Brutal Vows (Queens & Monsters #4)(34)

He glances down at his arm. There’s a ragged gash on the top outer part of his shoulder. It’s surrounded by bruised tissue darkening to purple, and it’s leaking blood.

He says, “It’s barely a scratch. He only clipped me.”

“A few inches lower and that bullet would’ve torn straight through your heart.”

“But it didn’t. Luck of the Irish, I suppose.”

I’m shocked by how casual he sounds. He could be discussing a hangnail for how nonchalant he seems.

“Have you been shot much?” asks Mamma.

“Depends on how you define much.”

“More than once.”

“Then, aye. This makes…” He pauses, thinking. “Five? Six?”

I’m astonished. “You’re not sure?”

He cocks a brow at me, smirking. “You seem impressed.”

“Only you would think that. It’s unfortunate your maker decided to finish you without giving you a brain. Sit.”

He winks at Mamma. “Look who’s barking orders now.”

She smiles knowingly. Then she rises and grasps her cane in one hand and her wineglass in the other. “I won’t stay for the gory part. I don’t have as strong a stomach at the sight of blood as Reyna does.”

A stomach I earned through years of cleaning my own blood from clothing, carpet, and my skin.

As Mamma hobbles out, Quinn watches me, his hazel eyes sharp as an eagle’s.

“You okay?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know. Today has been…”

“All sorts of fun,” he says, chuckling.

“Be quiet now.”

I turn away and head to the sink, where I pull a bottle of hydrogen peroxide from the cabinet beneath. The first aid kit is in a cabinet over the dishwasher, with clean gauze pads, antibiotic ointment, bandages, gloves, and tools inside.

I set the kit on the table, then stand over Quinn and pull on the latex gloves. As I gingerly clean and disinfect the wound, he drinks his wine and smolders as only he can, glancing up at me from time to time with hooded eyes.

I can tell he’s deep in thought, but I’ll be damned if I’ll ask him about it.

After a while, he says abruptly, “I still don’t want to see you after the wedding.”

“You made that clear earlier. I don’t want to see you, either. Your mood changes require medical intervention. Now shut up, or I’ll make your stitches look like they belong on Frankenstein’s monster.”

“You can just glue it.”

“With what? Elmer’s?”

“You don’t have any skin glue?”

“Do I look like a fucking pharmacy?”

His gaze rakes over me, head to toe. He growls, “No, viper. You look more like a fucking land mine.”

“If that was an insult, I didn’t get it. Now please. Shut. Up.”

A low sound of aggravation rumbles through his chest.

Working as quickly as I can, I thread a needle with unwaxed dental floss and make small, even stitches across the wound to close it. Instead of tying a knot at the end, I snip the floss with an inch left over, then tape it to his skin on both ends.

When I feel him looking at me, I know he’s about to demand an explanation, so I beat him to the punch. “It will heal better if the sutures aren’t pulled too tightly. Knots make them pull.”

“How do you know that?”

I mutter, “Years of personal experience on my own body.”

I’m about to draw away, but he grasps my wrist and holds it, his grip firm but not tight.

Startled, I look into his eyes.

They’re blazing with emotion.

He says gruffly, “I’d like to kill him.”

“Who?”

“Your husband. If he were still alive, I’d kill him for you. And I wouldn’t make it quick.”

That takes my breath away.

I stare at him with my lips parted and my heart hammering like mad, feeling as if I’m balancing on the edge of a high cliff, gazing down into an endless abyss below me, dangerously close to tumbling over.

Before I can say another word, Quinn releases my wrist, rises, yanks his shirt and suit jacket from the back of the chair he folded them over, and walks out of the kitchen.





13





Rey





Two hours later, there are two dozen more armed guards patrolling the grounds. Leo, Quinn, and Gianni are locked in the study, strategizing. I’m in the kitchen, making dinner. Mamma is upstairs, asleep, and Lili is in her bedroom, doing God knows what.

She’s probably still in shock. When she came up from the basement with Gianni, she was white as a ghost and shaking badly.

This was her first experience with the darker side of Mafia life.

She’s been pampered and protected since she was a baby, attending only exclusive all-girl private schools with other children of wealthy families, surrounded by bodyguards and watchful eyes. Scarsdale is less than an hour from Manhattan, but has only about 20,000 residents and almost no crime.

She hasn’t been exposed to death in any meaningful way. Her grandfather was killed before she was born, her mother died in childbirth, and her zio Enzo, well…

She didn’t see him die, either.