I can just make out his features in the dull, bleached light, and he looks annoyed. But then he sighs. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess you are.”
It’s all moot in the end. There’s no one waiting for us, although there are a few surprised homeless people who watch our emergence. We move quickly towards the sounds of the city again. Along the way I wipe the blond’s gun of my prints and dump it in a public trash can, and instruct Finch to do the same. I considered keeping the weapons; Finch and I already found out the IFF policy on revenge killings after we eliminated Gus and Maggie Donovan. I’m pretty sure that blond is not going to forgive and forget my killing of his brother.
And he seemed the vicious type. I suspect he’s going to make this personal.
But weapons are easy enough to come by, and I don’t want to chance getting stopped with a gun on my person. I’m already planning our next steps, thinking of how to get out of Rome, where to go next. A visit to my brother and his family is completely out of the question, now. But I still have business to deal with before we leave Italy altogether.
I flag down a taxi once we’re back into the busier part of the city. Holding Finch close in the backseat, ignoring the driver completely, I kiss him deeply. “Uccellino, I’m so proud of you,” I murmur afterward. “But we are going to need to talk about this.”
“What’s there to talk about?” he asks softly. He grabs my face and kisses me back, hard. “I’llalwayshave your back, baby. Forever.”
It’s true. Finch showed me tonight, proved it for once and for all. He’s exactly like me: he will not let anyone stand between us, no matter the cost. Without his quick action tonight, things could have been so much worse. It almost scares me.
And it fills me with new levels of respect and reverence for the man I married.
I take up his hand in mine and kiss his wedding ring. “Forever. For always.”
It’s time to move on together.
Chapter Fifty-Five
LUCA
We leave Rome as early as we can, after I buy tickets for a high-speed train north. We don’t talk much about anything that happened overnight until we’re safely in our first-class seats—Finch refused to travel in anything but—and I’m happy enough to have time to process and think. I asked him, as we packed, to explain to me exactly what steps he had taken, and his reasoning behind them, and he gave up all the information readily, succinctly.
I ran it through my mind again and again, in the hotel room, in the taxi to the train, and after we boarded and were waiting to leave. And at the end of all that thinking, I really couldn’t fault anything in his approach.
Refusing to let the enemy dictate the terms of engagement is a classic strategy. He’d been right that they would not expect an attack; he’d been right that they’d underestimate his grit. He’d been right to keep it quiet; Vitalicouldhave pulled together a crew or called in a favor from an extractor to pull me out, but probably not before six a.m. the next morning, and not without significant damage to my own reputation, which I can ill afford right now. Appearing weak is the one thing I have to avoid, and Finch is smart. He understood that.
No. The person who fucked up here is me.
I’mthe one who missed the signs. I was tunnel-visioned, hyper-focused, worrying about the wrong things. It could have gotten me killed—or worse, gottenFinchkilled. Because this IFF plan of luring Finch into handing himself over in exchange for me was never going to end well for either of us.
Once the train is beyond metropolitan Rome and speeding through the countryside, I get up to ostensibly use the restroom, but instead take the opportunity to eyeball our fellow passengers. None seem familiar. And it’s not even dawn yet, so there are few of them, and no one is sitting near to Finch and me. So when I get back to the seat, I take his hand in mine, and wait until he looks at me.
“Don’t do that,” he says, before I can start to speak.
“Do what?”
“Do that serious, ‘We have to talk’ expression. I told you last night, there’s nothing to talk about.”
The soothing rhythm of the train is lulling him. His eyes are heavy, and exhaustion has made him pale. I lower my voice and say: “You could have been killed.”
He doesn’t look away from me. “But I wasn’t.”
“Angel—”
“Luca,” he says firmly. In his eyes I see the same hard determination that I saw last night. “What happened at Innisfree with Maggie, it shook me up. I had to do a lot of processing. But we have been through alotof shit in our time together. Chicago, for example. And the things that happened on both our previous honeymoons. Last night was just another incident as far as I’m concerned. Our enemies will always keep coming for us, but I plan to be ready for them.”
He says it all in a whisper, but it’s still fierce.
And it’s all true, too. Ican’tkeep him completely safe from danger, and it would be even more dangerous to send him somewhere away from me.
All I can do is train him…and trust him.
“Okay,” I tell him at last. “Okay, baby bird. When we get back to New York, the first thing we’re going to do is get you some moving target practice. But you listen to me: I don’t want you running around saving me unless you absolutely have to, you hear me? That is not the first option; it’s the last. I’m telling you this not just as your husband, but because your actions have implications for—for the Family business. Understand?”
His eyes travel over my face, and I wonder what he’s thinking. Eventually, a slow smile dawns on his lips and he leans into me. “Yes, Don Morelli,” he says in my ear. “I understand.”
