Cold Brew and Bullets (Part 1 of the Syndicate Series)

Chapter 20- A Letter

Alessio:

I had never felt so warm in my life as I did when I woke up, but it wasn't in a bad way. It was immediately obvious to me that someone was wrapped in my arms, which was a first for me, but when I realized I must have broken my promise to Eliana by crossing our line of pillows, I felt guilty. There was something calming about holding her, though- when she had been down stairs in the medical room, sleeping in a haze of pain medications, I knew that we could monitor her vitals and make sure that she was doing alright, but there was something better about having her with me and knowing that she wasn't going to take a turn for the worse.

We were facing each other, her forehead resting against my chest while her hands had my shirt tightly clenched in them. Eliana's knees were pulled towards her chest, the way she was curled into a ball would have made me think she was cold if the blankets hadn't been on her. That in combination with the fact that one of my arms was under her head and the other was wrapped around her waist made me think there was no way she wasn't warm.

I tried to shift out from under her, so that she wouldn't get the wrong idea when she woke up, but she only tightened her grip on my shirt and pulled herself closer to my chest. Her eyebrows furrowed, like she was having a bad dream, and before I realized what I was doing, my thumbs were running over her face, trying to smooth the creases. I wished that I could erase the bruises that littered her skin still. I frowned as I felt how warm her forehead was. It wouldn't be surprising if she was slightly sick, seeing that she had been through so much in the last couple of weeks, but even a small fever that was supposed to burn off infection could turn bad in a hurry. I would need the doctor to check on that as well.

I needed to get back to work. I had already overslept more than I had in a very long time, this was the first time that the sun woke me up in years. There was a constant voice in the back of my mind, telling me to keep searching for information on where the Russians might be. I had no misconceptions about myself, I wasn't kind when it came to revenge, and whoever had done this to her would be paying for it with their life. If it required tearing down the whole organization piece by piece, I would do it without hesitation, but the person who had beaten her and taken a pipe to her face and body? The man who had cut Eliana's clothes off of her and starved her? They had a different kind of hell coming for them, and I would do it myself.

As carefully and slowly as I could so that I wouldn't wake her, I rubbed her hands and tried to pry them gently from my shirt. She didn't seem to want to relinquish her hold, but eventually she did so with a sigh. I got out of bed without shifting my weight too much so that she didn't wake up, and then I put the pillows back in their line down the middle.

My bathroom was connected through the other room in the suite, further from where she was sleeping so that it wouldn't wake her up if I took a shower. I was in a rush, by the time that I was done and sneaking across the room to make sure that I didn't wake up Eliana as I left, I had chosen a slightly mismatched tie and shirt, but it barely mattered to me.

I hurried to the kitchen to grab something quick for my breakfast, intending to get back to my office quickly and make some calls, but I walked in on a few of my men leaning over the counter, talking in low tones. Lucia was sitting near them, perched on the granite, watching from afar but seeming to be feilding their questions about her attempted hack.

They straightened up and nodded once they caught sight of me, but I was curious to know the details of what they had been discussing, "As you were."

Leonardo turned back to Lucia, "So you're saying that last night you were able to break through a new layer of the system?"

"Yeah, the deeper I go the more complicated the encryption is. I'm stripping it away and I took Allegra's advice, but I'm having to double check my own work to make sure that they can't back hack me."