Chapter 11: First Kiss

The driver was locked in Gabriele's cellar by midnight, and I told Ines she could stop pretending not to listen.

She put a kettle on and said nothing, which was how she said everything.

I found Gabriele in the study, sitting on the leather couch with his coat off and his left sleeve cut open.

The graze was a clean, shallow furrow, red along its length.

He was holding a wad of gauze against it with his right hand.

"Let go," I said.

"It's nothing."

"Gabriele."

He let go.

I knelt on the carpet in front of him, in the spot where he had knelt behind me, and opened the kit Ines had left.

I cleaned the furrow with saline.

He did not flinch.

I could feel him watching the top of my head.

"You wanted me to go in from behind you," I said, "so I wouldn't get shot."

"Yes."

"You were shot."

"I noticed."

"That's the stupidest thing I've seen a Don do."

"Stupid," he said slowly, "is when a man doesn't hide a woman behind a steel container because he thinks she should earn it."

His voice had dropped.

I pressed the clean gauze against his arm, and my fingers lay on his skin.

It was hot.

"Why did you come to us?" he asked.

"You offered."

"I offered five years ago. You said no, and you meant it. I want to know why now."

I looked up.

His eyes were very dark and very steady.

"You think I came to hurt Massimo," I said.

He did not answer.

"You think I'm here because I want to be next to the man who wrecked him, and when he comes back with a ring I'll go."

"I think you loved him for five years," Gabriele said. "I think that doesn't stop in a week."

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