Chapter Thirty One
Victoria
The fire is snapping.
That is what I focus on.
The small, sharp cracks from the hearth. The shifting wood. The occasional flare of orange against the dark grate.
It gives me somewhere to put my eyes that is not the door… and who’s waiting on the other side.
My hands are resting in my lap, fingers curled so tightly into the blanket that the knuckles ache.
Dr. Santoro left me here with instructions I only half heard. Rest. Fluids. No more stress tonight, which is laughable enough that I almost laughed in his face.
He gave me a glass of water, asked if I wanted something light to eat, told me I was safe, and then looked at me with the particular gentleness of a man who knows something irreversible has already happened, and that I'm going to have to find a way to live with the trauma of it.
I am safe.
I am sitting on a couch in Mario Conti’s house with a blanket over my legs, a fire in front of me, and armed people somewhere beyond the walls.
Safe is apparently a complicated word.
I hear the door open behind me.
I know it is Mario before he says anything.
His presence fills the room the way it always does, except now I feel it differently. Before, it made my pulse trip because I wanted him so much I could hardly breathe. Now, it scrapes against every raw place in me.
I keep looking at the fire.
His voice comes from behind me.
“Victoria.”
My throat tightens.
Just my name. That is all.
He is not angry, or demanding, or questioning me.
Somehow, that makes it worse.
I turn my head enough to see him.
He is standing just inside the room, the door closed behind him, one hand still near the handle. His jacket is gone. His shirtsleeves are rolled to his forearms. His tie is missing, collar open, hair slightly disordered in a way I have never seen on him outside a bedroom.
His face is calm.
But I recognize it as that controlled calm that means everything underneath it is potentially lethal.
I swallow. “What did the doctor tell you?”
“He told me you are unharmed.”
“Anything else?” I can't make my voice rise higher than a whisper.
His eyes move over me, taking in my face, my hands clutching the blanket, briefly my stomach, though it’s hidden.
