Page 217 of The Enslaved Duet

A moment later, her mouth softened, and her breath evened out. I lay there for a long while, listening to her breath as one might listen to a symphony, letting the sound move through my soul like a spiritual awakening.

She was alive.

Alive.

But she had been through too much, and enough was enough. From that moment on, Riddick and I wouldn’t leave her fucking side. Not until Noel was taken care of and put away, because no matter that it was Giuseppe’s thugs who had obviously hurt my wife, I had no doubt Noel had orchestrated it.

There was a gruff cough from the doorway, and I looked up to see Salvatore there, dressed all in black, his face a white mask of horror. There were tears in his gold eyes as he stared at the sleeping woman who shared those eyes with him.

“Madonna santa,” he breathed in a voice that was clogged with tears. “Look at her.”

“Look at you,” I countered coldly. “Alive and well.”

His expression shuttered, the wet glazed eyes turning cold as marbles. “As if you didn’t know.”

I leveled him with a cold look, but I was curious how he could have known that.

“I was not exactly subtle as I should have been, mm?” he addressed my unspoken question as he moved into the room and into the chair on the other side of Cosima. His meaty hand trembled as he linked it gently with hers. “I could not be when my daughter was so close. I knew it was probable you and others had eyes on her, but I indulged my own need to see her more than was prudent if I truly wanted to stay dead.”

The age-old fury in my heart eroded under the warmth of his affection for my wife. He hadn’t been there for her when she was a girl, and I resented him for that even though I knew it wasn’t exactly his choice. I wanted to believe that a true man made his own decisions regardless of the obstacles that faced him, but life wasn’t so simple and I’d had firsthand experience with the difficulty of overcoming your own circumstances.

The truth was, he loved Cosima with a verve that led him to sacrifice his own safety on multiple occasions in order to see her happy.

I could respect that.

Hadn’t I spent the past four years doing the very same?

But my softening was more than even that rational.

Once, years ago before the death of my beloved mother, I had called this man Uncle Tore. We had spent countless occasions with him as boys both in England and Italy with our mother, learning Italian, picking olives out of his many orchards, and squishing grapes with our toes in the old way just because it was fun for boys to get messy. He had loved us too, not quite the same way he loved Cosima, but in his own deep way. We were the children of his best friend, and as was the Italian way, that made us family to him.

So, there were deep fissures in the arctic glaciers I’d built between myself and my old affection for the man, and they deepened as I saw one furious tear roll down his creased cheek.

“It was Giuseppe di Carlo and his men,” I said quietly, careful not to disturb the magnificent beauty sleeping in my hold. “That is all I got before she slept again.”

He nodded tersely as fury flashed over his face. “Of course, it was. He has been trying to start a war since Dante took over as Camorracapo. He does not like that we will not parlay with him. He does not like that we pose a threat to his territory and undisputed reign as mafia kingpin in the city.”

“Perhaps,” I allowed. “But it’s more than that. He made a deal with the Order, with Noel, to spy on Cosima in exchange for membership.”

“More power.” Tore clucked his tongue and shook his head. “Sometimes thesestronzo,they do not understand that all power is not created equal. The taint of some, like this, will end you.”

“I can’t argue. He’s dead.”

His forehead dissected into deep lines of shock. “How so? You got to him already.”

I tipped my head toward my wife, sweeping my fingers over her crown to collect silky locks between my fingers. Her gorgeous mane comforted me as much as it did her. “This one took him out before she was shot. Or so she says.”

“Check on that,” he said, and it was half question, half musing. I had no doubt he would check on it even though he expected me to do the same. “Still, we will kill all of the men involved.”

I nodded. “That’s the plan.”

We locked eyes for a moment over Cosima’s prone, broken body, bonding over our dual protectiveness, and our combined rage and need for vengeance.

“Where were you when this happened?” he asked, and it wasn’t a reprimand, just curiosity.

“I confronted Noel,” I admitted. “Once again, I think he planned this exactly right so that I would be gone, and she would be vulnerable. Though,” I added in a voice like dry ice, “Dante was meant to be watching out for her.”

Tore winced as he drew Cosima’s hand to his face, pressing it to his cheek and closing his eyes. “This is my fault. I called Dante to a different project, something that needed doing for our organization. I didn’t realize…”