AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He kept his gaze fastened on that for a long moment, just taking it in. The crown of thorns, the cross, the heart of the Savior who had sacrificed everything for them. Thank you, Jesus.
Sabina’s breath hitched. Her head lifted off his chest. “Enzo?”
He managed a weak smile and another croak that didn’t form any words.
She sat up quickly and framed his face in her hands. Hers was swollen and tear-tracked, dark circles shadowing her beautiful eyes. “Enzo! Grazii Diu. I was beginning to think you’d never wake up.”
He cleared his throat. It was still parched, but he managed a husky, “What happened?”
Sabina gave him a blubbery smile, her eyes filling again. Bean, crying…for him? Or had they lost someone?“An attack. Papa suspects it was Torrio, though he can’t be sure. There were three shooters—he thinks we injured at least two of them, but they got away. You were the only one on our side that got shot.”
Grazii Diu indeed—the rest of his family was well. But… “Shot?” The question pulled his brows down. How in the world had that happened? The one person in the family who had taken steps to avoid such a fate, and he was the first to take a bullet? Val and Tony would never let him live it down.
“Mm. Grazed your temple. It was the fall that knocked you out—you smacked your head on the step.” She swallowed hard. “I thought I’d lost you. There was blood everywhere. You were limp, unconscious.” She shook her head and reached over to pour water into a tall glass. He eyed it ravenously, accepting her help as she held it to his mouth, though he added his hand to keep it steady.
He drained the cup but shook his head when she offered more. After setting the glass back down, Sabina clasped her hands together on the edge of the bed and studied him. If her frazzle was any indication, she had been doing the same thing all night. “I thought I’d lost you,” she whispered again. “Why did you turn back? You were safe at your car—safer than anywhere else, anyway.”
As if he could have sought his own safety when she was in the line of fire.
Her lips pressed together, and she reached up to brush his hair off his forehead, her touch so soft he could barely feel it. “Everyone else scrambled. Some for shelter, some for guns. But not you—you just came straight for me, as if you knew I was too scared to move. You could have gotten away, Enzo. You could have stayed safe, but instead you saved me, and you got shot in the process. But why? Why did you do it?”
A tired sigh leaked out. “You know why, Bean. I love you.”
She picked up one of his hands in both of hers and cradled it against her cheek. He could feel the sticky dampness of her tears, the softness of her skin, the fear in her fingers. “I wasn’t so sure. I haven’t been sure for so long, and after what I did…and you coming over like that, ready for a fight…”
Letting his eyes slide closed, Lorenzo dragged in a new breath. “I was mad. Maybe I still am. But it doesn’t change that I love you.” He forced his eyes open again. “How could you ever have doubted that? You know me—or you used to. You know I love you.” More than breath, more than air, more than life itself.
The eyes she focused on him glistened with tears that magnified years’ worth of uncertainty. “How could I know, Enzo? How could I be sure you didn’t regret proposing? You were never here. Even when—when Serafina died. You blew in, blew away again. You didn’t hold me, you didn’t tell me it would be all right. You never kissed me again after that first time—”
“Sabina.” He lifted his spare hand and rested it, heavy as the world, on her head. “Because I couldn’t trust myself.” How could she not have known that? That first kiss—he could still remember the weight of it, the wonder, the fire that had blazed through him and her both, leaving them breathless. But he wasn’t going to be like their fathers, like his brothers. He wasn’t going to play with that fire before it was right. He couldn’t do that to her soul or to his.
But what had he done instead? He’d made her doubt the very love he’d meant to demonstrate. He’d failed her.
And then she’d betrayed him.
She was there now, inches away, and it felt like a canyon yawned between them—his mistakes and hers, three years of pain and misunderstanding. Lorenzo could not shake the haunting thought of another man’s lips on that perfect rosy mouth, claiming what he had tried and failed to protect.
How had they destroyed each other like this?
Sabina rested her head on his chest again, right above where his heart thudded its recriminations. Her eyes slid closed. “On Thursday, when I saw the Prohibition cops shooting at Papa, I was terrified. I tried to run away, but I ran into Roman. He dragged me straight into the line of fire. I thought he loved me—yet there he was, deliberately putting my life at risk. Then there’s you, deliberately putting your own life at risk to save mine.”
Lorenzo shifted, telling himself it was because of every ache and pain shooting through his body. He hadn’t done it to make her move because she’d compared him to O’Reilly.
Objection, Your Honor. The witness is clearly lying through his teeth. Much as he wished he could allow it, it was sustained. He cleared his throat again. “Hey, I could’ve told you I was the nicer guy.”
She lifted her head to smile at his feeble humor. It faded fast. “I’m sorry, Enzo.”
She was. He could hear it in her voice, see it in her eyes.
He sighed. “So am I. I didn’t realize…I thought you knew. You’d always understood me so well, I just thought you knew. That we didn’t need words.”
In his classes, even before a judge, he could always find the right words to prove his case—but he’d clearly chosen the wrong ones now. The uncertainty compounded in her eyes, and she shifted away. “I’m sorry. I should have. I guess. I…”
“No. That’s not—I didn’t mean it was your fault.” Blast. He tried to push himself up a little against the mound of pillows, though every inch of altitude made the pounding that much worse.
He must have made some noise of distress, because she fussed over him, moving the pillow, soothing her hands over his face while he waited for the blinding pain to pulse its way back down. When his vision cleared, only worry filled her eyes—the last thing he wanted to see in them. “Oh, Sabina. Everything—everything I did was to keep this from happening. I never wanted you to face the violence of this life our fathers have chosen. I just wanted to rescue you from it. To spare that tender heart of yours any more pain.” He hadn’t wanted to see her turn into his mother, or hers, so careful about where they looked, so desperate not to see anything they couldn’t bear. He didn’t want her to be another Mafia wife, so strong and yet so broken.
But he’d broken her anyway.
