“No, our car will be just up the road any moment.”
We headed in the opposite direction toward the open road. I pulled my handkerchief from my breast pocket.
“It’s not that deep.” Sienna brushed me off as I wrapped her arm. “It’s a clean cut, and it doesn’t even hurt.”
“Why did you do it?”
“Because, you stupid ass, we were in trouble!”
“Did you just call me an ass?”
“Yeah, and I was being kind.” She batted my hands away from fussing with her arm. She was right. It wasn’t that deep, but it was still nasty, and she needed it tended to.
Niccola and Vinni turned away, but I knew they were laughing. I never let anyone speak to me that way, so they were thoroughly entertained.
Two cars pulled up and parked by the curb. My cousins hopped in the first one, and I turned to help Sienna inside the other. She suddenly had a gun pointed at me, stopping me dead in my tracks. Nonna’s words blew into my head.“Can you really trust her?”
A tear streamed down her face as her chin quivered.
“Sienna?” What the hell was happening?
“Don’t make me do this!” she screamed, and my heart broke into a million pieces. “Stop!” Her eyes widened, and her finger squeezed the trigger, and I waited for the impact of the bullet. A sudden irrational thought hit me that if I was going to die I would rather it be her than any Coppola. Only it zipped over my shoulder and clipped the neck of Caio. He went flying back, and his gun that had been aimed at me went spinning into the air from the momentum.
Her terrified expression moved to mine as she lowered the gun. I removed it from her hand, tossed it at Vinni, who was now at my side, and I jumped into the car with her. Where there was one rat, another was never far away.
Once the door closed and we were behind the protection of the thick tinted glass, I grabbed her shoulders to face me.
“Are you all right?”
My hands shook as I tried to process that I just killed someone on an open street in the middle of the day.
“Hey.” Elio grabbed me and made me look at him, but I was so far away from reality that it was almost overwhelming. “You’re okay. Take a breath.” He made quick work of fixing my arm with the first aid kit that came out of nowhere and assured me I didn’t need a stitch after all.
I was pleased the partition was up and we were in a limo instead of a town car. I needed to be grounded because I felt like I was being pulled in a hundred different directions at max speed.
I swiveled, dropped to my knees in front of him, and desperately grabbed for his belt to release it. His hands came down and covered mine to stop me.
“As much as I understand your need to feel something, let’s just get home, because chances are we’ll have company.” He kissed my hands, and I tried hard to pull myself together to see his point. “When I’m inside you, Sienna,” he purred as he pulled me up onto his lap, “everything else just fades away. I can’t protect you when we’re like that.”
I nodded my understanding, but the need for a release was consuming. I could also see by his eyes that he was in a battle to calm his own inner fire.
“What you did back there was impressive but incredibly reckless. I appreciate what you did and why you did it, but these are not your average criminals. These men are highly trained and have a shoot first, ask questions later type of mentality.”
“So, you’re saying I should have let him shoot you,” I shot back, feeling edgy about everything that had happened and about what was not going to happen right now.
“What I’m saying,” he grabbed my arm when I went to pull away, “is thank you.” His gaze dropped to my lips, and I could see his battle with what he wanted to do and what he should do.
“Kiss me,” he whispered.
It was as if something hit the center of my heart, and an all too familiar pain spread through my chest like paint oozing out of a can. It filled the gaps and grooves of my battered heart. The photos flashed in front of me, and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I loved Elio, there was no question, but things were strange and different now.
When his grip loosened on my arm, I slid from his lap and took a seat across from him, crossing my legs and my arms.
He glared at me in confusion and was about to speak when a phone call came through and he quickly took it. Once he hung up, he seemed deep in thought, and in those moments of silence, my brain ping-ponged from all that had happened. I had ended a man’s life. It was a terrible thing to try to get my head around. Elio’s hands came down firmly on both my knees.
“There’s a place in your head where you can put what happened tonight to rest. You just need to find it,” he whispered. I nodded once, understanding what he was referring to because I’d had to utilize that place before. He leaned back, and we returned to our silence.
Once we were outside the town, I lowered the partition. “Please drop me off at the Il Giglio hotel.”