Page 27 of By Blade, I Love
“Cristo. I was so worried. Did you kill Icarus?”
He hesitated. “We’ll talk when I get home.”
“Alright.” Emotion escaped my throat when I spoke again. “I love you.” I’d known him for a few months, and he’d become such a part of me. If I lost him, I wouldn’t be able to look at the sky again. I wouldn’t be able to breathe again. My family had meant the world to me, but he’d somehow become more even though we didn’t share the same blood.
“Love you too, baby,” he said before he hung up.
I’d fallen asleep on the couch waiting for him.
I heard his footsteps up the stairs and then opened my eyes to see him emerge in the well-lit room. A couple lamps were on, so I could see clearly. The sight of him struck me with adrenaline that made me jump off the couch and nearly trip on the blanket. “I’m so glad you’re home.”
A smile entered his eyes as he reached for me. “Everything’s alright.” He squeezed me and brushed a kiss across my forehead. “Relax.”
I pulled away so I could look him over, head to toe. I saw no sign of injury.
“I said not a scratch, didn’t I?” he asked with his typical smirk.
“What happened?”
He turned toward the kitchen. “I’m starving and need a drink first.”
I joined him in the kitchen and opened the fridge. “I have some leftover pasta from lunch yesterday.”
“I’ll take it.” He opened the cabinet, grabbed a big bottle, and poured himself a glass of scotch. He added a couple of ice cubes before he took it to the table.
I reheated his food and served it to him with a linen napkin and utensils.
He immediately started to scarf down his food across from me, eating the jumbo prawns with the pappardelle pasta.
I let him eat for a couple minutes, knowing how foul his mood could get when he was hungry. His body was probably crashing from the adrenaline dump he’d experienced. I knew exactly how that felt.
He wiped his mouth of the sauce. “It was a setup.”
“What does that mean?”
“Ciro called Don Russo under duress. Made it sound like a battle was about to take place, but he’d already been captured, along with the rest of his men and his family. I’m not sure what Icarus offered him to get him to comply, but whatever it was, it was a lie.”
“They’re dead, then?”
He nodded. “We did what we could, but we were outnumbered and fucked. Icarus laid his trap, and we walked right into it. I should have seen it coming, but I was following orders.”
“Did anyone in Cosa Nostra die?”
“Just a couple of injuries. We intended to run for it, but Icarus’s men—more like his militia—had us pinned down. Said he wanted to have a conversation, so I stepped forward and had that conversation.”
“Why you and not the don?” I blurted.
He shrugged. “In the moment kind of decision.”
“Wolfe.” I didn’t want my man needlessly risking his life for someone else.
“Trust me, I made the right decision. If it’d been Don Russo, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Then he shouldn’t be running Cosa Nostra.”
“Probably not, but that’s not up to me.”
When Don Russo told me that Wolfe should be the one running Cosa Nostra, it was clear he’d thought about it for a while. And now it was clear he wanted that transfer of power to happen sooner rather than later. “Then what happened?”
