“Let me see,” I say at once, pushing him forward and pulling off his jacket insistently. Shit. He’s bleeding again—though nowhere near as badly as last time. “Rosa will need to look at this,” I tell him.
He shrugs me off. “Let’s just worry about getting home first,” he mutters.
I sit back as well, content to let him brood. “Whatever you say, Dami. Whatever you say.” I’m riding high on adrenaline and satisfaction. We got away.Andwe got intel.
But as I think about that intel, my mood dims a little. My own cousin—trying to buy me. To what end? To save me?
Or to kill me off, so he could inherit my claim to the Family?
We get home without further incident. Vito makes sure to slow down as soon as we’re a few blocks away, I assume so we won’t attract attention. He drives straight into the underground garage I’ve never seen, but now realize must be set above the creepy basement where Dami kept me.
Might keep me again.
But not tonight. Tonight, Dami doesn’t even bother to hide the code from me when he punches it in to bring down the garage door, and then the security shields after it.
We troop up a small staircase that opens into a short corridor with several doors coming off it—those must be the bedrooms for Rosa, Vito, and Sammy—and into the kitchen. Rosa is already there, first aid kit at the ready, her lips a thin white line.
I pull the cloak around me, shivering. Rosa leaves the room and comes back with a white terry robe to put around me over the cloak, which I gratefully snuggle into. And then she sets about tending to Dami’s back.
“It’s not so bad,” she allows begrudgingly at last. Vito has made some hot chocolate in the meantime, and I curl my hands around its warmth gratefully. “I’ll dress it again. And you—” She stabs a finger into the middle of Dami’s back. “No more heroics!”
He winces. “Got none planned.” I catch his eye, and we both smirk.
Sammy chooses that moment to wander through to the kitchen, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He stops dead when he sees me, as usual. Then he points at me. “That’s mine!” he complains.
I look down at the robe I’m wearing. The fact that it’s Sammy’s explains why it fits so much better than Dami’s. Still, I don’t want a fight about it.
“Here,” I say, shrugging it off. I hold it out to him, and he grabs it from me as though I’ve stolen his most precious possession. I pull the cloak around me again, ignoring Sammy’s expression as he takes it in.
“What’s going on?” he demands, looking back to Dami.
“Nothing,” Dami replies heavily, and stands, pulling his shirt back on. “Go to bed, all of you. You—” he glances at me “—come with me.”
We don’t go up to the bedroom, even though I can see Dami’s exhausted. I am too, but I’m still humming with adrenaline from the Obelisk. So when Dami leads me into the great roomand turns on the gas fire, I’m glad we’ll have the chance to decompress.
“I can’t believe we actually got out of there alive,” I say as he shuts the door behind us.
“Yeah, well, we’re still two dead guys walking,” he says wearily. “Come here. Let me get that thing off of you.” I stand still long enough to let him unlock and remove the cage, but then I go right back to pacing.
“Sit down, would you?” he says.
“I can’t,” I snap back. “I have a hunk of metal up my ass, and it’s really uncomfortable.”
He gives a soft snort. “Then come here, like I’m telling you, and I’ll take it out for you.”
“In a minute,” I tell him. I want to calm down a little first. I pull off the stupid gold cloak and throw it down on the sofa. Dami sinks into his armchair next to the fire while I pace around in front of him. It feels completely normal now to be naked in his presence. Naked, even plugged still. None of it bothers me right now, because we have a bigger problem. “We need to think about what you tell your Boss. Killing Grisha was a really dumb move.”
Dami is looking at me with an expression I can’t read. “You don’t need to worry about what my Boss will think. It’s got nothing to do with you.”
“It does, actually. When we left this house, you were protecting me from one person killing my Family. Now we’ll have the entire New York Bratva after us, too. Don’t you realize you started a war tonight?”
He leans forward on his knees with an irritated sigh. “I don’t need you to be telling me about this business. I’m the fucking Giuliano Enforcer. I know how the politics work.”
But something keeps pushing me on. I’m not going to let it rest. “If you knew, then why the hell did you kill Grisha? My reputation is hardly worth a mob war, surely?—”
“Because you belong to me,” he barks. He catches me as my pacing brings me closer to him, and stands to hold me hard by both arms, even shaking me slightly. “You belong tome, and no one else gets to touch you, look at you, fuckingthinkabout you without my permission. What don’t you get about that?”
My euphoria dissolves into frustration. Daniel King was right; this man is an ignorant oaf. “Belong to you? If that’s the case, shouldn’t you prove it? At least Grisha wanted to fuck me! Allyoudo is tease me.”