The sounds of the cars parking behind them made him stiffen.
He wanted to look back. Just to make sure his orders were carried out and Nate hadn’t been forgotten. But of course his orders had been carried out. They always were.
Damiano didn’t turn around.
He watched Raffaele emerge out of the villa. His stern face changed very little when he saw Damiano, but when he looked at something behind him, there was clear relief in his black eyes.
Damiano’s lips curled into a derisive sneer. How touching. So apparently his stepbrother did care about his boyfriend’s well-being even if he was cheating on him. Truly a love story for the ages.
Giving him a curt nod, Raffaele marched forward.
Damiano strode toward the house, ignoring the burning pain in his back. He had no desire to watch them kiss or something equally nauseating.
“I’d be more careful, boss,” Lorenzo said, catching up to him. “You might shoot your leg.”
Damiano gave him a blank look before realizing that he had his finger on the trigger of his gun. Slowly, he took the finger off and turned the safety on.
He was calm.
He was calm and collected.
He had nothing to be angry about.
Chapter 16
Jordan had to shower with the door open.
His chest tight, he watched the water beat down on his body, washing away the grime, sweat, and Damiano’s blood.
Jordan would have liked to say that he felt like his old self after the shower, but that would have been a lie. He felt clean, which was a big improvement, but the anxiety and the sense of displacement remained.
The world still didn’t seem real. Everything felt slightly off: the scents, the sounds, the colors.
His spacious room made him feel distinctly uncomfortable: it felt too big and open. Unsafe.
And that was the crux of the problem, wasn’t it?
He felt unsafe, despite being saved.
“Are you all right?” Ferrara said stiffly, glancing at Jordan before his eyes returned to his laptop.
“Sure,” Jordan said, dropping his towel and pulling on a T-shirt and shorts. He couldn’t bring himself to care that he was naked in front of his boss. Actually, some embarrassment would have been very welcome. Anything would have been better than this anxiety and sense of wrongness. He kept waiting to finally feel safe—feel normal—but the feeling remained elusive.
“You’re lying,” Ferrara stated, his gaze on his laptop. “I will pay for the services of a therapist once we return to Boston. That’s the least I can do. It’s my fault for not waking you up and forcing you to catch a ride with Damiano.” He grimaced. “I could sense that something was going to happen, so I figured it would be better if you missed the wedding, but it only messed everything up.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Jordan said tonelessly.
“Still.” Ferrara went silent, typing on his laptop. “I bought tickets home for tomorrow. Noon.”
Jordan didn’t say anything. He wanted his boss gone from his room, but he knew Ferrara should be here to keep the appearance of a concerned lover reunited with his missing boyfriend.
There was a knock on the door, and Jordan whipped his head toward it.
It was a maid. She brought him food.
Lots of food. Fifteen different dishes.
“This is too much,” Jordan said, eyeing the feast in front of him. He was hungry, but he knew his stomach wouldn’t be able to handle more than some soup after ten days of being half-starved. “You shouldn’t have.”
Ferrara frowned. “It’s not me. The cook probably feels bad for you.”
Jordan played with the food listlessly. He forced himself to eat some soup and bread and to drink a few glasses of water.
There was another knock on the door, and Jordan held his breath again.
It was a security guy. He handed Ferrara a package.
“This is for you,” Ferrara said, turning to Jordan. “A new phone to replace the one you lost.”
Jordan accepted it without a comment.
It was only a matter of minutes to get the phone set up and have his data restored from the cloud. If only his mental state could have been fixed as easily.
He wanted Damiano.
Jordan screwed his eyes shut and breathed, trying to erase the thought from his mind.
It didn’t work.
Rationally, he understood that this attachment, this dependency, was born in unnatural circumstances that had nothing to do with their real lives. It was a combination of his desperate need for an anchor when his claustrophobia was driving him crazy, some fucked-up nurse-patient attachment from caring for Damiano for days, and the false sense of intimacy caused by the constant physical contact. Now that they were back in the real world, he knew that what he had felt in captivity wasn’t real. As a rational man, Jordan understood that.
It changed very little.
He still thought about him constantly, obsessively, wondering if he was okay, if he got professional medical help. From the rigidly straight way Damiano had held himself as he had emerged out of the car, Jordan wouldn’t put it past him not to tough it out in order not to reveal his weakness in front of his underlings. Stubborn ass.