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But my throat closed up again. I couldn’t say it. Mia’s arms tightened around me.
“Do you know if they were after Luca?” Emiel asked. “Or were they after you?”
I swallowed several times, still unable to draw a proper breath without my chest jerking around tears.
“M-me, I think. Berlusconi was there. He w-wanted me to sign over the restaurant for pocket change.”
Now the growl came from Mia, higher-pitched and vibrating against me where our upper bodies were pressed together.
“Thatfucking asshole,” she snarled, her tone vicious in a way I’d never heard it before.
“The police shot him,” I said, with no question at all in my mind thathe, at least, was dead.
“Good!” Mia spat. “I hope he rots in hell!”
I wanted to ask so many questions. How had the police known where to find us? Were Byron and I murderers? Did I need a lawyer, and if so, how on earth was I going to pay for one?
But Mia was holding me, and I still couldn’t breathe properly, and right now all I cared about was that she never,everlet me go. We did stay that way for a long time, probably because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to stop my body’s shaking, or the tears that tracked down my cheeks.
Eventually, though, she pressed a firm kiss to my forehead and eased back.
“I don’t want to leave you, Nat,” she said. “But I need to get an update on Luca and Byron or I’m going to go mad. I promise I’ll be back as soon as I can, to let you know what they say. Emiel can stay and keep you company, okay?”
She sounded a bit teary herself, and the only thing I could do was nod. The feeling of loss as she got up hurt worse than the bruises and pulled muscles, but I’d sealed my own fate when it came to Mia months ago.
She left with a final backward glance at me, her eyes wet and red-rimmed. Somewhat to my surprise, Emiel took her place, settling his large frame gingerly on the edge of the bed.
“Sounds like you an’ Byron are proper heroes,” he rumbled. “Saving Luca like that.”
The words were so ridiculous that I scoffed. “If it hadn’t been for Byron, I’d have been locked up in that office until the police found me. And I’d also be missing a pair of kneecaps if he hadn’t dragged himself after me and shot the guy who was pointing a gun at me.”
His eyebrows went up. “Byron shot someone?”
I nodded miserably. “Think we might’ve killed two people.” My gorge rose.
“Self-defense,” Emiel said dismissively. “No prosecutor in the country is gonna try to make that charge fly.” He hesitated, looking down at me. “You’re still in love with her. Mia, I mean.”
My throat closed yet again. “Of course I’m in love with her,” I rasped. “Who in their right mind wouldn’t be in love with Mia?”
He pondered that for a long moment. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”
It was too much. I covered my face with my bandaged hand and started weeping again, knowing that this fleeting moment as the object of Mia’s worry was almost certainly the last taste of being in her embrace that I would ever get.
To my shock, a tree-trunk arm curled around my shoulder, and the towering alpha who made fun of my form on the lat-press—and occasionally bought me coffee afterward—tugged me against his side.
“You two’ve had a rough time of it lately,” he rumbled. “Guess we all have, really.”
I stiffened for an instant, knowing that I wasn’t supposed to be okay with things like this. Men shouldn’t need emotional comfort from other men. Hell, we weren’t supposed to need emotional comfort,period. But Emiel’s one-armed embrace offered a kind of unshakeable solidity that promised nothing you could do would upset it—a solid strength that Mia’s gentle arms couldn’t offer.
For the first time in my life, I leaned into the easy support of a male body for reasons that had nothing to do with sex.
“I just want a time machine so I can go back and fix everything,” I choked out, my voice breaking on the words.
“Nah,” Emiel said. “If you did that, we wouldn’t’ve met her. And then where would we be? You gotta look forward, not back. That’s what my therapist says sometimes, anyway.”
The door creaked, and a familiar, very unwelcome voice barked, “What the hell is this? Are youcrying, boy?”
I froze, ice winding through my veins. Next to me, Emiel went very still.