My fingers closed around the door handle. Cold metal. It bit into my skin. The pounding on the door rattled the nightstand. One. Two. Three.
Alessio didn't looked at the door. He looked at me, treating the men trying to kill us were background noise while I was the main event .
"Hesitating, wifey?" His body was rough and strained. The blood loss was catching up badly.
I yanked the drawer open.Scalpel. Surgical thread. Gauze.Antiseptic. A man like him didn't keep band-aids. He kept trauma kits.
"You do this often?" I grabbed the scalpel. My Hand was shaking; he was right.
"Often enough." His jaw tightened as soon as I stepped between his knees. The space he'd made deliberately for me. "Get the bullet out first, then stitch."
His dress pants were black. The blood was invisible there, but I could smell it. I dropped to my knees on the white rug. It wasn't white anymore.
"Hold still."
He laughed. No humour in it. "I don't do still."
"Lift your arm."
He did slowly. The movement pulled his skin taut again, and the wound wept the fresh blood down his ribs. It cut across his obliques, disappearing under his waistband exactly where I had noticed it earlier.
I set the cold tip of the scalpel to the torn skin.
"Wait." His hand shot out, around my thigh. Tight enough to hold but not bruise, radiating heat through the lace of my dress."Breathe, principessa. You pass out and we both die."
I wasn't going to pass out. I was going to kill him myself for putting his hand on me like he had right to do. Anyways, legally, he did.
I cut .
He didn't flinch. Didn't make a sound. His fingers just flexed hard on my thigh once.
The bullet was shallow. Luck, or God, or the devil watching out for his own. I drug it out with the tip of the scalpel and dropped it on the nightstand. It clicked against the wood–one more piece of metal in a room full of weapons.
"You're good at this." His voice was lower now. Closer. I'd leaned in without realizing it, my hairs falling towards forward, on his chest.
"I'm good at surviving." I grabbed the Antiseptic. It would hurt. I didn't warn him.
He hissed when it hit the open wound. His grip on my thigh was as hard as an iron. Then deliberately, his thumb stroked once, back and forth–soothing me while he was the one bleeding.
"Your hands are shaking, principessa," he murmured, his breathe stirred the hair at mu temple. "Is it the blood or me?"
I didn't answer him. I couldn't, because the truth was in my hands. They were not shaking anymore. They were steady on his skin, fingers spread over the hard plane of his chest to keep him still. His muscles jumped under my palm.
His gaze dropped to where I touched him, then tracked back up to my face. Slow. Cataloguing. Like he is memorizing what surrender looks like to me. But I wasn't surrendering, but surviving. There was a difference.
"Faster, principessa! Unless you want them to find you." Voice was low and commanding.
I wanted to snap back but I bit my cheek instead and pulled the thread tight. Each pass pulled a rough grunt out of his throat that he tried to hide.
The pounding on the door stopped.
The silence was worse.
I threaded the needle with the fingers which were not shaking anymore. Anger was much steadier than fear for me.
"You know you are–"
"Shut up and let me work."
"Make me."
I looked up at him then. Big mistake. His face was inches from mine. Blood loss had paled him, but his eyes were still black and bottomless. Hungry. He'd call it earlier— hungry despite the blood. Men like him go off on violence, survival and claiming.
I was kneeling between his legs in my wedding dress, while his blood is on my hands, his hands on my thighs. What a scene.
The door blew inward.
Wood and metal sharpnel exploded into the room. I screamed and threw myself sideways by instinct–
His arm wrapped securely around my waist and hauled me down. We hit the floor behind the bed, his body covering mine. His gun already back in his hand like it was already there.
He was bleeding.He was shot. Then also he could so fast before I could even blink.
"Down," He snarled against my ear.
Bullets shredded the silk sheets where we'd been a second ago. Feathers and black silk snowed over us. His chest was heaving against my back–from pain or exertion of rage, I couldn't tell. His free hand fisted tightly in the skirt of my wedding dress, holding me flush to him. Not protecting, possessing.
"Alessio–"
"Three men," He cut me off, counting the shadows through the feathers. Calm. Like we weren't on the floor, bleeding. "maybe four. They want you alive and me dead."
"How do you–"
"Because the stopped shooting." His mouth was on my throat now. His words vibrating through my skin. "They saw where you went. They won't risk you."
He shifted just enough to press the cold barrel of the gun into my hand. Wrapping up my fingers around it with his own.
"Can you shoot wife?"
"Ihave never held a gun before today!"
"Thought so." He didn't sound disappointed. He sounded pleased.
"Then you trust me to keep you alive. Again."
He rolled, taking me with him, putting his back to the bed frame. He placed himself between me and the door. Between me and death. Again.
He looked at me. Really looked . For the first time since he had said "Now run," there was something other than a command in his eyes.
"I don't share what's mine," He said. Quiet.
A vow. A threat. "Not my territories, not my weapons and definitely not my wife."
He rose up to his knees, gun up and fire.
The first man dropped. The second man said,"De Luca! We have your father!"