“Go inside,” Alessandro ordered.
“No. I’m staying here,” I refuted.
The looks Alessandro was giving me were way harsher than any he’d given me any time before. I knew I was losing him to Denise’s tricks, and now that he thought she was the holy savior of his brother, he wasn’t likely to believe me about what Mira and I had found.
“Go inside,” he ordered again.
I glared back at him. “No. I’m staying here.”
“I told you to leave her out of it, Sandro,” Molly said.
“Stop. Please don’t fight because of me,” Denise moaned. “Willow’s smart to be distrusting.”
“How can you not see that she’s trying to earn your respect?” Alessandro asked.
“How can you not see that she’s doing exactly what she needs to in order to trick you?” I spat back.
“Do you seriously think she got shot just to fool us?” Molly asked. “It could have killed her.”
I looked at her and saw she gripped the far outside of her stomach—not a fatal shot. “Unless she organized it in a way to make it non-fatal.”
“You are impossible,” Molly huffed in disbelief.
“I told you already. If you’re not going to help, then stay out of the way.” Alessandro leered at me before turning his attention back to Denise. “I’m so sorry. Just hang in there, okay? We’re gonna get you some help.”
Luca came flying back a couple minutes later, and he, Alessandro, and Molly worked slowly and methodically to wrap medical gauze around her waist to hold blood in. She winced as Luca pulled it tight around her stomach, but he kept uttering warm apologies. Molly pet the sweat away from her head, and Alessandro looked on with concern, his hands still covered in her blood. After everything I’d been through with the Varasso family, they were catering to a woman they’d known less than seventy-two hours with more concern than they ever did me. It was painful knowing that, at the end of the day, my words meant nothing, even to my own husband.
I shook my head at the scene and turned to walk away. “Don’t.” I looked back over my shoulder, and Alessandro was glaring at me. “Stay here.”
“Ten minutes ago, you were telling me to go. What the fuck do you want from me?”
Alessandro didn’t answer. He turned his attention back to Denise, and Luca and Molly were now slowly bringing her up to her feet. She was gritting her teeth and wincing with each step, but Molly and Alessandro kept her braced against them while Luca climbed into his car and started it up. Alessandro helped Denise into the back seat, and then Molly ran around to the other side and climbed in alongside her. Alessandro opened Luca’s passenger’s side door, and I thought he was going to climb in and leave me standing there.
“Call me when you get there. We’re right behind you.”
Luca nodded. “Okay.” He looked past Alessandro to give me one disgusted stare before Alessandro shut his door and Luca’s car screeched as it pulled away.
When the car was gone from sight, Alessandro turned and looked at me. “We need to talk.” I didn’t recognize the man staring back at me. He had fury in his eyes, the likes of which had never been directed at me before, and as he started toward me, my fight or flight kicked in, and I backed away. For the first time in my life, I was afraid of Alessandro.
17
Alessandro
I took long strides toward Willow and ignored the alarms going off as she backed away from me. “What is the matter with you?” I barked.
Willow was shaking. “What is the matter with you?”
“How could you watch her take a bullet for Marco and not want to help stop her bleeding, at least. I wasn’t asking you to make her a friendship bracelet. Are you honestly telling me that you would have been comfortable with her dying?”
“She wasn’t going to die,” Willow responded. “Her wound wasn’t fatal. She planned it that way.”
“You’ve seriously lost your mind. No one in their right mind would get shot to further a personal agenda. The margin for error would be astronomical! A small miscalculation and that bullet could have hit her in the chest or deeper in her gut, and she’d be bleeding out right now. I know that we thought she was shady at first, but this proves she just wants to help.” My hands were clenched into fists at my sides. “We’re a little shady, too, but it doesn’t mean we’re bad people.”
“Yesterday, you thought she was just as much of a liar as I did!” She was breathing hard as she fought through anger to find her words. “You don’t find it strange that someone just happened to be here when Marco was leaving?”
“They probably just had someone stashed here, waiting for the next available opportunity,” I explained. “The Binachis have always been a family of opportunity.”
Willow threw her hands up in defeat. “How could you flip sides so quickly? How could you just let someone we don’t know anything about walk into our family and act like she belongs here? We met her three days ago!”