Page 91 of Savage Claim

“Already?” I sent Isabella a text and asked if she could wait a few minutes; her response wasn’t thrilled, but she assured me that she could.

I followed Damian into the cell at the very end of the soundproofed hallway. When the door opened, the smell ofrotten meat hit my nose. I reached for the Vicks VapoRub on the workbench near the door and smeared a little beneath my nose, not taking my eyes off the man chained to the wall ahead of me.

Artem sagged in his chains. His wrists were rubbed raw from all the pulling he had done when we’d first brought him here. He’d stopped doing that, but the wounds were infected now. Damian kept them manageably clean: we couldn’t let the man die from sepsis, not yet.

The man looked up when we came through the door, and although he barely reacted to Damian, his face lost the little color it had when he saw me. I smiled and knew that it was a nasty thing that stretched my face grotesquely. He flinched, and I cooed at him in a saccharine way. “I’ve brought you a present,” I told him.

Damian held up a tablet, and when Artem wouldn’t look at it, I crossed the room and grabbed him by his filthy hair. “You don’t want to miss this,” I said and nodded for Damian to press play. When I glanced down, I saw that Artem had shut his eyes. “If you don’t open your eyes, I’ll cut off your eyelids.”

He opened them, whimpering pitifully. This was a truly broken man, and I reveled in his misery. The video was of an older man, an uncle who lived in Chicago. Elio had gone to visit him, forcing him onto his knees, making him beg for a mercy that wouldn’t come.

Artem watched Elio spray the man’s brains all over the wall with dull eyes. He’d settled once the man had come on screen. Every day he waited for the video to contain his wife and daughter, and whenever it wasn’t them, he relaxed. He accepted his fate.

My phone started ringing. “Dolcezza? Are you all right?”

“Are you baking my biscotti, or what?” she snapped, and I did my best to hide my laughter. Teasing Isabella over a craving wasn’t a smart move at the moment. While she had managed with cravings fine before, being stuck on bedrest had made her cranky and quick-tempered over just about anything.

“I apologize,” I said. “I’ll be right up. Is there anything else that I can bring for you?”

She was quiet for a moment. “Will you lay with me for a while?” she asked. “Do you have time?”

Povero amore mio. “Of course,” I promised. “Three minutes.”

“Three minutes,” she repeated. “I’m timing you.”

I hung up. “I would burn the world down for her,” I said before glancing at Artem. “You know what I mean, don’t you? The whole world revolves around ways to make her smile.”

“You better go, Enzo,” Damian said. “You promised her.”

“I did,” I agreed. “Make sure he’s ready for tomorrow.” Artem looked at me, moving slowly, as if he were wading through water. “I want him lucid for his special lunch guests.” His eyes widened a fraction, and I laughed outright. “It’s a two-fer, after all.”

Artem’s broken, rattled screams followed me out into the hall, but when the door swung shut, and the sound cut off, I sighed, content, in the stillness. I took the stairs two at a time leaving the basement and made it to Isabella’s side with twenty seconds to spare.

She smiled, and it lit me up from the inside. “You always keep your promises,” she said as I settled onto the bed beside her and handing over her treat.

“And I always will,dolcezza.”

Epilogue: Isabella

NINE MONTHS LATER…

My wedding gown had a pretty, boat neckline and gossamer sleeves; from the front, it looked like something vintage made new again. It was deceptive, though, because it was entirely backless.

“Tell me again how long this took?” Amalia asked, reaching out a hand to smooth down my bare back. She was touching the phoenix blooming from the ashes that had been tattooed across the expanse of my back and wrapped around my side to cover the worst of my scars.

“Twenty hours all together,” I said. “I wanted to do it in two sessions, but we ended up needing four.” Lorenzo came to each session, and whenhecouldn’t handle my pained faces, he would make Jonathan stop.

“It’s beautiful,” Amalia mused, and I felt her finger smooth down my back again.

It made me laugh. “Thank you.”

She met my eyes through the mirror. “Which was worse: the tattoo or childbirth?”

I snorted. That was an easy one. “Childbirth.” Truthfully, the tattoo hurt a lot, but the pain was easier for me to push away. The more and more I could see the tattoo, the easier it became.

Amalia went a little gray, and I turned. She was beautiful in her bridesmaid’s dress; it fit her perfectly and showed off the cute little baby bump that was just starting to round out. The pregnancy had been a surprise to us all, but no one more than Amalia herself. The whole thing had her on edge for months.

“Nothing is worse than being shot,” I told her.

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