“I’m going to get the doctor and I’ll be right back.”
She leaves me alone for just a second and then her and the doctor are back. I recognize him from the last time I was in the emergency room: Dr. Costa with his kind eyes and bushy moustache.
“Elena, we need to stop meeting like this,” he jokes, smiling a wide smile.
“I hear you doc! I’d rather we not meet at all if it’s going to involve me in this bed hooked up to machines,” I say, looking down at my arms and seeing bruises, deep cuts around my wrists, and a cast around my right arm from when I feel backwards in the chair.
“Elena, let me go through your list of injuries … you’ve got a sprained right wrist, a concussion, cuts to your face, which we are treating for infection, and bruises all over your body—from your face to your feet. But, you are alive and your vital signs are good. It doesn’t look like there’s any internal damage.”
I let out a huge breath. Each injury he listed brought back a memory of what Giorgio did to me.
Giorgio, he’s dead!
Leo, where’s Leo?!
I realize I must have asked my question aloud because Dr. Costa answers, “Leo’s pacing the waiting room like a crazy man again. Driving the hospital staff up the wall with a million questions. We haven’t told him that you were awake yet.”
“Please get him, I need to see him.”
“Of course. Anna, go get Signor Forte please,” he says to the nurse, and she leaves the room in a hurry.
Leo storms into my hospital room and his eyes slowly take in my wrecked body—the cast around my arm, the bruises, the cuts—and it pains me to see how upset he is. But when his gaze reaches my face all I can do is smile at him.
I am happy.
As crazy as that sounds—I’m really happy.
Are these the drugs talking?
No.
Okay, maybe a little.
I’m happy to be alive that’s for sure. I’m happy that Leo is alive. I’m happy that we are in each other’s lives.
“You saved me,” I say, the first one to break our silence. Now he’s the one to smile—it’s a shy smile, like he’s not really sure this is the appropriate occasion to be happy.
“Now we can call it even and call it quits.”
“Quits … on us?” I’m shocked. Is he sick of all the drama I have brought to his life?!
“On us? Hell no, on this crazy ‘saving each other’s lives’ game we keep playing. No more of this fucking bullshit,” he says.
The nurse gives me a little more pain medication before leaving Leo and me alone.
His phone vibrates and I see a text message flash across his screen and the name of my best friend show up.
“You know Sophie has been texting me non-stop. I told her and Marco I would give them updates and let them know when it was okay to show up. We kind of took over the hospital waiting room last time you were here,” he says, typing a reply to my worried friends and family. I’m grateful that he is the one taking care of all of this.
Leo laughs at his phone screen and then looks up at me.
“You know your friend is out of her damn mind. She wants to throw a party at my nightclub to celebrate you being alive.”
Now this makes me laugh too! Sophie would see a reason to pop champagne at a time like this.
“You know what? She’s right! We should have a celebration. Not just that I’m alive, but that you are too, and that we all are!”
“You are a remarkable woman Elena Scott,” Leo says. “So should I give Sophie the nightclub event planner’s phone number? Should I warn her about Sophie first?” He laughs again.
Thinking about the nightclub makes me blush and Leo is quick to point it out. “What has you blushing right now?”
“The nightclub … that’s where we—” My thought trails off to the memory of me leaning on that couch.
“Where we … what?”
“You know… where you went down on me on that couch,” I say, trying to avoid eye contact with him. Even after all we’ve done, I get a little embarrassed talking about this stuff.
Leo looks at me like what I just said was the most important thing in the whole world. Like I just cured cancer or something.
“Uh, Leo—cat’s got your tongue?” I tease.
“Elena, how did you know about what we did in the nightclub?”
How did I know?
“I remembered,” I say, looking at him like #duh. Then it hits me. “Holy shit! I remembered!”
“What else do you remember?” he’s quick to ask. He looks like a kid in a candy story—excited and eager for me to say something else.
“I remember … everything, I think. I mean I have no clue what I don’t remember,” I say, laughing at how crazy I must sound. The drugs are starting to kick in for sure now. “I remember meeting you at the caffé, staring at your hot ass when you left, kissing in the cleaning supply closet, the nightclub, the pool, my trip to Milan with the girls, you wanting to be lovers and then surprising me at the charity ball when you told everyone I was your girlfriend. The charity ball.” I sigh in between all the memories flashing back to me with the next one hard to relive. “I remember overhearing your mother and Victoria saying how I’d never be good enough for you. I thought they were right. It really hurt me that they couldn’t accept me for who they thought I was—even though they had no clue.”
Leo grabs my left hand and slowly brings it to his lip to place a delicate kiss upon it.
“Elena, why didn’t you feel comfortable telling me who you really were? I understand not in the beginning, but at some point you could have.”
I take a deep breath and confess.
“It’s not that I wasn’t comfortable. I’m not ashamed of all that I’ve accomplished or being a successful woman. What upset me at first was I didn’t want any man to only want me because of all those things—which was the case back in America. I figured I’d come to Italy and not let anyone know. With you, I knew you wouldn’t care about ‘using me’ for success because you have your own set of very impressive accomplishments—more than mine.”
I take my hand back from his and twiddle my fingers—a nervous habit when I feel anxious. He doesn’t say anything, giving me the time I need to compose my thoughts before starting again.
“With you … I was crushed that all these people—who I assumed were very influential in your life—were very vocal about their hate for me. If these two women thought that, then what would the rest of the country think? Everyone watches every single thing that you do.
“And, if they don’t like me for my personality or my character, which I was always true to from the beginning, then I thought they didn’t deserve to know everything else about me. About the business side of me.”
Leo looks down at me and composes his thoughts.
“Elena, what those women think doesn’t mean shit to me. I don’t need anyone’s approval for anything I do in my life—and I’ve lived this way since I was a little kid. I can normally be a good judge of a character—except for Giorgio.” He looks down now at his hands. “But with you—you were different. From the beginning, I was initially attracted to you because of your beauty. But it was far more than that. When I caught you daydreaming at the counter in the coffee shop, I think from that moment I knew I had to know you better. And I’m glad you let me chase you—you are a kind, smart, beautiful, generous woman and I am proud to be with you. If anything, I am the one not good enough for you.”
I let what he says sink in, afraid that if I speak, then something smart ass will come out and I will ruin this moment. No one has ever said such lovely things to me before, and I know Leo—he doesn’t bullshit when he speaks, he gives it to you straight. Good or bad. And this was … too much. I feel the tears start to run down my face and before the drugs officially take over and I drift off to La La Land, I manage to say, “I love you.”
I wake up from a drug-induced sleep—which was actually lovely and I realize I’m now i
n another hospital room. This one looks less scary because I’m no longer in a single room alone. There’s a drape separating my hospital bed from another person in the room.
“Hello,” I whisper. Who knows who could be over there and in what condition? I would hate to wake someone up from a pleasant sleep. As pleasant as sleep can be inside a hospital.
“Elena,” I hear a deep voice say back through the white sheet.
They know me?! It’s then I realize that I’m a terrible friend because I forgot one of the most important people to me was also hurt in this mess.
“Mateo!” I practically scream out. I reach as far as I can outside of my bed to grab the drape with my good hand and I pull hard to get it to swing back. There he is lying in the bed beside me.
“I think you are taking this ‘always on duty’ thing I bit too far.”
He breaks out in a big smile and we both start to laugh.
“How are you feeling?” I ask him—noticing he has a white bandage wrapped around his forehead, which I spot dried blood on.
“So much better now that I see you are okay. I’m so sorry for this Elena,” Mateo says in the most serious voice I’ve heard. And that’s a lot coming from him.
“Mateo, are you out of your mind? This is in no way your fault. Giorgio was a crazy man and he was going to get to Leo and I in any way he could—I’m just so upset that it had to involve hurting you. I was scared out of my mind when I found you in the car,” I confess. I haven’t really talked about what happened to me in this whole ordeal. The police are coming back tonight for my statement—trying to give me time to recover.
“When I woke up in the back of an ambulance I was so upset. Then when I found out you were missing I went to another level of pissed off. If Leo hadn’t killed that man, I would have,” Mateo says.
I realize just how lucky I am to have such protective men in my life looking out for me.
“Mateo, you are truly a great man,” I say trying to pass my smile along to his grave face, “And I hope your boss gives you an awesome vacation after all of this! You deserve it!”
We both laugh until a nurse walks in to see what all the commotion is about. I guess laughing uncontrollably isn’t a normal reaction from trauma patients. #WeAreDifferent
17
One Month Later
The police just left Leo’s home after an intense briefing on the shooting-turned-kidnapping and assault-turned-death. What an experience. If it hadn’t happened to me, I would have thought it was a movie.
The police searched the abandoned farmhouse, which legally belonged to Giorgio, and other than the room Leo found with the police, it was completely empty. I’m glad I wasn’t there to see it; I would have had nightmares for the rest of my life. Instead I did see police photos of the crime scene. Giorgio had the entire room covered in photos of us and even more on his computer.
But it looked like the obsession started before me. Giorgio wanted Leo’s life and everything in it. The police say he acted out of pure jealousy and rage. Some stalkers take things to the next level. I believe they say he falls into the ‘Resentful Stalker’ category. Police also investigated Giorgio’s apartment and found that he was collecting Leo’s trash.
I’m sad that Giorgio had to die—he could have sought some kind of help—but with him attacking me, the police say there was no hope. Someone would have been carried out of that basement in a body bag—and I’m grateful it was not Leo or me.
Leo did not face any charges for killing Giorgio because he acted out of self-defense. I don’t think he was ever worried about charges; he was acting on his instinct to keep me safe, and I know he would do anything for me, as I would for him. We’ve both proven that to each other and I don’t think we need to do any more of that again.
I’m still in a cast but it should be coming off soon and the bruises and cuts are healing nicely. Most of them are gone now, a few still slightly yellow where I was punched in the face.
“Bella, you ready to go to dinner?” Leo says, coming into the room with a towel wrapped around his waist and a few drops of water on his chest. #Drool
“Do we really need to go? I’d rather you ditch the towel and get over here,” I say, as I lick my lips and wink at him. He laughs at my bad attempt to seduce him.
“I would love to drop this towel and bury myself deep into your tight pussy. But you are the one who set this dinner up, and I think even if we skipped, Sophie would somehow make her way over here to hang out with you. So if you don’t want them to catch us naked, we should go.”
“Why do you always have to be right?”
I head towards the walk-in closet in Leo’s bedroom that I’ve officially taken over. It’s a good thing he has two. I’ve stayed here every single night since I left the hospital, and I don’t miss my apartment or having my private space at all. I like sharing my time and my space with Leo. However, he has yet to say anything about me giving up the apartment to live here with him permanently. Actually we haven’t even spoken about when I’ll go back to Michigan. I have to go back at some point, right? I mean my company is there.
Who am I trying to convince here?
Yourself, stupid.
I’m so deep in thought that I don’t even realize that Leo has walked into my closet until he touches me, scaring the crap out of me! He was just trying to brush my long hair aside to help me zip up my tight black dress.
“You okay, bella?”
“Yep,” I manage to squeak out before stepping into my stilettos. The mood feels different now as I think of moving back to Michigan and being far away from the one person who forces my heart to beat.
Forces my heart to beat? When did I become this sappy love-struck girl? Damn Leo, he’s got me good.
I don’t want to leave him. I just don’t wanna. #Pout
The waiting list of this restaurant is miles long, but Mr. Beautiful knows the right people and our reservations were immediately made.
“Well don’t you two just look like the hottest couple Rome has ever seen,” I hear Sophie say before we walk to the table where she and Marco are waiting for us.
“I could say the same thing back to you two,” I say, taking my seat next to the window. I can’t help but to marvel at the view! This is the city I’ve grown to cherish, and I’m sitting here with the man I’m madly in love with and two of my closest friends. What a perfect night this would be if my head weren’t in clouds of worry.
“I hope you don’t mind we ordered a bottle for the table and caprese appetizers,” Marco says, before dipping a piece of fresh bread into a dish of olive oil. Italian bread—it’s to die for! I join him and take a slice for myself before Sophie starts to fill us in on all the fun things she and Marco have been doing around Rome. Watching her excitement as she talks about all the fun they are having together makes me so ecstatic to be able to help her out. She asked me if she could work from Italy while she’s here—of course I said yes—but in a week she’ll be headed back to Michigan.
Michigan—the topic I want to avoid but can’t seem to escape tonight.
“Elena! Snap out of it girl,” Sophie says, nudging my arm. I see the three of them staring at me. Of course, I was off in my own world.
“Sorry! My mind has been all over the place lately,” I say.
“How did everything go with the police today?” Marco asks.
Leo fills them in on what the police told us, but I can feel Sophie’s eyes trying to make contact with mine. I’m refusing to look over at her. I know, I’m so mature. She’ll be able to read right through me if I look at her, and I don’t want her to see that it’s not what the police had to say that’s got my mind so scattered.
“Excuse us, we are going to use the ladies room,” Sophie says as she grabs my hand and pulls me from the table.
“I didn’t know I had to use the bathroom?” I say to my best friend, but with her death grip on my hand I have no choice. We are going to the bathroom.
“Women can’t help but travel in
packs to the bathroom,” Marco says to Leo, and they both laugh.
We walk to the super posh bathroom, with dark marble counter tops that complement gold wall mounted faucet sets—this place is so fancy I’m surprised there’s not a lady inside handing out towels.
Sophie grabs me by the shoulders and looks me straight in the eyes. “Okay spill it. What has you so upset? It’s not the stalker situation, I can tell. I want the truth.”
“I’m going to have to go back to Michigan.”
“Well … duh. When are you thinking of going back?”
“That’s the thing, I haven’t thought about it at all. It just hit me before we came here that at some point I have to return. My company is there, my family is there, my apartment, my … everything.”
“Not your man.”
“And that’s the reason I’m upset. Why am I living this fairy tale now if I have to leave it at some point? Leo’s whole life is here. He won’t follow me.”
“Girl, listen, you run a social media marketing firm. What do we always teach our clients? Social media allows them to run their businesses from anywhere with the Internet. The world is at their fingertips! And it’s at yours too, Elena. And … if you so happen to want to setup an office here in Italy, I might know at least one of your employees who would help you,” she says with a wink.
An office here in Italy?
She’s right, social media happens anywhere. It’s the freakin’ Internet. Duh. Why didn’t I think of that?
And the rest of the stuff? Well my apartment I can sell, and my parents can come visit me or I’ll go visit them. My family would never want me to turn down love. I feel like the heavy dumbbell crushing my heart has been lifted. Now I just need to get Leo to ask me to stay. I mean, I sure as hell am not going to force myself onto him if he doesn’t want me. I don’t want to look crazy desperate.
“Sophie, you are a genius!” I squeal with excitement as I embrace her in a huge hug and kiss her cheek.
“Well, I already knew that, but it’s nice having someone say it. Now let’s stop this ridiculously cute love fest and go back to our hunky Italian men. Who knew I’d be saying that sentence one day? ” she says, still locked in my tight embrace.
Fighting For Mr. Beautiful: Eternal City Love, Book 2 Page 13
