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“He can’t just be let to stay here,” I said, anger bubbling up, knowing he stood by and watched Claire get abused, then watched her and her son become prisoners.
“No,” Luca agreed. “I think he’s going to leave. If he hasn’t already packed up. But if it seems like he is staying, we will take out the whole operation.”
I wanted him to be taken out either way, but I understood Luca’s reluctance to chase someone to take them out.
We’d already had casualties.
Injuries.
And a traitor uncovered through all of this.
It was his job as the boss to try to make sure no one else got hurt or killed. And, of course, to go through our ranks with a fine-tooth comb now and make sure everyone left was as loyal as we’d assumed.
“She’s a good one, you know,” Luca said a while later, nodding his head back at Claire.
“I know,” I agreed.
“And while I think she had every right to have the kind of rage she took out on Warren, I think that is some shit you’re gonna want to talk about, make sure she’s alright about. She was… a mess afterward.”
That made sense.
She was a gentle woman.
Not prone to violence, save for self-preservation, or to protect her son.
But the day after the attack when she’d visited me in the hospital, she hadn’t been able to raise her arm from the muscle failure caused by all the stabbing.
“We got Lettie,” Luca said. “Think what we need next in the family is a shrink,” he said, shooting me a smirk. “Should tell Milo to marry one.”
“She’s gonna be alright,” I assured Luca.
She did what she needed to.
Was it overkill?
Yeah.
But she’d been beaten, humiliated, and held captive by the man for a long time. If anyone deserved to go a little overboard on the stabbing, it was her.
The memory of that night would slowly but surely get buried under new, better memories.
It would just take time.
—
“What do you think you’re doing?” Claire asked later that night, coming into the kitchen to find me standing at the island.
“Making dinner,” I said.
“Yeah… no,” she said, rolling her eyes at me, then coming around the island to gently push me back toward the living room where I was camping out on the couch for the time being.
The stairs had been attempted, and quickly written off as an option for another few days.
“Did you forget that you’re a Grassi?” Claire asked as she flicked a blanket over me when I lowered myself down. “While you were sleeping earlier, no fewer than four meals were dropped off. And I was informed that this is just the first wave.”
“Oh, yeah?” I asked, smiling at the idea of her interacting with all the family’s women, getting to know them, getting comfortable with them.
She’d already gotten close with my mom and my sisters during the whole hospital and hotel stay. But I liked that she was meeting the cousins and aunts and everyone else as well.
