Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty Seven
Adrian
There is sound before there is anything else.
A steady mechanical breath that does not belong to me. A faint beep, and another. A soft hiss. A distant murmur beyond a door. Rubber soles on tile somewhere far away.
Hospital.
The thought forms slowly, like it has to push through mud to reach me.
I hate hospitals.
That is the first clear thought I have.
The second is pain.
It’s not as bad as I expected, but I imagine the painkillers they have pumping through me are helping with that.
But they do not stop me from feeling everything, and as I wake, it arrives in layers.
Throat first.
Raw, scraped out. Like I swallowed broken glass and sand. My mouth is dry, my tongue feels too big, and my chest aches with every breath.
Then my side.
Jesus.
My side is a deep, pulsing burn beneath layers of bandage and tape and whatever drugs they still have running through my veins. It feels torn apart and put back together, which means it probably was. Every inhale tugs at something. Every tiny shift sends a warning through my ribs.
There are other pains too, though those are fainter. Jaw, cheekbone, shoulder, wrist, knuckles, even my thigh.
Inventory comes automatically.
Airway clear.
Hands restrained? No.
IV left arm.
Pulse ox finger.
No weapon.
Then memories start coming back in fragments.
Power going down, phones jammed, safe room. Caterina telling me not to go. Guys creeping through her house.
Andrew.
The thought of Andrew brings me closer to the surface, and memories start coming faster.
The guy at the panel, being attacked, Vito and Nico showing up, then disappearing. Fixing the monitors, then being attacked again.
Fist in my side again and again. Forearm jammed against my throat.
This time, I knew I wasn’t getting out of it.
Darkness closing in.
Then…
Caterina.
I smile dreamily.
Her face looking down on mine.
Her mouth forming my name.
I try to answer back, and it comes out as a weak sound.
A chair scrapes hard against the floor.
“Adrian?”
Everything in me focuses on her voice.
I force my eyes open, and light stabs into them. I close them again and feel the light behind my lids dim.
I try again, and it takes a lot of effort. My eyelids feel weighted, my vision blurred around the edges. For a second, the room swims white and gray and bright, and I cannot make anything hold still.
Then she comes into focus.
She is standing beside the bed, one hand pressed to the mattress, the other gripping mine.
Dark hair loose around her shoulders, no makeup, pale face, red-rimmed eyes.
She looks exhausted.
And so damn beautiful.
My chest tightens so hard it hurts more than my side.
“Cat.” It is barely a word; more like a croak.
Her face crumples.
“Oh, my God.” She covers her mouth with one hand, but she does not let go of mine. “Oh, my God, Adrian.”
I try to lift my hand, and it barely moves.
I hate how weak I am.
She catches the attempt and presses my hand between both of hers.
“You’re awake,” she whispers. “You’re awake.”
I try to answer.
My throat refuses.
A rough scrape comes out, and pain flashes up my neck.
“Don’t,” she says quickly. “Don’t try to talk. They only took the tube out a few hours ago. Your throat is going to hurt.”
Tube.
That explains it.
I blink once, trying to force the pieces into order.
How long?
She seems to read it on my face because, of course, she does.
“Five days,” she says. Her voice shakes. “They kept you in a medically-induced coma because of the trauma, and the swelling, and the blood loss. You were intubated. They weren’t sure—”
She stops.
Her fingers tighten around mine.
“They weren’t sure about a lot of things.”
I remember a lot of blood loss. My strength leaving. My hand in the grass, inches from the gun.
Caterina’s face.
I realize now it wasn’t a memory. It was real.
She had been there, looking down at me.
I look at her more sharply.
Bad idea.
The room tilts, and I have to close my eyes for half a second.
When I open them, she is leaning over me, panic already rising.
“Don’t move,” she orders. “Please don’t move.”
I want to ask why she was outside.
I want to ask if she was hit.
I want to ask where Vito and Nico are, Andrew, my people, Nick’s security, the children, Lucia, Teresa, Erica.
My mouth forms the first word badly.
“Safe?”
Her eyes fill again.
“Yes,” she says immediately. “Everyone in the safe room is safe. The children are safe. Lucia, Nick, Vito, Teresa, Nico, Erica. Everyone who was in the room is safe.”
I stare at her to keep going. I know she understands, but she’s hesitant.
Her hesitation scares me.
“Andrew is alive,” she says. “In surgery for a while, then ICU, but alive. Mara is alive. She has a shoulder wound and a concussion. Two of your people died.”
Her voice breaks on that.
My eyes close.
Two.
Names. I need names.
I cannot ask.
Not yet.
Her thumb strokes over my knuckles. “I’m sorry.”
That is not her apology to give.
I turn my hand enough to press my fingers weakly against hers.
She sees it.
Her mouth trembles.
“Nick lost one of his team, too,” she says. “Another is stable. The rest are injured, but alive. After Nico got the jammer down, Papà got there with reinforcements, though it was mostly over by then. The police came after. It was… chaos.”
I can only imagine.
Luca Conti and the police.
Dead attackers on Caterina’s property, in her house.
A new set of problems forms in the back of my mind, but it is foggy, distant.
I hate these damn drugs.
Caterina’s expression changes, as if she can see the thought passing through me.
“There’s time for work later,” she says gently. “Right now, you need to heal. For real this time. Not like the bullet.”
I would argue if my throat worked.
She reaches for a cup on the side table, then pauses and presses the call button first. “The nurse said if you woke, I need to call them before giving you anything.”
Of course, she follows the nurse’s instructions when she ignores mine whenever it suits her.
My mouth tries to curve, but it hurts. Probably more like a grimace.
She sees it anyway.
A small laugh escapes her, half sob. “Do not smile at me like that. I have spent almost five days thinking you might die, and if you start being charming now, I may hit you.”
I try to speak, and it comes out as a rasp.
She leans closer despite herself. “What?”
I force the words out.
“Missed… me?”
Her face changes.
For one second, she looks like she might laugh.
Then she cries instead.
She bends over my hand and presses it to her forehead, shoulders shaking.
My chest goes tight.
I hate this.
I hate that I am too weak to sit up, too weak to pull her into my arms, too weak to do anything but lie here and watch her break because I made a promise and almost failed to keep it.
I move my fingers again.
She lifts her head, wiping her face with one hand.
“You are not allowed to joke yet,” she says. “There are rules.”
I breathe carefully.
“Yours?”
“Yes. Mine. And the doctors’. And Teresa’s. And Papà’s. Basically, everyone has rules for you now.”
That sounds like hell.
I let my eyes close for one second.
When I open them, panic flashes across her face.
“I’m here,” I manage.
Her lips part.
The words are rough. Barely understandable.
She leans closer, her forehead almost touching my hand again. “You better be.”
The door opens.
A nurse comes in first, then a doctor, then Teresa right behind them, like she has her own personal call button thing for my room.
She probably does.
Her hair is pulled back, her face pale and drawn, but her eyes sharpen the second they land on me.
“There he is,” Teresa says, voice light in a way that fools no one. “The world’s worst patient.”
The nurse checks the monitor. The doctor moves to my bedside, asking questions I answer with blinks and small motions because prolonged speech is impossible. Name. Pain. Breathing. Can I follow his finger? Can I squeeze his hand?
Barely.
It irritates me how much effort it takes.
Caterina stays beside me the whole time.
Her hand never leaves mine.
The doctor says things I might care about later.
Extubated. Significant blood loss. Blah blah.
My eyes start to close sleepily as whatever the nurse just pumped into me starts to take effect.
The doctor leaves after telling me not to speak more than necessary.
Teresa waits until the door closes behind him before stepping closer.
For a second, she is not a psychologist or the wife of the Conti family’s future don.
She is just my cousin.
The kid who used to follow me around, asking too many questions.
The girl who cried at my father’s funeral when I was too shell-shocked.
The teenager who flew all the way to Texas to be there when I came back from my first tour, even though she was in the middle of exams. The woman who called me for help because her family needed protection.
Her eyes shine.
“You scared me,” she says.
I swallow carefully.
“Sorry.”
Her mouth tightens. “Don’t be sorry. Just don’t do it again.”
Caterina makes a soft sound.
Teresa leans down and presses a kiss to my forehead.
That undoes something in me.
“You’re going to listen this time,” she says against my hair. “To the doctors, to me, to Caterina. You’re going to heal up. Because this time, I know I can kick your ass.”
I can’t afford to laugh right now, but she gets it.
Caterina says, “Can I have a minute with him?”
Teresa looks at her.
Something passes between them.
Then Teresa nods. “One minute. Then I’m telling everyone he’s awake before Vito kicks down another hospital door.”
Another?
I file that away.
Teresa leaves.
The room quiets again.
The machines continue their steady beeping.
The pain is fading now as the painkillers threaten to take me under.
I manage to stay awake only because Caterina is here, and I don’t want to leave just yet. I’ve already lost five days with her, even if I didn’t realize it, and I don’t want to miss out on the next few hours.
She sits again, close enough that her knees press against the side of the bed. She holds my hand with both of hers.
For once, she does not seem to know what to say.
That worries me.
Caterina Conti always has words. Sharp ones, smart ones, furious ones. Words that slice, deflect, challenge, charm, and command.
Now she only looks at me.
“Cat,” I rasp.
Her eyes snap to mine.
“You hurt?”
She inhales shakily.
“A few scratches. Bruises. Nothing serious.”
I stare.
“You… left room.”
Her mouth tightens.
“Yes.”
I close my eyes.
“Caterina.”
“Do not take that tone with me from a hospital bed.”
I open my eyes again.
She is angry now.
“You were dying,” she says. “I watched him attack you, and I knew…” She shakes her head. “I just knew.”
She knew I would die, so she left the protection of the safe room for me.
And if something had happened to her, it would be on me.
“I had Vito’s gun,” she says. “Nick was with me, so it’s not like I was defenseless.”
The memory sharpens through the fog.
Her face in the dark.
Her mouth forming my name.
Not a hallucination.
“You shot him,” I whisper.
She does not look away. “Yes.”
Any other woman might say it with horror. Caterina says it directly and with no remorse.
Oddly, it makes me proud.
The fact that she can say it with her head held high. Not that she had to kill a guy on my behalf.
I squeeze her hand.
I am tired.
Suddenly, violently tired.
The room starts fading, and so does Caterina.
No.
I just woke up.
I need more time.
I need too many answers.
I need to tell her—
What did I need to tell her?
I hear her voice distantly as I fight sleep.
“I’m here,” she says soothingly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I force my eyes open one more time.
She is leaning close, her hand around mine, her dark eyes wet.
My eyes close again, and this time, I can’t fight it.
Love you.