Chapter 4 - The Turning Point
Kneeling beside him in the dark, Janevra pressed her hand firmly against the entry wound on his shoulder, applying immediate pressure to staunch the bleeding.
Elio winced, a sharp hiss escaping his teeth, but his gray eyes remained locked onto her face, wide with a mixture of disbelief, awe, and an overwhelming wave of raw emotion he had never permitted himself to feel before.
“You... you could have taken the tunnel,” Elio whispered, his voice cracking slightly as he looked down at the blood staining her hands. “Bruno gave you the key. You could have escaped. You could have run away from all of this.”
Janevra didn’t flinch. She looked right back at him, her gaze as cold and uncompromising as winter steel.
“And gone where, Elio?” she asked quietly. “You made it very clear on our wedding day that I am part of this family. If the Vieira empire burns, my father burns with it, and I become a target anyway. Do you really think I’m the kind of woman who runs away when the house catches fire?”
Elio swallowed hard, the cold, arrogant mafia boss entirely stripped away, leaving only a man humbled by the breathtaking courage of the woman he had so foolishly underestimated.
“I called you a strategic asset,” Elio murmured, his voice thick with guilt. “I called you a sheltered girl who didn't understand this life. I was a fool, Janevra. A blind, arrogant fool.”
“Yes, you were,” Janevra agreed flatly, refusing to offer false comfort. She pulled a strip of fabric from the lining of her ruined dress and expertly tied a tight compression bandage around his shoulder to stop the bleeding. “And if you ever speak to me like that again, I won’t just shoot the assassins—I might shoot you.”
A rare, breathless chuckle escaped Elio’s lips, turning into a wince as the pain flared. But for the first time since they had met, there was no ice in his gray eyes. There was only absolute, burning devotion.
Footsteps echoed loudly from the stairs above, accompanied by the bright beams of flashlights.
“Boss! Mrs. Vieira!” Bruno shouted, rushing down the corridor with half a dozen surviving guards behind him, guns drawn, securing the perimeter. “Clear! The extraction team is at the rear courtyard!”
Bruno skidded to a halt, staring in sheer astonishment at the two dead assassins on the floor and the sight of the mafia boss bleeding against the wall, being tended to by his newly minted, weapon-wielding wife.
“Secure the estate,” Elio ordered, his voice returning to its commanding authority, though his hand instinctively reached out to wrap around Janevra’s wrist, as if afraid she would vanish into thin air. “And get the private medical team to the east wing immediately.”
As the guards moved past them to clear the lower level, Elio looked up at Janevra, his grip tightening gently on her hand.
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“You saved my life,” he said softly.
“I saved my home,” Janevra corrected him, standing up and offering him her hand to help him to his feet. “Now let’s go upstairs. You have a lot of explaining to do.”
