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I don't let go. Not when the shaking stops, not when she pants raggedly against my skin and collapses into my arms, limp, shattered, and wrecked.

I just hold my wife tight.

32

DAMIANO

“Hey, I just got off the phone with⁠—”

My words stutter to a halt when I walk through the front door of the cottage.

“What in the actual fuck…” I hear myself say as I stand slack-jawed in the doorway to the kitchen, staring at…well, I don’t even know, to be honest. But it's alarming how closely the scene resembles one where Bella is making, refining, and packaging up a Pablo Escobar quantity of cocaine in our fucking kitchen.

“Okay, don’t be mad.”

I’m still in a state of stunned horror as I take in the chaos of the kitchen when I turn to the sound of her voice. Instantly, I’m faced with another scene of pure chaos strewn all over the couch and the coffee table.

Bella is standing behind the couch, two knives, a machete and a hatchet clutched in her arms as she smiles sheepishly at me. About four dozen assorted other weapons ranging from knives to swords to more hatchets and axes to hand saws to—fuck, are those dentist tools? —litter the room around her.

“Before we even get to mad,” I murmur, frowning as my gaze slowly drags up and down my wife, who aside from holding four lethal weapons is also covered head to toe in white powder. “I have several questions.”

Bella nods and looks at me expectantly.

“Well?” she shrugs.

“Well, first and foremost…” I turn to point at the fucking disaster zone that is the kitchen. “What the fuck?”

She frowns. “Is that your first question?”

“Yes. Literally what the fuck, Pablo.”

She giggles. “Not narcotics.”

I nod slowly. “So, it’s…?”

“I decided to make homemade boba.”

I slowly nod and glance back into the kitchen, which is covered in white dust. Various pans, pots, bowls, stirring spoons, and tongs are scattered everywhere, all covered in rapidly drying dark red goo.

“You decided to turn our kitchen in a boba factory.”

“Aww, you called it our kitchen!”

I exhale slowly as I try not to let the state of the place throw me into a full-blown anxiety attack. All kidding aside, this mess is fucking with me.

I take a series of calming breaths, deciding to move past the boba explosion.

But I am far from done with the questions.

“Okayyy,” I say slowly. “And…the weapons?”

Bella shrugs. “I felt like reorganizing them.”

“This is organized?”

She gives me a look. “Yeah?”

My brow furrows. “By…what, exactly?”