Fair enough.
“I suggest you brace yourself.” Now Niccolo was the one to smile. He uttered the name and had the enormous satisfaction of watching Tommaso’s face lose so much colour that Niccolo must look a picture of health in comparison.
What other reaction there might have been was lost by the scream of his name that echoed through the air.
All three of them turned their heads to the curvy woman tearing over to them.
Barging the shellshocked Esposito brothers out of her way, she dropped to her knees beside him and began stroking Niccolo’s cheeks. “Oh, God, oh, God, you’re hurt.”
He lifted his head, which was feeling very light, and clasped her cheeks. “Georgia, I’m okay.”
“How can you be okay?” she wailed. “You’ve beenshot.” She pulled his hands off her. “You need to keep still. You’re bleeding.”
“Yes, but it’s over.”
“Over? They’veshotyou.” As she spoke, she pulled her top over her head and deftly wrapped it over his shoulder to staunch the blood flow. “Don’t move. I’m going to call for an ambulance.”
“No ambulance.” That was Mattia, who’d pulled himself out of the funk Niccolo’s revelation had put him in. “He can be seen by our doctor. He was at the funeral, so he won’t be far.”
Tommaso, who was in an even great stupor and who didn’t speak English, muttered something. Mattia translated for him,neither of them noticing Georgia getting to her knees and aiming her gun at them.
“You will call your doctor right now, and when you’re done, you’d better give me a damned good reason not to shoot you both,” she snarled, so fully in protective Tasmanian Devil mode that she was oblivious to the fact she was threatening two of Italy’s biggest gangsters with only her bra covering her pendulous breasts and her small baby bump clearly visible. Her hands were red from Niccolo’s blood. To his mind, she’d never looked more beautiful. Or magnificent.
“You’re not going to shoot them because it’s over,carina. I told them to shoot me.”
“Youtoldthem to…” Her gaze whipped to him. “Are you mad? Youtoldthem to shoot you?” She quickly turned her attention back to the Espositos. “Make the damned call.”
Mattia held his phone up and made the call. “He will be here in five minutes,” he said when he ended it.
“He’d better be.”
“Georgia?”
She looked back at Niccolo.
Lifting himself up, he gently covered the delicate, bloodied hand holding the gun. “Put it down. It’s over.”
She stared searchingly into his eyes.
“It’s over,” he repeated. “Look – they’re walking away.”
She followed his gaze.
The loud buzzing in Georgia’s ears, there since she’d heard the gunshot, a drill in her head since she’d spotted Niccolo prostrate on the ground, finally quieted as what he was telling her finally sank in.
“It’s really over?” she whispered, sinking down and letting him take the gun from her.
“I swear it.” His eyes shone with love and amusement. “Has anyone told you how fierce you are when someone you love is threatened?”
She choked a laugh and wiped away the tears that had sprung from nowhere. “I only figured that out myself a few minutes ago. I suppose if I didn’t already know I love you, threatening those two terrifying men would have forced me to recognise it… Are you in a lot of pain?”
“Not now that you’re here.”
She choked another laugh. “Am I going to spend the rest of my life checking your wounds for infection and force-feeding painkillers into you?”
“This is the last wound. Once this is healed, this will be it for me. I’m going to live a quiet life with the love of my life and our child, and however many more children she wants to have.”
Now it felt like her heart was choking. “I’m so sorry for what I said to you earlier.”
