Her eyes cut my way blazing with inner fury and I readjusted; not just far away from her. Elena wished I was dead.
She affirmed my belief by saying, “It should be your lying, cheating, fat ass in this bed and not Cosima’s.”
I reeled, my stomach tossed backwards, my heart hitting hard against the back of my ribcage. My foot caught me before I fell on my ass, but only just.
The Mean Girls snickered.
I opened my mouth to say something without any idea of what exactly to say when a large presence at my back made me stiffen.
“Excuse me,” an incredibly posh British accent ordered.
I whirled around to face the man and my mouth fell further open. The man in front of me was even taller than Dante, some impossible height that was made even more astonishing by the fact that he was perfectly proportioned, not as deeply muscled as the Mafia man but close. That was where the similarities ended though, because this man was not rugged. His dark blonde hair was pushed back from his regal forehead like a golden crown, highlighting the aristocratic features that I honestly didn’t think I could have recreated with paint or brush. He was so exactly symmetrical, so beautifully colored in tones of all gold but for the bright glint of steely sliver at his eyes. They weren’t black, those eyes, but I recognized in them, as they bore down on me, the same ruthless, violent capabilities that lived in the eyes of the made men I’d known in my youth.
This stranger was not a good man.
Elena seemed to have surmised the same thing. She stood swiftly, moving to the front of Cosima’s bed to block our vulnerable sister from the newcomer. It was a beautiful gesture that made me feel better about her as a person and worse about her as my sister.
“You have the wrong room.”
The blonde prince - seriously, he could have been King Arthur reincarnate - looked down his nose at us. “I do not.”
“This is Cosima Lombardi’s room,” I offered.
Elena dug her sharp elbow into my soft side.
“Perhaps you are in the wrong room. This is Cosima Davenport’s room.”
“What?” I breathed.
“Excuse me?” Elena asked harshly.
The blond stranger was completely unfazed by our horrified expressions. In fact, he idly adjusted the gold cuff link at his wrist and said, “The woman you are trying to hide from me is my wife.”
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
Putain.
Who was this guy?
“Who are you?” I asked, my voice still breathy with incredulity.
“Her husband,” he said, standing straighter, proud and so tall even Elena, who was tall for a woman at five foot eleven, had to tip her head back to maintain eye contact with him. “You may call me Alexander, seeing as we are family.”
Still reeling, Elena, Beau and I stood mutely as he walked briskly around us and took the unoccupied chair up against Cosima’s bedside. He sat down on the very edge, looking stupidly big for the tiny orange chair, and immediately took up her hand.
“My beauty,” he murmured, his hard mask collapsing as he took in her lank hair, the deep bruises that were turning yellow over the left side of her face.
“Cosima isn’t married,” Elena said, the first to recover.
“She is. I was at the ceremony.”
“She would never get married without telling us,” Elena snapped, moving forward to point a finger in his face. “You are some freak stalker who has seen her in magazines and fixated on her. Get out!”
Alexander stared at her without expression. Even though I was used to Sinclair’s immaculate mask, there was something terrifying about this British man’s blank face. Sinclair hid behind his propriety, his beautifully honed manners and perfectly enunciated speech both because he been trained to do so by his adopted parents and then because it gave him a degree of necessary separation from others.
Alexander was not wearing a mask. He truly seemed devoid of feeling. So, the way he stared at Cosima with devoted yearning sent shivers of revulsion down my spine. I wouldn’t have been surprised if this man was a psychopath. Was this the man that had put those deep bruises around my sister’s wrists when she had visited England before Thanksgiving?
His unfeeling gaze cut to mine and I had my answer.
“I would say your goodbyes,” he said quietly. “Visiting hours are over and I am the only one who has been granted the choice of staying the night with her.”
“Like hell you are,” Elena snapped. “How do I know that you are who you say you are?”
“He is her husband,” Dante said from the doorframe, his voice uncharacteristically low and subdued.
We both swung his way.
“They were married two years ago in England. If you press him, I am sure he will show you the marriage certificate,” Dante continued.