Chapter 10: The Kitchen Table

Fiora's POV

The Ruggieri safe house was a narrow stone townhouse on the hill above the bridge, with iron on the windows and two armed men in the yard.

Massimo did not let me go in first.

He checked every room and came back with blood drying down his sleeve.

"Sit," I said.

"I'm fine."

"Sit down, Massimo."

He sat on the edge of the kitchen table.

I found a first aid kit under the sink, ran water over a towel, and took his arm in both hands.

The cut ran from his wrist to his elbow, shallow, with pieces of glass still in it.

I picked them out one by one.

He didn't flinch.

"You lied to me," I said, to his arm.

"I withheld."

"That's lying with a better suit on."

"Yes."

"You said everything. You promised it in my kitchen."

"I did."

"Then say what else you've kept."

He was quiet.

"Nothing," he said. "I swear it."

I laid the towel across his skin and held it there.

His forearm was warm and hard under my palm, and I could feel his pulse in it.

"I'm so tired of being protected," I said. "I've been protected my whole life. Handed off, hidden, kept quiet, kept small. I don't want it anymore."

"Then what do you want?"

I looked up.

His face was a hand's width from mine.

The scar through his eyebrow was white in the lamplight.

I had stopped thinking about the towel.

"I want you to stop holding back," I said.

He didn't move.

"Fiora, you've had a shot fired at your head tonight."

"I know."

"You've lost five years."

"I know that too."

"You should not be making choices right now."

"Then I'll make one very slowly," I said, and put my mouth on his.

For one second he stayed rigid.

Then his good hand came up and took the back of my neck and he kissed me back, hard.

It was nothing like Remo.

Remo had kissed me quickly, to check that I was still there.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Spoke Sicilian Over My Head, So I Called My Don Grandfather from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.