Page 57 of Surprise Twins for the Mafia Prince
“Relax,” I command.
“Bossy ass...” she mumbles, but her body melts into mine. I can feel her warm breath through the thin hospital gown every time she exhales, and I grin. The pain doesn’t matter in thismoment. Even the looming threat against us seems distant and unimportant.
I know we’re safe here. My father will have men watching the hospital with orders to kill anyone who so much as looks at us wrong.
As Paige’s breathing becomes deep and even, I know that I’m never letting this woman go. I’ve already known that she was important to me and that I was developing feelings for her, but the depth of my emotion hits me as I press a kiss to the top of her head.
I’m falling for her—hard and fast and without a safety net.
25
PAIGE
It’s beentwo days since the shooting and Dario is finally home from the hospital. I’m glad that he’s feeling better, but more than that, it’s a relief for him. To my complete lack of surprise, he’s a terrible patient—like, award-winningly awful.
Over the two days he was at the hospital for observation, he got more and more irritable, snapping at nurses when they came in to take notes on his stats or bring food that he complained was “inedible sawdust masquerading as nutrition.”
I couldn’t really dispute that—hospital food has all the culinary appeal of licking a cardboard box—but I did go out of my way to apologize to the nurses for having to deal with him. I even dipped into my meager savings to buy them all lunch from a nice Italian place on his second day there, trying to make amends for Hurricane Dario. I also made sure that he got a plate of eggplant parmesan, which he told me is one of his favorites. It managed to put him in a decent mood for the rest of the day, even though he wasn’t thrilled to be stuck in the “boring hospital room with walls the color of despair.”
Now, he’s home, and I can tell that he’s happier, even though he’s obviously in pain. At the hospital, he had an IV that put the medicine directly into his veins. That’s not an option at the apartment, so the doctor wrote him a prescription. Dario didn’t even want to bother filling it, but I insisted and we stopped at the pharmacy on the way home from the hospital. I was surprised when he gave in so easily, but I should have known better.
Crossing the kitchen, I place the bottle of pills on the table next to his dinner—a casserole I pulled from the freezer and reheated according to the instructions Dario’s chef taped to the top of the dish on an index card. He looks up at me with a blank expression on his face.
“Take two of these,” I say, crossing my arms and trying to look intimidating.
Considering that I’m staring down a mob boss, I don’t think it’s working. The corner of Dario’s mouth twitches up as if he’s trying not to laugh at my attempted tough-girl routine.
“I’m fine,” he says, but his eyes dart back to his plate. I watch him shovel in a big bite of food, as if he’s starving.
If he thinks that’s going to deter me, he’s wrong. I didn’t survive a drive-by shooting and his near-death experience just to be outmaneuvered by mealtime distractions.
“No you’re not. You took a bullet three days ago!”
“Not my first.” He doesn’t look up from his plate.
I frown. I don’t like it when he says stuff like that. I know it’s probably the truth—a man in his position lives a life full of danger—but hearing about it makes my chest feel tight, likesomeone’s wrapped barbed wire around my lungs and is slowly tightening it.
It’s almost funny to think about how my feelings toward Dario have changed over the last few weeks. Back then, I never would have thought I’d care this much about him. All I felt was fear, disdain, and a reluctant attraction. I couldn’t see the man past his family’s sins.
I’ve gotten to know him since I moved in, and I knew that I was softening towards him. That feeling has shifted into genuine affection since the night that we were shot at. He jumped right into action, taking me to the ground without hesitation. It all happened so fast, but I knew that he was focused on my safety above all else. Even while he bled out in the street, he was ordering me to call someone to come keep me safe.
That kind of behavior shows me that he cares about me, despite the rocky start we’ve had. Now, I’m going to show that I care by getting him to take his damn pain meds.
“I get it. You’re a tough guy who doesn’t even flinch when a bullet tears through your artery. But I’ve noticed you wincing in pain when you try to use that arm and you looked pale and sweaty earlier when you brushed against the doorway. I can tell you’re hurting.”
“I didn’t get pale or sweaty,” he retorts, looking affronted.
I roll my eyes so hard I’m surprised they don’t get stuck looking at my brain. “I’m not insulting your appearance, Dario. Don’t let it bruise your ego.”
He turns back to his plate of food. “I don’t like pain medicine. It makes my head swim. I never use it unless I have to.”
I still don’t like the idea of him in pain, but I’m not going to push him if he really doesn’t want to take the medicine. Instead, I sigh through my nose and take a seat at the table beside him.
Dario has a dining room with a dark wooden table that shines under the iron chandelier hanging above us. The wooden chairs match the table and make my ass sore after about twenty minutes, but Dario likes to eat dinner in here. When I first moved in, we sat at opposite ends of the long table, but I didn’t like how formal it felt—like a business dinner between strangers or a scene fromBeauty and the Beast.
Now, I sit to his right. It allows for easy conversation and neither of us has to leave our seats if we want the salt and pepper. The casserole is good, with chicken and broccoli and rice. The chef doesn’t create complex meals for us, but that’s fine with me. I have simple tastes, and this type of food reminds me of when I was a kid and still had my family. We had money before my dad died and probably could have had a chef of our own, but my mom loved to cook for us. She was all about comfort food, and this casserole reminds me of that.
Not long ago, the memory of those good times would have caused a bitter pain inside of me because after we fled Vegas, my mom didn’t make us wonderful home-cooked meals anymore. She’d turned into a shell of her former self, and that meant that no effort was put into taking care of her kids at all. No more cooking or keeping up with the housework or spending quality time with me.
