Page 87 of Double Edged Hearts
I press my lips together. I’ve been thinking about that, definitely since I spoke to Cora days ago .
The translation of his question is really this—Do I want out of the business?
“I’ll understand if you need to speak to your girl first,” he adds.
“No. I don’t need to. I am who I am, Claudius, and I wouldn’t be who I am if I wasn’t Number Four, part of the crew. If there’s anything today taught me it’s that I know you guys always have my back, so I have yours. You came to my rescue, and you came for her. I can’t just bow out of the crew, the famiglia.”
“No?”
“No, Boss, so I guess if it’s alright with you, I’ll see you in two weeks.”
He chuckles and raises his fists to bump them with mine.
“See you in two weeks, bro. Call me if you need me.”
“I will,” I promise, and he leaves.
I head into the living room, where Cora is curled up on the sofa drinking a cup of hot chocolate. Her hair is piled up on top of her head in a sexy messy bun. She’s wearing one of the big T-shirts we bought at the market the other day.
I like the casual, sexy look, but I’m pissed as fuck about the bruise on her cheek and the bump on her head.
I crouch down before her, and she sets her cup down on the coffee table.
“Are you okay?” she asks. “You should rest. I’m worried about your wounds.”
“I’m okay, Goddess. Don’t worry about me. I’m good. The question is are you okay?”
“I’m happy to be here with you, I’m happy you’re alive, but I don’t know if I’m okay. Too much happened, Alex. Too much that will stay with me forever,” she says.
“I’m sorry I had to kill him…” I thought I should say that. He was her father, and I killed him. Regardless of what was going on, my bullet ended his life.
She shakes her head at me. “Alex, you know you did what you had to do, and I know you’re only saying that for my benefit. You’d do the same thing all over again if you had to, and I would be in agreement. He was going to kill me. After all of that and everything we’ve been through, he was going to kill me.”
I reach for her hands and take them into mine. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
“I don’t think of him as my father. He wasn’t. Not to me. I just want to move forward and pick up where we left off four years ago.”
“Yeah?” That sounds great to me.
She nods and smiles, and I think it will be interesting to see what we do next.
“Yeah.”
I glance around the place and see how homey she looks here. “You like it here?”
She nods again. “Do you want to live here?”
“Sometimes. You’d be too far away from the guys if we were here all the time though. We could come here for breaks. I like the quiet.” She looks out to the lake and smiles wide. “The kids would love it here. They’d like the lake a lot. We should get a boat.”
My damn heart warms at her words, and I can see the vision too of having a family with her.
She looks back at me and smiles.
“Yeah, we should get a boat,” I answer and sit next to her on the sofa.
She curls up in my arms, and I feel like I can finally rest indeed.
