Chapter Twenty-Four
LUCA
Ihave a hazy sensation of being half-carried, half-dragged back up the stairs by my brother on one side and Finch on the other, neither of them saying a word, just breathing heavily until they get me back into bed.
Frank is the first one to speak when I open my eyes again and take in the two of them. “Georgie, Georgie, Georgie,” he mutters, shaking his head. Even under the ravages of time and scars, his face bears the same expression it always used to when he cleaned up after me. He spent his whole life doing it, right up until I ordered him out of the city, and he’s still just as disappointed in me. Just as worried.
I want to apologize, but my agony is too intense to do anything except lie there and outlast it. Frank murmurs something to Finch and leaves the room. Finch comes over to sit on the bed next to me.
I lie there for a long time until the tide of torment recedes, until I can grope across the bed for Finch’s hand.
He lets me take it.
“Are you alright?” he asks in a low, steady voice.
“Yeah.” My voice is a croak.
“Okay. Frank’s going to call Darla over here to check on you. In the meantime, you can explain to me, your long-suffering husband, what theactual fuckyou thought you were doing, prancing down the stairs like that on your own?” His voice gets louder and louder until he’s just a decibel or two under shouting, and he goes on.
I stay quiet and let him chew me out, not that I have much say in the matter. I’m still woozy from the pills I took after I heard voices from downstairs and realized who was at the door. They knocked off the edge of my pain long enough to drag myself up, pull on a robe, and act as though I was fine while I walked down those stairs. But I think I might have wrongly estimated the dose, because reality is fuzzy around the edges right now, blunted.
“Sorry,” I slur at last, when Finch goes quiet again.
“Why?” he demands. “Why in the hell would you pull a stunt like that?”
I’m floating and comfortable. I don’t see why I shouldn’t let Finch in on my thought process, if he wants to know so badly. “Because the only thing men like Rossi and Alessi understand is strength.”
“You said it yourself, they’re your closest allies.”
I laugh at that, a long giggle. Mother Mary, I think I’m high. “Don’t you believe it, angel. They might look friendly, but I trust them no further than I’d trust Sonny Vegas.” I grope for his hand again. Somehow I seem to have lost it. “And you know it, too. You know it as well as I do.”
After a pause, Finch snuggles down next to me, his warmth glowing next to me. From the corner of my eye he seems all golden-red, a little campfire in the cold darkness of my life. “I do know that,” he acknowledges. “But I don’t want you killing yourself just to prove a point.”
Fondness blooms, chasing away the last of my pain. Finch and I are a team. Have been a team since I pulled my head out of my ass a few months after our marriage—his words—and started taking him seriously. But there are some things we will never agree on. Some things he will never understand. The need for me to appear completely indestructible is one of those things.
We can have different opinions; I remind myself about this constantly. And I’m much happier keeping Finch far away from Family business. It’s safer for him.
Still, I can’t help wishing sometimes that he could understand my actions better than he does. But…thereisone time when we always understand each other fully.
The shriek in my nerve endings has faded to a mere ache, and Finch is close, the grassy scent of his cologne tickling my nose. I reach out for him, my hand trailing up his hip, down again, between his thighs…
Where he traps it by squeezing those thighs together.
“Behave,” he murmurs, amused.
I want to tell him I’ve never behaved well when it comes to him, but there’s a knock at the door, and Hudson murmurs something through to us.
“What did he say?” I mumble.
“Darla’s on the way,” Finch tells me. “And don’t groan like that. She’s taking leave of absence from the hospital a day early because of that stunt you pulled this morning, so you have to be nice to her.”
I suppose that seems fair.
* * *
I consult with Darla,who considerably tones down her chirpy side when she’s alone with me. I appreciate that. I think she can see it would only irritate me. All I want from her is her skill, her ability to get my body functioning at peak performance again as fast as possible. She declares that I need a further few days to recuperate before we can make the journey to Boston.
Finch and Frankie seem surprised that I agree, but they certainly don’t argue. I spend the rest of the day resting in bed. My meals are brought up by Hudson on trays, and I even say thank you.
