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Twenty-Nine
Aria reachedfor one of the pale pink peonies in the vase next to her bed and lifted it to her nose, inhaling its scent. Leave it to Damian to find peonies when the ground was still cold and unyielding, and to cover her room with them less than an hour after she’d gottensettled.
The flowers had arrived shortly after he left the hospital, saying he had to see to some details at the house and check on the two guards who had been injured. She’d had to force herself not to beg him to stay, not because she didn’t want to be alone, but because she couldn’t shake the feeling that the explosion was just the beginning of something that would change themforever.
She didn’t know if it was Malcolm who would dictate the terms by way of his chaotic, unpredictable maneuvers, or if it would be Damian by way of hisrage.
Probably thelatter.
Damian had tried to hide it from her, but he was seething. She’d only seen the fury lift from his face once since she’d gotten to the hospital and that was when they’d witnessed their baby on theultrasound.
She couldn’t stop the warmth that spread through her at the memory. She had seen the love on Damian’s face, had watched awe play across his usually sternfeatures.
She returned the flower in her hand to the vase and lay her hand against her stomach. She’d been terrified something had happened to the baby, that the terror she’d felt when sprawled in the back seat of the SUV, the panic as debris rained down on them, would somehow harm the fragile life she was carrying insideher.
She should have knownbetter.
The baby would be both a Fiore and aCavallo.
A warrior like her andDamian.
Still, she couldn’t help being relieved that the baby had been given a clean bill of health. She wasn’t worried about her own. The nurses had slipped her finger into a blood pressure monitor, but they’d told her the readings weren’t dangerously high considering what she’d beenthrough.
She would have insisted on going home if she hadn’t seen the desperation in Damian’s eyes. He wasn’t ready for her to leave the hospital yet, and while he’d never admit it, he’d been as shaken by what happened as she’dbeen.
He’d told her what he’d seen as they’d waited for the triage nurse, how the SUV had been parked when he and Cole emerged from the driveway, how it looked like Aria was in thehouse.
Damian hadn’t known that Enzo had spotted the drone, that by some mixture of experience and skill and grace, Enzo and Andre had hurried her back to the car with no explanation. That they had shoved her into the backseat only seconds before the explosion ripped through the front of thehouse.
For a couple interminable minutes, he’d thought she was inside when the bombhit.
And it was a bomb. They were sure of it even though the fire department was still assessing the scene. Aria had seen the drone, although she hadn’t known exactly what it was at thetime.
There was only one person who would go to that kind of trouble, who would arm a drone and drop an explosive in an area just feet away fromAria.
Malcolm.
She feared for Damian in the wake of his fury. Feared he would do something reckless, that he would cast off his usual coolheaded planning for the allure ofrevenge.
She would give him this night to figure things out with Cole, to get the Vitales’ apartment secure for theirstay.
But then she would go home and make him dinner, sit between his legs and lean her head against his back. She would remind him that revenge only mattered if they both made it out alive to enjoy more nights like thatone.
Like all the ones they’d enjoyed over the past few weeks since the shooting atVelvet.
She could only hope he’dlisten.
