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I grabbed his hand and moved it to the mattress. Heart pounding in my chest, I laid on my side and watched him. I sighed in relief. When he was on the operating table, I hadn’t been that scared and upset since Aiden disappeared.
“Morning, princess,” Marcello said in a hoarse voice.
“Hey.” I smiled so wide my cheeks hurt. “How are you feeling?”
“I’ll live,” he muttered. “Did you have a nightmare?”
“Yeah.” I laid my hand on top of his, and he squeezed my fingers. “I can’t get back to sleep without you by my side.”
“I can’t sleep beside you for the rest of your life.”
I propped myself up on my elbow and looked at him. “I wish you could.”
The smile slipped from his face. “Alex…”
My heart wanted two brothers.
I felt like such a mess, wondering if my medical condition was fucking with me. Or did I have real feelings for them both? It was hard to love Luca. And Lord knows I tried my best to forget about the past shit and let myself fall headfirst. But before I could fall, we hit a roadblock every time, snapping me back to reality.
It wasn’t like that with Marcello. With him, I lowered my walls one at a time. He never made me second guess my feelings for him.
“Do you need a nurse?” I brushed the sweat-matted black hair off his forehead. “You look pale.”
He closed his eyes and breathed through his nose. “The pain will pass.”
“I can ask the nurse to give you more morphine.”
I attempted to slide off the bed, and he said, “No, don’t leave.” He held out his hand and wiggled his fingers. “Come here.”
I placed my hand in his, and he squeezed it. “I thought you were dead,” I choked out, fighting the tears welling in my bottom lids. “Marcello, I can’t lose you.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” He patted the top of my hand with his fingers. “Don’t worry about me, beautiful.”
“I choose you, Marcello Salvatore,” I said, and as expected, his head turned in my direction. “I said those words to you last year, didn’t I?”
He nodded. “You remember?”
“I don’t know what my doctor gave Luca, but ever since he drugged me, I’ve been having vivid dreams of me with the Knights in a temple.”
“They’re not dreams,” he admitted. “That happened. How much do you remember?”
“Luca told me I had to choose the Knights.”
“You do.”
“What happens if I don’t choose all of you?”
“We get cast out.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Seriously?”
“I told you before the Queen has a lot of power.” He rubbed the sleep from his tired eyes and yawned. “What else do you remember?”
“I woke up screaming your name after I chose you. Then I came into your room so I could fall back to sleep. I needed to know you were okay.”
He forced a pained smile and grabbed his side over the top of the blanket. “I’ll survive.”
I lifted the blanket, exposing his scarred but muscled chest. “Did you get these scars from your father?”
A mess of scars covered his olive skin. Luca’s scars were so bad they looked like spiderwebs that spanned most of his chest and back. But Marcello’s scattered from his hipbone to his shoulder.
“A few of them, yeah. Luca took most of the punishments. My dad rarely hit me, but when he did, Luca always stepped in front of me.”
“I’m surprised he would sacrifice himself for anyone else.”
“He made a promise to our mother before she died.”
“To protect you?”
He nodded. “When I was a kid, I didn’t know any better. My mom treated me like a baby while my dad let Luca shadow him everywhere. They were two peas in a pod. I was more like my mother, and my dad knew it. So did Luca. After she died, I realized I needed to toughen up. I learned to defend myself because Luca wouldn’t always be there to save me.”
“I didn’t know,” I said with my mouth open in genuine surprise. “Luca said he took the brunt of the punishment, but…”
“My brother has a heart,” he said with laughter in his tone. “It’s just locked inside a steel box buried three hundred feet below the ocean floor.”
I chuckled. “He acts like all of us are disposable. It’s just… He has a funny way of showing it. We got into a fight last night…”
“Your life will never be easy. Not with Luca,” he said with sadness in his eyes. “But he will take care of you.”
“I want him to love me,” I said aloud, which surprised me.
“He does,” Marcello insisted. “In his own way.”
Desperate to change the subject, I shifted the conversation to his recovery. “You have a long road ahead of you. Pops said it could take months, maybe even a year.”
“This isn’t my first gunshot wound,” he said with no emotion in his tone. “It’s not as bad as you think.”
