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Hank muttered expletives under his breath, and a second later, I felt a heavy hand on my hair followed by a bristly kiss to my forehead.

“You text me later and you come to Book’s tomorrow, or I’ll knock this door down to see you’re okay,” he murmured to me before moving away.

Each of the others followed, but I didn’t open my eyes to any of them. It made it easier to absorb their love and ignore the branding glower of my husband as he watched these strange men touch me goodbye.

“The rest of you,” he said. “Fiammetta will call you later. I . . . thank you for being here for her, but now, you must leave.”

“She needs me,” Alessia protested, curling me even closer into her side. “I won’t leave when she needs me.”

“You will leave if you know what’s good for you,” Dario drawled mildly.

“It’s okay, Less,” I assured, even as I turned deeper into her embrace, seeking the comfort of my best friend. “Cesare must be waiting for you.”

Alessia hesitated unhappily for a moment before she sighed into my hair, kissed my cheek, and got out of the chair beside me. I heard her whispering to Elijah, Akira, and Finn, convincing them to leave.

A minute later, the door to the living room closed with a gentle snick.

There was a soft tread on the carpet, and then the air displaced at my feet as my husband stopped before me. I held my breath as rough calluses traced the hot skin of my bruised cheek. It ached so severely, I wondered if Afansay had broken bone.

“They put their hands on you.” Dario’s voice was cold as ice, no inflection, no emotion.

A statement of fact.

But his hand was warm as it brushed lightly—so lightly—back and forth over the swell.

“They took you,” he continued. “They killed one of my men, kidnapped you, tied you up, and kept you in a fucking shithole for days where I could not find you.”

“Did you even look?” I asked, surprised at how dead my voice seemed.

The silence that bloomed between us resonated like a physical pressure against my skin.

“Did I even look?” he echoed.

The tender touch slid down my cheek to my jaw and then clenched hard around my chin. I hissed at the pressure but kept my eyes resolutely shut.

“Look at me, Fiammetta,” he demanded irately.

I did not.

“I said,” he repeated in sibilant Italian, “look at me, wife.”

Deciding this whole confrontation would be over sooner and then I could go back to bed if I just obeyed, I peeled my lids open and then blinked at the sight before me.

Dario, crouched in front of me, was absolutely covered in blood.

It speckled his face, dripped down his corded neck into the stained collar of the white shirt he wore beneath a bulletproof vest. There were long smears of it on his bare wrists and forearms, and when he grinned at me—a feral, manic expression that made him look utterly mad—blood even stained his sharp, white teeth.

“Did I even look for you?” he repeated, and there was emotion there now, raw and trembling, the words cracking up his cold veneer like quakes in the earth revealing molten heat beneath. “Did I receive word that you had been taken while I was on a flight to Sicily and immediately have them turn the plane around? Did I call in every man on the ground in Chicago and pull in favors from other capos and organizations to find any hint of where you had been taken?”

“Did you agree to pay the ransom demand so they would send me home to you?” I cut in, surging forward to bare my own teeth at him. Our noses brushed, we were so close, and I could tell he was surprised by my show of anger. “Did you care beyond your own pride at having your property stolen what they might be doing to me all that time?”

Dario’s eyes were so pale a blue they were almost transparent, only the texture of each iris, tiny striations and pops of brighter hue like facets in a diamond, gave them depth. I stared into those colorless eyes and tried to understand him for the millionth time, knowing I’d fail.

Finally, he bit off a violent Italian curse and dropped his grip on my chin to clutch hard at the arms of the chair, caging me as he leaned forward even more to growl into my face.

“I had forgotten just how young and dumb you are. You think those bastardi would have been appeased by one million dollars if I had agreed to pay? They would milk and milk until I had paid them every last fucking penny, and then do you know what they would have done to you, Fiammetta? They would have strung you up in that pit of a building and fucked you before they cut you until rivers of your blood flowed over the ground. They would have kept an ear maybe.” He reached up to draw shockingly tender fingers over the shell of said appendage. “Or a finger.” His hand tangled with mine, sliding his digits between my own and squeezing so tightly I hissed. “To send to me in a pretty box with a note that said something trite and idiotic like ‘Here is your wife back.’”

He was breathing hard, air rattling around in his huge rib cage before streaming out his mouth. There was something violent about him even though he kept very still, a harnessed power that said whatever revenge he had taken from these men was not enough.