AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Teo,” I paused my steps before we made it onto the main street. “Your hand.”
He quickly shoved his hand in his jacket pocket to hide the blood and hurried me along toward the hotel.
Once we were safely back in the room with our door locked, Teo stripped out of his jacket and shirt. He cleaned the blood from his hands while I stood in the doorway staring, still half in shock.
“Teo?”
“Yes? Are you okay?” He glanced up at me in the bathroom mirror before drying his hands and hurrying to my side.
I nodded but I wasn’t sure if it was a lie or not.
Teo led me to sit on the edge of the bed and took a seat beside me.
“Why did you kill that man? He seemed legitimately scared. Do you think that he would have actually turned around and hurt us after all that?”
“He may very well have been scared. Many men are when they think they might die. But he was not just some new recruit.”
“How do you know?”
“The tattoo on his hand. The four dots.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s a tattoo given by Graziani, the leader of the Corsicans that we ran into in Nice. You see, there is a common French prison tattoo that is five dots, four in a square, one in the middle. It signifies a man who has done time. The four walls and the man inside, but Graziani’s men make a point to never be taken alive. Always leaving the prison cells empty.”
“The four walls, no one inside,” I said, following along.
“Exactly. He had the mark on his hand. That’s how I knew that he wasn’t just some street thug. Graziani only gives those tattoos to men who have earned it.”
“Wow. Okay.” My shoulders slumped with some relief that Teo had had a good reason for killing that man. I should have known by that point that I could trust him not to act rashly or to be unnecessarily cruel.
“I’m very sorry that you had to see that, especially considering everything.” Teo reached down and gently placed his hand on my belly.
Just because I’m pregnant doesn’t mean that I’m made of glass.”
“I know that, but I never want you to have to experience the darker parts of our world. I wish I could shield both of you from all of it.”
“How is this going to work? Raising a baby in the life that we live. Keeping our child safe from enemies...” I said more as a question to myself than to Teo but he answered anyway.
“We protect him or her the same way that our parents protected us. By working to bring more and more power to our family, more respect, more security. We strive to become untouchable so that our children and their children’s children will continue to be safe for decades to come.”
Teo wrapped his arms around me, enveloping me in his warm embrace and I breathed in the comforting scent of him, feeling safe in the arms of the man I love, my husband.
.
