Chapter 3 - Night Terrors and Raw Edges
The storm broke over the valley at three in the morning.
Elena woke to the sound of something shattering against stone. It wasn't thunder; it was heavy glass, followed by the dull, rhythmic thud of an animal struggling in a trap.
She threw on her gray woolen robe, shoved her bare feet into slippers, and grabbed the heavy brass flashlight she kept on her bedside table. The third-floor corridor was freezing, drafts whistling through the floorboards. She hurried down the service stairs to the second floor, her heart thumping against her ribs.
The double doors of Dante's bedchamber stood slightly ajar.
A low, guttural snarl came from within, thick with delirium.
Elena pushed the door open. "Mr. Rossi?"
The room was pitch black save for the lightning flashing through the uncurtained windows. The side table lay splintered on the floor, water and shards of crystal sparkling in the intermittent glare.
Dante was on his feet in the center of the room, stripped to his sleeping trousers. His bandages had been torn loose, trailing white ribbons across his chest. He was soaked in sweat, his chest heaving, his left hand gripping a heavy semi-automatic pistol.
He leveled the barrel directly at her forehead.
"Who sent you?" he rasped. His eyes were wide, glassy with fever, completely untethered from reality. "Was it Lucian? Tell me who paid you!"
Elena did not move. The bore of the gun was nine millimeters wide, steady despite the fever wracking his frame. She lowered the flashlight beam to the floor so she wouldn't blind him.
"It’s Elena, Dante," she said. It was the first time she had spoken his given name. She kept her tone low, rhythmic, like someone speaking to a spooked stallion. "Put the gun down. You are in your bedroom. In the villa."
"They came through the perimeter," he breathed, stepping toward her, the muscles in his back bunching into knots. "The cars were burning... Enzo is dead in the drive..."
"Enzo died three years ago in Palermo," she said softly, recalling a scrap of conversation she had overheard between the guards. "There is nobody in the drive. Look out the window. Just the rain."
He blinked, sweat stinging his eyes. For a terrible second, his finger tightened on the trigger. Elena did not flinch, though every instinct screamed at her to throw herself onto the rug. She took one step forward, deliberately entering the path of the weapon.
"Dante," she whispered. "Give it to me."
She raised her empty hand, palm up, reaching toward the steel slide.
The lightning cracked, blue and violent, shaking the foundations of the house. Dante’s gaze dropped to her open hand—small, work-roughened, unblemished by gunpowder. The wildness in his eyes fractured, replaced by sheer, staggering exhaustion.
His knees buckled.
Elena lunged forward, catching him under his good shoulder as the gun clattered onto the thick carpet. His massive frame knocked her back against the doorframe, the breath whooshing from her lungs, but she held on. His fever-hot skin scorched her through her thin robe; his head fell into the crook of her neck, his breath ragged and broken.
"The fire..." he mumbled against her throat. "Elena... it's too cold..."
"I know," she muttered, straining against his weight as she dragged him toward the four-poster bed. "You’re burning up, you idiot. The wound is infected."
It took every ounce of strength she possessed to haul him onto the mattress. He collapsed onto his back, his jaw slack, teeth chattering violently despite the heat radiating from his pores.
Elena worked without thinking. She retrieved the gun, clicked the safety on with a practiced flick of her thumb—her father had been a hunter—and placed it high on the wardrobe. She fetched clean water, towels, and the strongest injectable antibiotic from the chest.
She tore away the ruined dressings. The suture line along his collarbone was angry red, swollen tight with infection.
"Hold still," she commanded, uncapping the syringe.
When the needle sank into his thigh, Dante let out a low groan, his hand reaching out blindly. His fingers caught the sleeve of her robe, twisting the fabric until his knuckles turned white. He didn't let go.
Elena sat on the edge of the mattress, soaking a washcloth in cold water. She wiped the sweat from his forehead, his cheeks, the rough stubble along his jawline.
"You should have let Marco call a doctor," she whispered, her voice gentle in the dark.
Dante’s eyes fluttered, half-open. "Doctors... talk. Doctors... take money from rivals."
"I took your money."
"You... don't care enough to sell me," he murmured, his grip on her robe loosening slightly as the medicine began to fight the fever. "You just want... the electricity paid."
"That's right," she said, dipping the cloth again, wiping the fever heat from his neck and broad shoulders. "So don't die. You owe me three weeks of wages."
Dante let out a sound that was remarkably close to a dry chuckle. His fingers slipped from her sleeve and found her hand, curling loosely around her fingers.
Elena should have pulled away. Domestic staff did not hold the hands of Mafia dons as they drifted into medicated sleep. It crossed every line Marco had established; it violated every survival instinct she had honed over twenty-six years of life in the gutter.
May you like
She didn't move. She stayed on the edge of the mattress, listening to the rain beat against the glass, letting the warmth of his scarred hand anchor her in the shadows until the gray dawn finally touched the room.
***
