Page 73 of Brutal Vows

I run my hands over her, smearing blood and sweat on her face, throat, and arms, but other than the cut on her head and the bruises forming on her swollen knuckles, which are visible even through the blood coating her hands, she’s not injured. I breathe a sigh of relief and pull her into my arms. Scraps whines and settles behind her back, leaning his weight on her as though he needs the comfort of her touch. I pet his head and stroke his back, give Loretta a squeeze, and pull back as men pour through the front doors.

She blinks at me when I frame her face, but by the absent quality of her stare, she doesn’t see me. I wrap my fist around her throat and tug at her hair on the uninjured side of her head. She hisses and snaps into focus.

“You’re hurt,mia gattina. Go to the hospital. I’ll be right there,” I vow.

She grabs my lapels with her bloody hands and shakes her head. I peel her fingers off the fabric, shuck the coat off my arms,and drape it around her shoulders. She pulls it tight around her and watches in silence as I give my father a farewell kiss on each cheek and gently place his hands over his stomach as though he’s resting. He looks peaceful with his head in her lap. I’m glad she was with him at the end.

I order the five I trust the most to escort her to the hospital as I organize the rest into a war party.

I’ll mourn the loss of my father after I avenge him. Thefigli di puttanawho dared murder my father, hurt my wife, and threaten the Russo family will pay with their lives.

Their deaths will be agonizing.

Kill them all.

With my loved ones no longer in danger, I stalk out the front door without looking back.

Chapter 19

Loretta Mancini

He left me.

Without a backward glance or a second of hesitation, he turned around and stomped through the front door.

His father’s head lies heavy in my lap. Scraps gives a low, unsettled whine with every breath.

Blood cakes my hands. Rushing water reaches through the hands of time and patters onto the floor.

My mother’s dead eyes stare up at me.

She left me. Pops left me.

Ermanno will never forgive me.

He’ll never come back.

I spiral into a confusing mix of jumbled thoughts and emotions. A stranger taps me on the shoulder and asks me to follow him. I trace my fingertips over my savior’s face, wondering how someone can look so peaceful when their death was so horrendous, but when my shaking hands leave bloody smudges on his skin, I lean down and give him a parting kiss on the forehead.

As I stand, Scraps leans his massive body against my leg, keeping me rooted in the present despite the chaos in my mind, but the visual of an older Ermanno lying dead and alone is too much.

My brain turns off. Sights and sounds become distant nuisances. Nothing matters. I am nothing. No one. Rejected. Alone.

A doctor wearing a blue mask over his face tilts my head this way and that. He numbs the gash on my head, but I didn’t feel it anyway. Bright lights shine down on me and people rush back and forth, but none of it registers.

Time passes, but I sit in a bubble of nonexistence. Nothing can affect me. Nothing seems real.

I don’t want life to be real. Reality hurts too much.

The world slowly forms around me. A woman speaks. Her tone is urgent. Pressure on my thigh draws my eyes down to my lap.

Scraps lies between my legs on the hospital bed with his head on my hip and his front paws draped over my thigh.

My heart lurches as crimson memories flash through my mind’s eye, but Scraps whines and licks the inside of my elbow.

He’s alive. He shuffles closer even though there’s nowhere for him to go.

The big, fluffy baby needs me.

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