Page 50 of Claimed By the Silver Fox

He mutters a curse under his breath, and I sense the anger rising in him.

I touch his arm, drawing his attention to me once more. “Promise you’re not going to do anything to him, okay?” I whisper. “The doctor, I mean. I—I don’t want him punished for this. He doesn’t deserve it. He was probably just trying to figure out a way to stay alive.”

“He can’t put anyone else at risk like this⁠—”

“You think that there are a lot of mafia reaching out to him to confirm pregnancies with private home calls?” I point out, raising my eyebrows. “I don’t think it’s an issue he’s going to have again. God knows what Andreo did to him to get that out of him in the first place, he’s probably already been through enough as it is.”

Antonio eyes me for a moment, eyebrow slightly cocked. “You’re a kinder person than I am, Julia.”

I smile, a little sadly. “Well, someone’s got to be,” I reply, and I lean my head on his shoulder for a moment as the doors slide open in front of us.

He keys in a code at the door, and the heavy oak opens with a hiss. Inside, the apartment looks more like an upmarket hotel room than anything else, heavy, deep red furnishings everywhere I look, a glossy, clearly new kitchen just across from the living room, which is positioned around an enormous fireplace.

I pause for a moment, taking it in.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. It’s just…” I trail off. I don’t want to say it out loud, not when this is all that he has.

He frowns, looping an arm around my waist. “You can tell me. Whatever it is.”

I take a deep breath. In the name of being honest, I guess I should start saying what’s actually on my mind, huh?

“It reminds me of the place I used to share with Andreo,” I confess, shaking my head.

Antonio’s face darkens. “I’ll find somewhere new⁠—”

“No, Antonio, you don’t have to,” I assure him at once. “This is fine. This is great. Hell, anywhere without Andreo in it, that’s all I need, right?”

I try to perk up my voice, but I get the feeling that I’m not getting through to him. He suddenly looks exhausted, dark rings under his eyes, and I wonder how long he’s been awake, trying to find me, trying to track his son down. I wonder if he knew, before he saw me, that he was going to have to take out his own flesh and blood when the time came.

He guides me to a couch, and I take a seat, gazing out over the city below. It’s still bright, but the window is slightly tinted, as though the entire town is covered in a thin haze that keeps us apart from the rest of the world.

Antonio stands behind me, resting a hand on my shoulder, and I can feel his eyes on me, drinking me in, like he’s trying his best to figure out just what kind of state I’m in.

I could spend a lifetime trying to convince him that he has nothing to worry about, that Andreo didn’t lay a hand on me, but Antonio knows as well as I do that this goes beyond that. It’s more than just the literal matter of what he did to me, it’s the psychological scars that have been branded onto my mind that will linger long after he’s gone.

“Do you want something to eat?”

I shake my head. “I’m not hungry.”

True, mostly. I keep replaying the moment I looked at Andreo’s body on the floor. It’s the first time I’ve been that close to a corpse, and it has left me with a profound sense of unsettlement, like there’s something within me rejecting the very nature of what I saw.

“You need to eat, Julia. Here, let me order you something. I can call the cook who lives here⁠—”

“No, no, Antonio, really,” I assure him, and I catch his hand before he goes anywhere. “I don’t want to eat. I just want to…be here, with you. Just for a while.”

I notice that he winces slightly when I touch his arm, and I raise my eyebrows in concern.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt…?”

“Not from today,” he replies, and he presses a hand against his upper arm and rolls his shoulder back. “Andreo got me when we were in the mansion. Shot me in the arm.”

I gasp. “Oh my God,” I mutter, rising to my feet, reaching to unbutton his shirt so I can see the extent of the wound. “When I saw that you were alive, I just figured he had missed or something…”

“It’s not bad,” he protests, but my brows knit together when I see the wound on his arm. It’s covered, but I can see some blood leaking through the bandage, and can tell that it’s causing him a whole heap of discomfort.

“Let me redress this,” I suggest. “Come on. This place has a bathroom, right?”