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“You’re agood man, Niccolo. However you feel in the morning, know that what you did tonight was justified.” His arm stretches across the front seat of the van, his hand coming to rest on my shoulder; the touch grounds me to reality and soothes my frazzled nerves. “You protected the woman you love; nothing is more honorable than that.”
Chapter 54
Christine
Lucia escorts me to the honeymoon suite, and I stare at my phone for hours, waiting for it to ring. But Niccolo never calls.
As I stand under the hot, steaming water of the shower, it washes away my carefully applied makeup and rinses the hairspray from my locks. My sister-in-law stands guard, sitting on the couch and waiting for my return. I spend my wedding night playing cards and trying to avoid talking about my absent husband.
When I crawl into bed around midnight, Lucia tucks me in like a child. She can’t be much older than me, but her experience teaching elementary students has taught her how to take charge in the middle of chaos.
“I know this isn’t how you expected to spend your wedding night, but thank you for trusting me. I don’t know what my brothers are doing; they live by their own codes and laws. But I’m sure whatever it is, they are trying to protect you.”
I slip into a dreamless sleep, punctuated by an endless opening of doors. I am too exhausted to make sense of it all.
Lucia leaves, then she returns a couple of hours later with Niccolo in tow. I roll over onto my side and curl into a ball because I’m freezing despite the comforter, only to see them standing in the bathroom doorway, arguing in hushed whispers. The little voice in my head screams at me to wake up and investigate, but exhaustion pulls me under.
When I wake the next morning, I find Niccolo sleeping on the tiny little couch in front of the electric fireplace. He’s still wearing his wedding clothes. Dark, scuffed shoes peek out from the arm of the couch. His arm is tossed over the edge, the black suit stretching toward his wrist.
My heart stops when I see a spray of crimson on the white shirt underneath the suit jacket. “Nic.” My voice sounds hesitant and unsure, and I’m too quiet to wake him up. I reach forward to touch his blanketed form, shaking his ankle gently before calling his name even louder. “Niccolo, wake up.”
His eyes shoot open in fear, and he instinctively recoils. It takes him a moment to track his surroundings before he realizes he’s safe; he’s in our shared hotel room, and nothing bad is going to happen to him.
“Is that blood on your shirt?”
Niccolo sits up on the couch, making a face of unease as he strips off the blanket and tosses it on the floor. “Probably,” he groans. “This couch has very poor lumbar support.”
But I can’t hear him over the sound of fear crashing in my ears. There is blood everywhere, decorating his suit in a macabre pattern. “Whose blood is that?” I manage to squeak out.
He looks down at his chest, and realization dawns on him. “Christine, this isn’t what it looks like.”
“I-I don’t know what it looks like. You didn’t come back last night. You left. You left, and you didn’t come back,” I start stuttering. “What happened? Where did you go? Why are you covered in blood?”
Niccolo jumps off the couch and strips off his suit jacket, tossing it on the ground with the blanket. “We took care of your uncles last night,” he admits. “They won’t bother you anymore.”
Are they dead? Is that why he looks like this? “Your knuckles,” I breathe, trying to make sense of it all. “What happened to your hands?”
“Nothing is wrong,” he says gently. “It’s just some bruising from using my fists to beat the shit out of Marco. I’ll be fine.”
Nobody wanted my uncles at the wedding last night, but I didn’t want them dead, either. “Tell me what happened. I need to know.”
He offers me a seat on the couch. Though flecks of blood stain the sofa, I reluctantly sit beside him. “For starters, Giovanni and Marco are alive. They’re at St. Francis receiving life-sustaining care. They arealive, Christine.”
Relief floods through me knowing they’re okay, but a tinge of disappointment prickles in my chest. “So this was just another setback,” I voice.
“No,” Niccolo cuts me off. “This wasnota setback. This will ensure your safety. We were going to do this today,” he manages with an awkward smile. “I wanted to have my wedding night with you before getting my hands dirty, but we didn’t anticipate Giovanni and Marco showing up to the reception. I mean, maybe Dante anticipated it, but I didn’t.”
I wish they wouldn’t have come; their appearance ruined the rest of the night. “What did you do to them?”
He reaches up to rub the back of his neck anxiously. “You can’t be mad,” he prefaces. “We didn’t kill them. Remember that.”
I’m not mad; I’m nervous.
“I beat Giovanni with a bat, and then Dante and I took turns using Marco as a punching bag. But again,” he adds as he sees my face begin to contort with shock, “neither of them is dead. They’re both alive and well at the hospital. Well, notwell, per se,” Niccolo shrugs, “but not in the ICU.”
I can’t believe Nic. I don’t understand why he’d do this. “How is this supposed to help us?” When Grandfather finds out, he’s going to want revenge. He’ll have Niccolo killed, and I’ll be a widow by next week. I haven’t even had sex with my husband yet, and I already have to say my goodbyes.
Niccolo reaches forward to take my hand in his, bringing it up to his lips to kiss away the tension in my muscles. All I can focus on is the black and blue of his knuckles, swollen from his ministrations.
