His Mafia Prince
Chapter 235: We Got Company

Chapter 235: We Got Company

(TYLER)

In the end, we don’t even make it to the next morning in the hospital. We sneak out in the middle of the night like criminals, or something.

I don’t mind. I want to get out of the hospital as soon as we can, and Sasha wanted to go under cover of dark, to make it harder for our enemies to track us.

There’s some discussion of how to get Sasha from the car into the house, since he can’t walk yet. He won’t let anyone carry him, and when Miles suggests putting a wooden ramp over the stairs at the front to wheel a chair up, you can imagine how fucking well that goes down.

In the end, Sasha consents to Marco helping him limp up the steps, watchers be damned. Marco, who has insisted on staying here in the brownstone with us while we’re still in the city, takes his nephew up the steps faster than he should have in my opinion, though not as fast as he should in Sasha’s, so by the time we get into the house, there are a lot of sore feelings going around.

Miles checks in with Giulio, who’s been hovering in the background like staff, despite being one of the current residents of the place. Marco puts Sasha on the sofa and looks around the old house with fond, nostalgic eyes, and then Fabio sweeps into the room like the absolute angel he is, with artisan hot chocolate for everyone.

For a second, I see Marco and Sasha thinking they’re too tough for hot chocolate. I legit see the thought chugging through Sasha’s brain and into Marco’s like a little steam-engine train, but as soon Fabio presses a mug into their hands and they smell it, they sit there silently and drink it up like good little boys.

I walk after Fabio when he moves to put the tray down on a side table, where I take my mug from the tray.

"Nice work," I murmur to him, and he gives me his familiar, anxious smile. Fabio never seems to look at me fully, always shooting glances or side-eyes. I have no idea why I make him so nervous.

"Thank you, Tyler."

"Sasha," I say, going over to him, "you need to take your meds."

Darla gave me a bunch of antibiotics and heavy-duty painkillers to give to Sasha before she joins us. Sasha takes the antibiotics without comment but leaves the painkillers.

We have a silent argument between us, which I think is noticed by the others because of the nervous chatter that breaks out. In the end, I let it go. For now.

"I’ve made up the main bedroom for your use tonight," Fabio tells us. "Mr. Marco is just down the hallway in the spare room if you need him overnight. And I will sleep down here on the sofa bed."

I turn my shoulders so Sasha won’t see the face I make. "I don’t know if he’ll be able to get up the stairs," I say softly. "I most certainly will."

Sasha’s sharp interruption cracks like a whip. Fabio attempts to calm the waters.

Miles went what Sasha called "crazy" with installing safe rooms and panic rooms after the Irish managed to get into the property. We even contemplated getting one in the townhouse, down off the kitchen area.

"Alright," I say. "We’ll take the master." I raise an eyebrow at Marco, who gives me a little nod, an I’ve got it. Sasha’s head snaps around to stare at us as though we’re planning treachery right under his nose. "Well, when we finish these drinks," I say quickly, "let’s get some sleep."

Sasha does make it slowly up to the second floor with Marco’s help. Once we get into bed and I am, for the first time in many days, lying right next to my husband, my hand in his, I feel better than I have for a long time.

"I was so scared," I say into the dark.

We’re both lying on our backs, close together but not snuggled up, for fear I might hurt him.

"I’m sorry," Sasha says, and the gentle, regretful tone in his voice is exactly how he used to sound. But then he ruins it all by adding, "I’ll protect you better from now on, baby."

***

I wake up after Sasha, and I’ve curled into him, though he’s in the same position, flat on his back, and our hands are still linked.

I come to consciousness abruptly, all at once.

"Sasha—" I rub my eyes, the bad dreams I had flitting away too fast for me to recall them. Not that I want to recall them. They were full of death and darkness.

"I’m here," he says, turning his head to look back at me, and he actually smiles. "Where else would I be?" I don’t think I’ve seen him genuinely smile since—actually, since well before the attack on the warehouse.

The business with Luigi really affected him for a long time. His sense of humour, never exactly light-hearted, has been pitch-black these last few months.

I reach out gingerly to touch his face, trying not to jostle him. "Did you sleep?"

"Some."

"Did I disturb you?"

"No," he says, but I can see that he’s lying.

"Will you take some pain meds this morning?"

"I will not."

And just like that, the irritation is back between us.

"Sasha, Darla is only coming with us on the condition that you submit to her regime of care."

"And I will," he says. "I will be happy to follow the instructions of a registered medical professional."

I roll my eyes so hard I flop onto my back on the bed, glaring up at the ceiling. "If there’s one person in your care team who knows as much about drugs as Darla, it’s me."

"You can help me go take a piss," Sasha concedes, as though I should be grateful. It says a lot about my state of mind right now that I am. But after that, and once I’ve helped Sasha have a sink-bath, during which he stared at his bandaged body in the mirror with contemptuous eyes, and once I’ve showered myself and dressed, he sends me away.

"I’ll dress myself," he says abruptly, when I try to help.

"Sasha—"

"Go downstairs and tell Fabio I want real eggs for breakfast, and some of those pancakes of his. I’m so fucking sick of hospital food; I need something real. Please," he adds after a moment, seeing my face.

"But you can’t come downstairs on your—"

"I’ll call Marco when I want to come down. I promise."

Maybe he just wants to have some time alone. He hasn’t had a moment of it since he entered the hospital, and he won’t get much more at Marco’s. So instead of arguing I bite my tongue—much more biting and the damn thing will fall off—and I leave Sasha there and carry his request downstairs like I’m his messenger-boy instead of his husband.

In the kitchen, Fabio is already making up pancake batter, and there’s a bowl full of the contents of a dozen cracked eggs, too, ready to be scrambled. I sit down at the counter and watch Fabio work.

When he slides across my morning coffee to me without a word, the guilt cracks me open just like the eggs.

"I’m sorry if we’re making life difficult," I blurt out. "Or, I guess, more difficult than usual."

Fabio stares at me in genuine surprise, absentmindedly pushing back his sandy hair from his forehead, leaving a dusting of flour in his eyebrows.

"It’s no bother at all," he says. "After everything you and Don Sasha have done for me...I’m glad to help. Besides," he finishes, a shy shade of awkwardness back in his voice, "you’re family, the both of you. Nothing is too much for family."

I reach over to grab his wrist and give it a squeeze. "Thank you for saying that." A weird-but-good moment passes between us; Fabio is sympathetic, and I’m grateful all over again for his puppy-dog eagerness to please. I withdraw my hand, and then I swallow down the lump in my throat with a mouthful of his hot, sweet coffee.

Marco comes down not long after, knuckling at his eye, and falls on Fabio’s coffee like a vulture.

"How’d Sasha sleep?" he asks.

"Okay, I guess. I think he was in more pain than he’ll admit to. Not sure if it helped having me there in the bed with him."

"Course it did," Marco says gruffly, and wraps an arm around my neck before ruffling up my hair. "You’re the best medicine for him right now, Tyler."

I wish I could agree. But there’s something standing between Sasha and me, some barrier that has never been there before—not even before we got married and he was keeping me at arm’s length.

I don’t like this wall between us. I hate it, actually. But I don’t know how to make it go away. For one crazy moment I almost spill all this to Marco and Fabio, like a goddamn group therapy session or something, but I’m interrupted by the doorbell.

"Must be Luigi," I say. "Bright and early." He promised he’d come by to let us know about the lead on the Irish—and to have that private talk with Sasha.

Marco peels his lips back, about to say something nasty, but a guard’s sharp, "Heads up!" from the front door carries through to the kitchen and makes us all tense up.

Marco pulls his gun out of the back of his waistband. "What’s the sitch?" he calls back through.

"Gonna need you here," is Giulio, the guard’s only reply. Marco lumbers out of the room with a one-word command to me and Fabio: "Stay."

A ripple of panic goes through me as I’m transported back to the warehouse incident, to nighttime instead of day, to the attack that caught us off guard.

"It’ll be okay," Fabio whispers reassuringly, although his voice wavers. "Giulio’s a really good guard. And Mr. Marco’s real tough, too." He’s trying to convince himself as much as me.

But soon after, Marco reappears in the kitchen doorway. "Better come see," he says to me, frowning. "Sasha’s got himself a couple of visitors."

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.