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“You be nice to her. She did you a drawing.” He hands me a piece of paper. On it is a pretty good rendition of me running through the grass. I’m dressed as an ogre. She’s drawn herself as the princess, like up in the attic. I’ve got a club instead of a gun.
“We still got that contact at the Gazette back in New York?” I ask.
“Sure do.”
“Hook her up with a cartoonist's job there.”
“You sure? It’ll mean calling in a few favors? Could make things complicated when you get rid of her.”
“Just do it.”
Alessandro walks out of the room while I’m looking at the picture, closing the door behind him.
I lay back on the bed, ignoring the pain in my side. I’ve been shot before. I know the drill.
I’m thinking about what he just said. She could have run. I didn’t think of that. She chose to stay. Kept me alive, and for what reason?
Is this about revenge? That’s the question I need to answer. Getting her pregnant, getting hitched to her, pissing off her father. Is it just about revenge? Is there more to it than that?
The door opens as I’m trying to get out of bed. Anna sees me and runs over, grabbing my arm. “Where are you trying to go?” she asks.
“Out of this bed.”
“Not yet, sunshine.” She stands right in front of me, refusing to move. “You’re supposed to be resting.”
“Get out of my way.” A wave of dizziness washes over me as I try to push past her. “Move.”
She doesn’t even flinch when I shout at her. She just folds her arms. “Enough of that,” she says. “Lay back down right now. The doctor said you have to rest. You got shot, Marco. You’re in no fit state to be walking around.”
I want to yell at her some more, but that look on her face is utterly adorable. I lay back down.
“That’s better,” she says. “At least you can listen to reason sometimes.”
“Don’t sass me, Anna.”
“When’s a better time than when you’re too weak to fight back?”
I growl at her, but she just laughs. “Come on, when else am I going to get a chance to tease you?”
“How come you didn’t run?”
“Excuse me?”
“Back at the house. When I was out. You could have run, but you didn’t. Why not? You’d already escaped. Why not keep going?”
“You think I’d leave you to die? What kind of woman do you think I am?”
“One who wants to get away from me.”
“Not at the cost of your life. You saved me anyway.”
“I did?”
“I was thinking about it while you were out. If you hadn’t shot Theo, he would have taken me back to my father. You stopped him. I wanted to say thank you.”
“I should thank you as well.”
She looks surprised. “You want to thank me? What for?”
