s hand, then ran her hand up and down his arm. “You can’t do that again.” Her chin quivered. “Never ever. You can never get shot at again.” Dante made a soft sound, and Sofia curled into his good side when Matteo lowered her to the bed. “Promise me.”

Tears blurred my vision, but I managed to see well enough when Dante ever so slowly lifted his hand with his pinky extended.

Sofia wrapped hers around his and rested her head in the crook of his arm. “That’s a pinky promise. You can never break one of those.”

“Only if he’s protecting her again,” Luca whispered in my ear. “We all know we’d dive in front of a bullet for our girls, pinky promise or not.”

“Don’t tell her that.” I relaxed into Luca’s arms.