Page 56 of Savage Claim

Lorenzo snorted and stood. Even standing as far apart as they were, he seemed to grow until he was staring down at Gemma. “That may be so,” he admitted in a voice that was almost gentle. “But if it wasn’t for me, you’d still be hanging from chains next to what was left of your mother. Efram would have let you watch her rot in front of you. So, maybe, you should try being a little grateful that I brought you into my home.”

While he spoke, Gemma’s face grew alarmingly red. Before she could make the situation worse, I grabbed my sister by the shoulders and turned her away. “Go,” I told her. “Now.” My mind was already reeling with the apology that I would have to come up with to make this up to Lorenzo.

CHAPTER 35

Lorenzo

Isabella had remained scarce for the rest of the day. I understood why she did, but it pissed me off that she would try to hide from me. This thing with her sister was getting out of control. I had been accommodating, but the well of my patience was running dry.

I was looking over the final bids for the weapons cache in New Jersey when my office door swung open and my brother stood in the doorway. I had a second to think that it wasn’t Thursday when I realized that Cristian was wearing a pair of jeans and a tee shirt for a band that I knew he hadn’t listened to in at least ten years. Laymen’s clothes. It had been a long time since I had seen my brother out of his seminary-approved attire. He didn’t look entirely comfortable, like he wasn’t sure whether to come in or not.

“Cris, what’s going on?” Cristian gave me a wobbly kind of smile and practically tripped into my office.Is he drunk?“Fratellino?”

He looked at his usual chair by my window before he settled into a chair in front of my desk. “I quit, Enzo.”

“Quit?” I could feel my eyebrows pulling together. I took in his outfit again, and I suddenly felt cold. “What exactly are you telling me?”

Cristian gave me the most pitiful stare. For being a man in his thirties, he looked absolutely lost. “I left the Church.”

I knew it before he said it, but his words still stung like a slap across the face. My brother was one of the only truly good men that I knew. It was like he was the good one so that I could be as ruthless as I needed to be for our family. I cherished that goodness in him.

“Talk to me.”

Cristian stared at me for a long while; he looked haunted. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. When he handed it to me, the paper felt frail. Like it had been read, folded back up, taken back out, and read again dozens of times. I stared down at the words and swore out loud. “Where did you get this?”

Cristian shook his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “All that matters is that the Church isn’t the place I thought it to be, and I can’t be there anymore.”

He and I both knew that there was so much more to unpack. The Church had been his purpose, his reason for more than a decade. A part of me wanted to push it and force him to talk to me, but the look on his face was so broken that it stopped the words in my mouth. “Okay,” I said instead, surprising him. “I’m here when you do want to talk.”

There was that wobbly smile again. “Thanks,fratellone.”

“Should I have your room made ready for you?” I asked. Cristian’s bedroom was on the third floor; it shared the wall with my childhood bedroom. “Or, if you’d like more space, we can set you up in a guest room and knock the wall down and make it a proper suite for you.”

Cristian looked horrified at the prospect. “I wouldn’t know what to do with all of that space,” he said. “My room at the sem—” His face scrunched, unhappy, and my hands balled into fists. “I like having a smaller space. It’s easier to keep tidy.”

“Sure.” I would let Cristian do anything he wanted at this point, if only to erase that haunted expression from his face. “Let’s get you set up.”

“Ouch,” Isabella yelped again, and I stilled my hips for the third time. My foreheadthunk-ed against her shoulder, and I let out a sharp sigh.

“This isn’t working,” I said and shifted back. She made a soft, unhappy noise when I pulled my cock out of her, but she didn’t disagree with me or demand I put it back. She wriggled away as soon as she could and settled onto her side of the bed. I stared at her, absolutely puzzled. Even in the midst of our worst fighting, sex had never been a problem, but today was just…bad. “What’s going on,dolcezza?”

Isabella raised and lowered one shoulder. “I think we’re both distracted right now,” she said. “I know I have a lot on my mind.”

She wasn’t wrong, necessarily, but it still pissed me off. She was seriously thinking about her sister while I was fucking her?

I scoffed, and her eyes went hard. “What?” Pushing herself back up into a seated position, she demanded, “You think you were totally in the moment just then? You weren’t thinking about Cristian? I know he’s staying in a room upstairs, even if you never explained why.”

“You think I was thinking about my brother while I was buried in your pussy?” I sneered at her, and she flushed. “Does your sister have such a hold on you that you can’t spare me half an hour?”

She stood and started gathering her clothes. “If that’s what you think about me, Lorenzo.”

I was out of our bed in an instant. I put myself between her and the door. “What?” I challenged her. “If I think that way about you, then what?”

“Then, I might as well go sleep with my sister,” she said, not cowed in the slightest.

“No.” I spat the word. “You sleep in my bed, Isabella. End of.” I thought I had made that perfectly clear before, but obviously, I was mistaken.

I saw her jaw clench, but she appeared to be chewing on her words. She took a breath, and it seemed like the air went out in her. “I told you to stop threatening me.”

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