He ignored her and waved Alesio over. “Hold her steady. Here and here. Tightly,” he stressed, pointing to her waist and good shoulder.
“Please, don’t! Oh my God. Stefano, don’t.” She didn’t care that she was pleading. “Just leave it! It’s—”
She was ignored as Alesio, her supposed friend, did as he was told, holding her tight while Stefano grabbed her wrist and twisted her arm into an odd position.
“Fucking stop it!” she screamed as the pain overwhelmed her.
“Stay with me,” Gabriel’s psychotic brother murmured as he gripped her bicep and slowly shifted it before leisurely bringing her arm back in. She wailed through a sickening pop, and just when she thought she was going under, felt an instantaneous relief in her limb.
“Is it back in?” he asked.
She blinked and tried not to cry. “Y-yes.” She took her first full breath since coming to. “Yes, it is.” His satisfied expression blurred as her eyes filled. “Thank you. That was…God, that’s amazing. Thank you.”
As she blinked the tears back, Alesio walked away and Stefano propped a dislodged pillow behind her.
“How did you know what to do?”
He gave her a droll look. “Most of us know a thing or two about in-the-field patch-ups. That one I’ve had to do twice on myself. It works a little differently, but the end result is the same. Relief. You’ll have to ice that first chance you get.”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” she said before she could stop herself. “I’ll try to remember to ask Saint Peter for an ice pack when I reach the pearly gates.”
His lips curved as he brushed his thumb gently over the aching hot spot on her cheek. She jerked back, his touch foreign, but she failed to show the scope of her disgust when she caught a glimpse of familiarity. She saw Gabriel somewhere in his smile.
“I truly am sorry for this, Eva.” His hand dropped away, and he moved back to his seat.
“Yet, here we are,” she said under her breath, very tempted to ask about this apparent one-eighty she was witnessing. This wasn’t the Stefano Moretti she’d met at Caleb’s. Nor was it the monstrous one she’d created in her head since that meeting.
Testing her renewed ability to move, she inched around and brought her feet to the floor, straightening so she didn’t feel so vulnerable. It sounded really loud when she cleared her dry throat and dipped her toe in the water.
“What did you mean when you said, ‘while we wait’? Wait for what?”
“Gabriel.” His eyebrows rose when she gasped. “What. You didn’t think he’d come after you? Have you met him?” He snorted. “The guy’s a fiend when it comes to those he cares about. Why do you think he’s never taken me out?” He tipped his chin her way. “From the impression I’ve gotten, he’d level an army to get to you.”
As she processed that, her heart celebrating it, her confusion only grew. “You sound like you respect that.”
“I do.”
“Yet, you hate him.”
His gaze shifted to his lap, but not before she saw confusion flash in the depths of his eyes. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.”
He looked up and motioned Alesio and Furio to the door.
Furio stood, his irritation at being dismissed apparent on his twisted features. “You fuckin’ serious?”
The expression on Stefano’s face shifted, and Eva saw just how scary he could be when pushed. “I would say so,” he ground out.
Scowling, Furio crossed to where Alesio was holding the door open and stalked out. Alesio followed, looking like he didn’t care either way. Such cold men.
“You’re not in much of a hurry to do this, huh?” she commented, praying he’d somehow found his conscience.
He didn’t respond. Just sat there staring at his lap with his brows down low.
Her nerves didn’t handle the stretch of silence well.
“You sure know how to create tension,” she commented once she couldn’t take it anymore. “Are you going to kill me or what?”
“No.”
“Sexually assault me?”
His lip kicked up again. “No.”
Fucked up sense of humor, but okay. “Let your men have me?” Her voice came out on a squeak.
“No, Eva.”
Thank you, God. “Then maybe you want to tell me why you don’t seem like the boogeyman everyone’s been going on about?”
“Christ.” He looked up at her. “Do you interrogate my brother like this?”
A soul-deep yearning for Gabriel filled her chest. “Sometimes. Though, we haven’t been together long enough for him to know what a real pain in the ass I can be.” Or maybe