CHAPTER 7: A Kiss in the Dark
2031 Words
The first time she saw Matteo bleed for someone else, he didn’t even curse.
Three days after the intruder, the tension in the house wound tighter. Men came and went more frequently. Conversations dropped to murmurs when Elena entered a room.
“Is this about Il Corvo?” she asked Rosa one afternoon, after catching a glimpse of a map spread across the dining table, red circles marking areas in the city.
Rosa clicked her tongue. “You pick up too much, signora.”
“That’s not an answer,” Elena said.
“It is the only one I will give,” Rosa replied. “Let the men handle men’s wars.”
“I’m living in the battlefield,” Elena muttered. “It feels relevant.”
That night, she couldn’t sleep again.
The clock read 1:47 a.m. when she finally gave up. The walls seemed to press in around her, the silence too loud.
She threw on a sweater over her sleep shirt and leggings, padded out into the hall, and headed toward the small lounge Rosa had shown her—a room with shelves of books and a window seat overlooking the sea.
She never made it there.
At the top of the stairs, she heard the front door open.
Voices. Footsteps. The scrape of something heavy.
Elena crouched instinctively behind the banister, peering through the railing.
Matteo came in flanked by two of his men. He moved a little slower than usual, jaw clenched. One of the guards—Marco, the one Rosa had mentioned—had blood on his sleeve.
No. That wasn’t right.
The blood was coming from Matteo.
It soaked through the side of his shirt, dark and spreading. His hand pressed against it, fingers slick.
“Boss, you need stitches,” Marco said, worry cracking through his usual composure.
“It’s a scratch,” Matteo said. “I’ve had worse shaving.”
“This is not shaving,” the other man muttered, pale.
Rosa appeared like a summoned spirit in a robe and slippers, hair still perfectly neat. “Madonna mia,” she breathed. “You leave for two hours and come back leaking? Upstairs. Now.”
“I have calls to make,” Matteo said.
“You have a hole in your side,” she retorted. “Call the undertaker if you prefer, but you are not bleeding on my floors.”
His mouth flattened, but he didn’t argue. He let them guide him toward the stairs.
He took them slower than usual.
When he reached the landing, he stopped.
“Elena,” he said.
She froze, caught.
“How did you—”
“You breathe differently when you’re hiding,” he said.
Under any other circumstances, she might have been offended. Right now, she couldn’t look away from the dark patch on his side.
“That’s not a scratch,” she said, voice thin. “That’s—”
“Superficial,” he insisted. “The bullet grazed me. The other guy looks worse.”
“That makes me feel so much better,” she snapped, stepping out from behind the banister. “God forbid both of you look terrible.”
He tried to move past her. She blocked his way without thinking.
“Let me see,” she said.
“Elena,” he warned. “Move.”
“No.” Her chin lifted. “You promised it’s my life too now. That means I get to see what bleeds in it.”
For a second, she thought he might actually pick her up and set her aside. The tension rolled off him in waves.
Then he exhaled slowly.
“Rosa,” he said, without looking away from Elena. “Bring the kit to the lounge.”
“The guest lounge?” Rosa asked.
“The nearest sofa,” he said. “Before she decides to wrestle me to the floor.”
Rosa’s lips twitched, but she nodded and disappeared.
Elena led the way, lightheaded with adrenaline. Matteo followed, boots heavy on the carpet.
The lounge was dim, lit only by a lamp in the corner. Books lined one wall; the window framed the dark sea. The couch near the lamp looked suddenly like an emergency bed.
“Sit,” she said.
“I run this house, not you,” he said on reflex.
“Then order yourself to sit,” she shot back.
He gave her a look that would have made lesser men turn to stone.
Then he sat.
Rosa arrived with a metal case and a bowl of water, muttering under her breath in Italian that Elena was pretty sure translated to something like “stubborn men and idiotic pride.” She set them down and stepped back.
“You know what you’re doing?” Matteo asked Elena skeptically.
She grabbed a pair of gloves from the kit, snapping them on with more force than necessary.
“I have patched up more scraped knees than you’ve ordered coffees,” she said. “And I attended a first aid seminar. Unless you’re hiding organs in strange places, I think I can manage a graze.”
That earned a low sound from him that might have been a chuckle—quickly smothered when she reached for his shirt.
“Lift,” she said.
He hesitated.
For a moment, they simply stared at each other—her hand poised at the hem of his shirt, his breath warm against her fingers.
Then he raised it.
The sight punched the breath from her lungs.
The wound itself was, as he’d said, superficial. The bullet had carved a furrow along his side, tearing skin and leaving a raw, angry line. It oozed blood but didn’t pour.
But it was surrounded by old scars.
Thin white lines. Faded circles. A long, jagged mark across his ribs that looked like a knife had kissed him years ago.
“How many times have you been shot?” she whispered before she could stop herself.
He shrugged with one shoulder. “I stopped counting.”
“That’s not impressive,” she said sharply. “That’s… sad.”
His eyes flicked up to hers, searching.
She soaked gauze in water, cleaned the blood as gently as she could. He hissed once, muscles tightening, but he didn’t pull away.
“Hold still,” she murmured.
“Hard to do when you’re poking an open wound,” he replied, but the bite was gone from his tone.
Rosa handed her antiseptic. Elena dabbed it on, the harsh smell filling the room.
“You were out because of Il Corvo?” she asked quietly.
He didn’t answer right away.
“Information,” he said at last. “A meeting that got noisy. It’s resolved.”
“You call this resolved?” She nodded at the wound.
“The man who pulled the trigger won’t be pulling any more,” he said. “That’s as resolved as it gets.”
She didn’t like the implication. She liked the alternative—that bullet hitting him somewhere worse—even less.
She taped a bandage over the wound and sat back, gloves sticky.
“There,” she said. “You’ll live. Try not to open it up again showing off.”
“I don’t show off,” he said.
“Right. You just stand in front of flying bullets for fun.”
His gaze settled on her face. For a moment, the rest of the room disappeared, Rosa’s soft footsteps fading into the background.
“You’re shaking,” he said.
She looked down. Her hands trembled slightly.
“That’s just adrenaline,” she said, snapping off the gloves and tossing them into the bin. “It’s not every day I patch up my…” She hesitated over the word. “…husband.”
He watched her, expression unreadable.
“Does it scare you?” he asked finally. “The idea that you might wake up one night and find out I didn’t come back?”
“Yes,” she said, because lying felt pointless with the smell of blood still hanging between them. “It scares me when you leave. It scares me when you walk in bleeding. It scares me that Tommaso might sit in this kitchen one day waiting for someone who doesn’t show up.”
His throat worked.
“That’s why I don’t promise peace, Elena,” he said quietly. “I can’t give you something I don’t own.”
“What can you give me?” she asked, the words out before she could stop them.
Silence stretched.
He reached up, fingers brushing her wrist. His touch was warm, calloused, careful.
“This,” he said softly. “I can give you honesty. Even when you don’t like it. I can give you protection. Even when you think you don’t need it. I can give you every weapon I have to keep people like him”—he jerked his chin toward the window, the night—“as far from you as possible.”
She swallowed.
“And yourself?” she whispered. “Do I… get you too? Or just the version on the contract?”
His hand tightened fractionally around her wrist.
“Be careful what you ask for,” he said. “You might not like all the pieces.”
“I don’t like a lot of things already,” she said, heart pounding. “But I’m here.”
“You are,” he murmured.
She realized how close they were. Knees almost touching. His bare skin inches from her. The lamplight threw his face into sharp relief—strong nose, high cheekbones, the slight stubble shadowing his jaw.
She shouldn’t. This man had signed her into his world with ink made of threats.
She shouldn’t…
“Elena,” he said, voice low. “If you stay in this room, I will stop pretending I don’t want to touch you.”
Her breath caught.
“And if I leave?” she asked, barely audible.
“Then I’ll let you go,” he said. “For tonight.”
The choice lay between them, humming.
She thought of the contract clause. Mutual consent. Her condition.
Her heart thudded against her ribs, loud enough that she was sure he could hear.
Slowly, deliberately, she reached up and touched the corner of his mouth with her fingertips.
“Then don’t pretend,” she whispered.
Something snapped.
He moved, closing the distance, one hand sliding to the back of her neck, the other bracing on the couch. His lips caught hers, not gentle, not polite, but hungry in a way that made her toes curl.
Heat streaked through her, sharp and dizzying.
She’d been kissed before. College boys with soft hands and softer promises. Nothing like this.
Matteo kissed like a man who didn’t know if there would be a tomorrow. Like every second had to be used, claimed, devoured.
She opened under him without meaning to, fingers clutching at his shirt. The faint taste of coffee and copper on his tongue, the steady thud of his heart against her palm where it lay on his chest—it all blurred into sensation.
When he finally pulled back, they were both breathing hard.
His forehead rested against hers. “This is a bad idea,” he said hoarsely.
“Probably,” she replied, dazed.
“I’m covered in blood and you’re shaking,” he continued. “It’s the worst timing for this.”
“Then we’re consistent,” she said. “Our marriage started as a bad idea at the worst time.”
He huffed out a low, helpless laugh.
Her hand slid down, over his bandage. “Does it hurt?”
“Less than other things,” he said.
She didn’t ask what those other things were.
He kissed her again, slower this time, as if memorizing. Her world narrowed to the warmth of his mouth, the roughness of his jaw, the hand in her hair.
For the first time since she’d signed her name beside his, the ring around her finger felt less like a shackle and more like a line connecting two points on a map she hadn’t known she’d been drawing.
- Writer
- chap_listContents
- likeADD