Page 27 of Savage Claim

“They’ll come to respect you for it,” Amalia assured me. “You survived all of that shit,andyou played their game and won.”

Playing the game didn’t feel great. I flaunted the worst thing that had ever happened to me, and I talked like it was the biggest joke in the world. I didn’t feel like much of a survivor. I knew that was, technically, what happened. I didn’t die from the thing that could have easily killed me, and thus, I was a survivor. But I hadn’t done anything remotely brave. I just happened to not die from blood loss. Or when my heart stopped during the emergency surgery.

Instead, thinking about that night still made me feel like I was going to throw up. I could barely look at myself nude in the mirror, and I had no idea why Lorenzo was so utterly fascinated by my body. Inevitably, when he had me naked, his hand would cup my side. Or his fingers would trace along the puckered edges of my scars. He openly stared at them.

It all made me uncomfortable, and until this morning, I had been doing a good job at ignoring it. Lorenzo found me sexy, and I told myself that it was enough. But I was deep in a shame pit, and it was hard to drag myself back out.

“Dolcezza.”

Lorenzo came into the kitchen, dragging his cousin behind him. Elio sidled over to Amalia and kissed her so gently that it made me smile. They were different with each other now, more tender. I had seen them soften towards each other before she was shot, but it was even more apparent now. Elio had nearly lost her, and that had scared him deeply.

I glanced away from them to Lorenzo. “Good morning.” He had gotten up early; I had pretended to sleep so that he wouldn’t askany questions. I tipped my head up expectantly, and although he rolled his eyes, he dutifully crossed the kitchen to drop a kiss on my lips.

I could make Lorenzo Vitali come to me with a look. That should make me feel confident, but it just made me wonder how much of what he did was out of pity. Or obligation now that I was having his baby.

Lorenzo cupped my cheek, pulling me out of my head. “Go get ready,” he insisted. “You’re coming with me today.”

“What are we doing?”

“It’s a surprise.”

My surprise turned out to be a trip to White Hart Tattoos. It was an exclusive, custom tattoo shop in Little Italy, but despite its light and bright feel, I felt even more out of place standing in the lobby than I had at dinner last night.

“What are we doing here, Lorenzo?” Was he planning on getting a tattoo? I wasn’t against that, necessarily, but I wasn’t sure what I was meant to do while he was letting someone poke a million holes in his skin.

“Mr. Vitali!” A man with colorful tattoos covering both arms and peeking out of the collar of his shirt stepped into the lobby, grinning. “It’s good to see you both. This must be Isabella, right?” He held out a hand to me. “I’m Jonathan.”

I shook his head. “Nice to meet you.”

I expected him to turn to Lorenzo, and for them to start discussing some kind of tattoo, but Jonathan’s eyes never strayed from me. “I have an initial design worked out for you, but I want to lay it out over the area that I’m to cover to make sure it’s lined up correctly.” His eyes strayed down to my belly. “I know we have a while before you deliver, obviously, but I want to have it perfect for when you’re ready.”

Design? What the hell was he talking about. “Lorenzo?”

He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed gently. “Jonathan specializes in cover up tattoos,dolcezza.”

“Specifically, a majority of my work is covering up scars for people.”

Both men were smiling when I teared up. Everyone I ever mentioned my insecurities to said that I needed to embrace my scars. It was a badge of courage. It was something I had to accept. Even Lorenzo had been flippant about them at first. He showed me again and again that they didn’t bother him; I was just as sexy to him with them as I would have been without them.

No one had ever validated my desire to be rid of them.

“Show me the design?”

Both Jonathan and Lorenzo grinned, and they swept me back into a room that had to be Jonathan’s studio. There was a complicated looking chair that could change positions depending on what body part he needed access to. Jonathan pointed me to it before he fetched several pieces of paper from the table that was pushed into the corner.

“I have a few different options for you. If you like any of them, we’ll put it on as a stencil so that you can get an idea of what it will look like.”

He showed me the potential designs. They were all similar in theme—a phoenix rising from the ashes—but he had drawn that image in a number of ways. There was one that caught my eye immediately; it was realistic, and I could imagine how pretty it would look with bright, highly-saturated colors.

“This is beautiful.”

Jonathan beamed. “It’s my favorite,” he admitted. “Should we see how it looks?”

It was more than a little awkward to take off my shirt in front of a complete stranger, but Jonathan barely gave my body a second glance. He was too busy fussing over laying out the stencil so that my scars were completely covered. When he finally seemed satisfied, he stood back and shooed me over to a mirror.

Although a stencil, obviously, didn’t have full-color, and the lines were a little smudged from the transfer, I could envision what it would look like if I got it done for real. My scars would disappear beneath beautiful color and delicate linework.

Tears stung behind my eyes. Lorenzo stepped up behind me, eyes on my face through the mirror. “What do you think,dolcezza?”

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