I Saved the Mafia Boss—Now I'm His Obsession. novel Chapter 6

Adriano

⫘☠︎︎⫘

There’s a spoon in my mouth.

A fucking spoon.

Warm, salty liquid slid down my throat before I could fight it, and by the time my brain caught up, she was already loading up the next hit like I was some half-dead pigeon she scooped off the street.

She made a soft sound, she sounded pleased, like feeding me soup was the highlight of her goddamn week.

Vincenzo, I needed my brother, Vincenzo.

“You’re awake again!” she chirped, and then made a face, “Well, Sort of. Ish. That’s okay. You don’t have to be all the way awake. I’ve got soup.”

What the fuck is happening?

My eyes dragged open, everything was bright, like the inside of a greenhouse had swallowed me whole. There were plants on every surface, hanging from the ceiling, climbing shelves.

And her.

She looked like springtime.

She was wearing an oversized pink T-shirt, hair in a lazy braid. No makeup, no shoes, just this barefoot, wide-eyed girl with the voice of a cartoon character.

God help me.

“Flan didn’t like the smell,” she said conversationally as she dipped the spoon again, “But she never does. She’s so dramatic. You’d think I tried to poison her with lentils or something.”

Another spoonful. She held it up to my lips like she was feeding a baby bird.

I wanted to curse, I wanted to tell her to get me a fucking cell phone so I can call my fucking brother and get the fuck out of here and off the drugs she had been feeding me but I was floating. My limbs weighed a thousand pounds and my head was made of smoke.

Wait, was she some psycho?

“You’re doing so good,” she cooked like she was talking to a baby. “I mean, your eyes are open now and your breathing’s steadier. Yesterday you were groaning and twitching, which the doctors said is a good sign.”

Soup again. I didn’t even taste it, it was something vaguely herbal, warm and had too much oregano.

She pushed a stool closer to the bed and sat down, still holding the bowl.

I watched her from the corner of my eye because I couldn’t do much else. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t move without feeling like my stitches were going to tear wide open and spill my guts across her nice little bedspread.

“My cat uses a walker,” she said brightly, like that was normal. “It’s this little custom thing I found on Etsy. She’s got wheels on her back legs now. Zooms around like a little sausage on rollerblades.”

I blinked slowly.

What.

“She was abused. Her previous owner broke her spine and left her in a dumpster. Can you believe that?” her face twisted with anger, like the cruelty still hurt her to remember. “She was barely alive when I found her. All matted and shaking and full of fleas but we fixed her up. Didn’t we, Flan?”

Somewhere in the room, the cat meowed. A weak, croaky little sound.

Jesus Christ.

“She has anxiety,” Maddie added, completely serious. “But so do I, so we understand each other. Sometimes we both hide under the couch when there’s thunder.”

I would’ve laughed if I could. Instead, a strange noise came out of me, some half-breath, half-choke that made her freeze.

“Oh my god,” she gasped. “Did you just make a sound?”

She leaned forward, all excitement and hope and way-too-close. Her face was inches from mine, eyes bright, lips parted.

Fuck.

Even in my barely living, drug-fogged state, I noticed her lips.

Full. Pink. A little chapped. Probably tasted like soup and some organic lip balm called ‘Coconut Cloud’ or ‘Peaceful Bee’ or some shit.

She smelled like rosemary and laundry.

She was still talking, “You must be so uncomfortable. Do you want water? Blink twice for yes. Or... no, wait. That’s for Morse code. Do you even know Morse code?”

God help me, I couldn’t look away.

“Anyway,” she went on, oblivious, “I named her Flan because I thought she’d be sweet and wobbly. Turns out she’s a tyrant. Hates everyone except me. She clawed my boyfriend so hard he needed stitches.”

Boyfriend?

Where the fuck is the boyfriend? Maybe, he'd be of some help.

Soup again. She didn’t even wait for permission. Just nudged it at my lips with a cheerful, “Open up, you handsome menace.”

I’d kill a man for calling me that.

But from her lips, it felt less like mockery and more like a nickname you give a raccoon who keeps breaking into your kitchen.

Menace.

Fuck.

She stirred the soup again, blowing on the spoon, and watching me like she was waiting for a sign that I’d snap, spit, bite or do anything.

But I just laid there. Helpless. Drugged out of my fucking skull.

And all I could think was:

If anyone finds out about this, I’ll have to kill them.

And maybe myself.

She smiled again, so sweet, so proud of herself.

“I knew you were a fighter.”

Lady, you have no idea.

So soft. So warm.

So fucking unreal.

And she sure as fuck didn’t belong anywhere near me.

She inhaled like she’d just completed a 5k.

Jesus Christ.

If she knew even one thing about me, she’d have thrown herself off the fire escape as soon as I bled onto her perfect, sunshine-colored blankets.

Please don’t be evil? Sweetheart, I invented evil.

Hell, I didn’t just take pleasure in it. I was good at it. Violence was the only thing I’d ever been born for. Some men were made to build, to teach, to love. I was made to crack bones and empty magazines into kneecaps.

I wanted to tilt my head, smirk just enough to make her second-guess herself, and ask her, What if I am one of those bad people, Sunshine? What then?

I wanted to watch the way her throat bobbed when she swallowed, hear her breath stutter just a little with fear.

Because fear was easy, fear was predictable, fear, I understood.

But her?

She was a fucking anomaly, a glitch in the system.

And she was talking so fast I was starting to think she didn’t even know what she was saying anymore.

“I mean, you can’t be a bad guy,” she rambled, shifting the bowl in her hands, “Because bad guys don’t say ‘please’ when they break into someone’s house all bloody and terrifying.”

She was trying to convince herself.

That’s what this was.

She wanted to believe I wasn’t the monster lurking in the dark. That I was just some unfortunate soul who stumbled into her little nest of sunshine and chamomile like I wasn’t soaked in the sins of a thousand men.

“Anyway,” she muttered. “I hope you’re not evil. That’d really suck.”

She set the bowl down and gently wiped the corner of my mouth with a towel. Her fingers brushed my jaw.

“Get some rest,” she whispered, all sunshine and lavender and fucking suicide. “You’re safe here.”

Safe.

I would’ve laughed if my lungs weren’t cracked glass.

Because somewhere between the drugs and the bleeding and the absurdity of this moment like her ridiculous soup and her crippled cat and her stories about raccoons, I realized something.

She’d brought the devil into her home.

And she was smiling at it.