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“I just need to do one more thing and then we can get you cleaned up before the Doc gets here,” Lino murmured, shifting my weight so that he could stand with me in his arms. His hand seemed to leave a trail of red wherever it went, and he hissed.
"Not mine," I murmured, looking down at Connor's body as we passed. I wanted to kick his pretty face in, because the bullet hole wasn’t enough damage for what he’d put me through.
"You did some damage, Samara," Matteo grinned at me as we passed. "Ivory and Sadie will be proud." I wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of it but didn't dare. Not with the pain ripping me in half.
When we stepped up to where Enzo and Georgio stood over Emilio, I noted the way he held his shoulder and rocked where he sat. The glare he gave me as Lino set me to my feet in front of him made my heart clench again.
I had no idea what I’d done to make him hate me so much.
“Why?” I whispered, and my bottom lip trembled. While I hadn’t had a bond with him the way that Ivory and Scar did, I would never have expected him to do something like this.
“You’re a stain on the Bellandi name,” he hissed through his teeth. His eyes went over my shoulder where Matteo stepped up beside me, and I winced at the vehemence in the glare he gave Emilio. “It was bad enough that one Bellandi married outside the family, but for Lino to procreate with a Jew is unthinkable. We had to get rid of you before you could get pregnant.”
I’d thought it had been because Lino was of the age where men were expected to settle down, but all the inquiries and pushes about us having children, every last one had been a deception to make us want to wait. A way of fishing for information about whether it was an immediate concern. “My father encouraged this?” Lino asked, drawing the gun from inside his jacket.
Emilio sneered. “It was his idea. He found Connor long before you managed and gave him shelter in his home until we could get rid of you. He arranged the buyer, since he had the contact from his bitch of a second wife.”
Lino growled, raising his arm to press the gun against Emilio’s forehead. Emilio glared up at him, not bothering to beg for his life.
“I’d like to kill you slowly,” he snarled, but he glanced at me. “But I think I’ll save that for my father instead. You lived like a minion who didn’t matter, and now you get to die like one too.” There was no bang, no blast like I would have expected. Just the thump of the bullet and his eyes going lifeless as he fell to his side.
I didn’t flinch. I’d never seen a man shot before, not until Connor. But anyone who could sell me to another person wasn’t a man. They were rabid dogs who needed to be put down, and all I felt was pride that my husband had been the one to do it.
"Going to clean her up. Doc is on the way," Lino murmured, lifting me into his arms again.
"Good. We'll clean up out here,” Matteo responded. As he said the words, a box truck pulled into the driveway. I didn't want to know or think about how many bodies they'd thrown into that box truck, so I buried my face in Lino's neck and let him take me inside.
???
The hot water felt rejuvenating. Like I'd gone into the shower one person and came out another.
"I almost lost you," Lino murmured as he towel-dried my hair.
"I thought that the loan shark was with Connor. What happened?" I asked, and Lino sighed as he tugged a shirt over my head and helped me into some sleep shorts.
"Decoy. Wasn't Connor at all, but the fucking shark was too stupid to notice the difference. We came back as soon as we realized it was a decoy, because you were the first thing I could think of that Connor would want me distracted from. I'm so sorry, Little Dove." His forehead touched mine as he lifted me and laid me out on our bed. "I fucked up."
"I'm fine," I whispered. "You came back in time, and you couldn't have known Emilio would betray you like that."
"I promised I'd protect you. I failed to do that," he grunted, and he stepped back from me. The way his shoulders slumped, I could see every bit of self-hate and blame and the way it wore on him.
"You helped me protect myself. If you hadn't encouraged me to go with Sadie—" I broke off, thinking about the reality of where I might be now if I hadn't managed to stall just long enough. "I don't even know how long I fought them off, but it felt like forever."
"Sadie taught you that, not me."
"And you shot them," I murmured. He'd killed two men for me, killed in cold blood and not even batted an eye. “I’m sorry that you had to do that for me.”
He chuckled, stepping back into my space. "That's not a weight you need to worry about, vita mia. It wasn't the first time I've killed, and I'm certain it won't be the last." I stared up into those dark eyes, wondering how he
could survive so much abuse as a child, survive being turned into a hardened killer, and still look down at me as if he couldn't live without me. It seemed unnatural. Like it couldn't be possible for one man to feel so much for me, when he should be deadened to feeling in general.
I knew he'd been well on his way as a child, but somehow, whatever this bond was between us had rescued that small piece of him. Preserved it for me. "What will you do with your father?" I asked him, staring up at him with wide eyes as the Doctor arrived.
"Don't worry about it. Trust me when I say that I won't lose any sleep over what I do to that man."
I nodded, settling in while the doctor poked and prodded at my ribs. Lino held my hand, wincing with me every time I showed any signs of pain.
He may have been brutal.
