Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chantilly
I shouldn’t have been surprised by the two mafia soldiers approaching my hire car with raised guns, but I wasn’t thinking with a clear head when I pulled into the Agostino’s expansive driveway. After cutting the engine, I raised my hands off the steering wheel.
The mafia family would be on high alert with two of their soldiers already dead and Valentino lying comatose in one of the mansion’s bedrooms.
I shuddered. I couldn’t think of Valentino being suspended somewhere between life and death. I couldn’t lose him, not now. He was too vital, too magnetic and invincible. Except he clearly wasn’t the latter, he was as human as I was.
The closest soldier yanked open the driver’s door and grunted for me to get out. I nodded, my hands still in the air as I awkwardly alighted.
“Why are you here?” he asked, his boyish face far more intimidating once I locked eyes with his hard stare.
I resisted gulping. “I’m here to see Valentino.”
The other soldier snorted from his beaked nose that almost touched the top of his long, dark beard. “Have you got a death wish?” he asked gruffly.
I shook my head, glancing his way and conceding, “I’m risking everything to be here.”
The boyish-faced soldier narrowed his glacial blue eyes as he looked me up and down. “Valentino isn’t…cognizant. I’d suggest you leave while you still can.”
“Luca, what is going on?”
I turned at the sound of Ethan’s voice. His nostrils flared, his cheekbones appearing stark against the sudden pallor of his skin. “You,” he said hoarsely.
The blue-eyed soldier—Luca—nodded toward me. “Boss, this woman claims she wants to see Valentino.”
“I do.” I dropped my hands and walked away from the soldiers who waited for whatever command Ethan issued. Gravel crunched underfoot the moment I left the concrete driveway and stepped toward the slate pathway where Ethan stood. I slowed. “You probably weren’t expecting me.”
“No, I can’t say that I was.” He inclined his head at the soldiers and they moved back into position, returning to guard the mansion from anymore intruders.
I stopped, looking up at the man who could so easily kill me on the spot. Ignoring the fluttery sensation inside my chest, I said, “I would have been here sooner, but I only just heard about Valentino.”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “He’s not doing well. But he’s getting the best care money can buy.” His jaw set. “We can’t lose him.”
I realized then why Valentino was here. Ethan didn’t trust someone from the Irish mafia—any of the rival mafias—from infiltrating a hospital to finish Valentino off.
My eyes stung at the thought and I blinked back tears as a rush of emotion almost overwhelmed me. “I can’t lose him, either.”
Ethan’s lips thinned. “You’d better mean that,” he said gruffly.
“I do mean it,” I croaked. “I just want to see him and tell him how I feel.”
“So you’re not leaving him again?”
Wait.He thought I’d left Valentino? I touched my high ponytail, self-conscious now under his faintly accusing and astute gaze. “He asked me to leave,” I admitted softly. “He wanted to keep me safe.”
Ethan barked out a disbelieving laugh. “Until recently, nowhere could have been safer than with Valentino.” He shook his head, his voice softening. “It was almost as if he’d had a death wish.”
My heartbeat accelerated. Was it possible Valentino had gone off the rails after he’d forced me to leave? Was it possible his feelings really were as deep as mine and he hadn’t wanted to live without me?
I pushed the ridiculous notion away. He was as likely to push me away yet again and tell me to never darken his doorstep a second time. It wasn’t as though he didn’t have a plentiful supply of women and whores at hand, and I’d already admitted to myself men like him didn’t know how to love.
Sex was as close to loving someone as Valentino would likely get.
“I don’t believe that,” I answered. I inhaled sharply. “I can’t believe it.” I bit my bottom lip and added, “I just want to know one way or the other how he feels about me.”
Ethan arched a brow. “Isn’t it obvious?”
The door swung open before I could think deeper about the don’s reply, Sabrina popping her head out. “Ethan, what’s taking you so long, I—“
She gaped. “Chantilly! You’re here. We’d lost all hope you’d call around.” She rolled her beautiful, silvery-blue eyes. “And didn’t that make Carlo crow.” She pressed a hand to her mouth. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be bitchy, Carlo does everything in his power to help this family. Just…don’t get on the wrong side of him.”
“It’s okay, I understand.” I managed a shaky smile. “But I’m not here to see him. I’m here to see Valentino.”
She flinched, glancing at her husband before she said, “You do know he’s not yet conscious?”
“I didn’t know anything until a handful of hours ago,” I admitted. “I drove here as fast as I could.”
Sabrina opened the door wider and stepped aside. “Then you’d better come in. Who knows, maybe you’ll be able to wake him? Nothing else has worked.” Ethan followed me inside, then curled an arm around his wife before she added, “You might be our last hope.”
A shiver of premonition went through me as I followed Sabrina across a huge entertainment room which featured a grand marble staircase and a glittering chandelier the size of a small car. She rattled off Valentino’s medical state, filling me in about his gunshot wounds and his blood loss, his medically induced coma from which he’d yet to wake, despite the fact he should be capable of doing so.
All I cared about was getting to him as soon as possible.
I should have been here from the moment he’d been hurt. Instead I’d been wasting precious time waiting for him to pick up his jeep.
I slowed, my breath stalling as I looked at Ethan. “Has he been charged for any of the murders?”
Ethan shook his head. “Not yet, not in his condition, but don’t worry, I have the best lawyers already working on it if—when—he wakes. His case will be watertight.”
At least I understood Valentino’s loyalty now to his mobster family, to his don in particular. They loved him like a blood brother.
My pulse settled and I even managed a smile as we took an elevator up to the next floor before we stepped out into a parlor. We turned right and traversed a wide corridor that led to some bedrooms.
I knew right away where Valentino was. One of Ethan’s soldiers stood outside the doorway, guarding the man they all adored.
Sabrina nodded. “He’s in there.”
The door opened and a doctor walked out, a frown crinkling his brow. He looked up, his eyes scanning us. “I’m not sure my patient is up for a visit today.”
My breath caught in my throat. Had Valentino deteriorated?
“Try telling Chantilly that,” Ethan said with a wry smile as he nodded my way. He clearly didn’t think Valentino was going anywhere.
The doctor blinked at me. “You’re family?”
“Well, no—“
“Then I can’t allow you visitation rights,” he said in an authoritative tone.
Sabrina huffed. “She has our permission.”
The doctor ignored Sabrina and looked at Ethan. “Is that true?”
Ethan nodded. “It is. She’s more than family to Valentino.”
The doctor’s face turned stern as he harrumphed. “Well then, if he goes backward from this visit I can’t be held responsible.” He all but glared at me. “You have five minutes. No more.”
I didn’t answer, I was already pushing through the door and marching inside, slowing only when I saw all the tubes and paraphernalia Valentino was attached to. “Valentino,” I whispered.
Of course he didn’t answer, he lay as still as a statue even when I caught his hand in mine and held on. His skin was clammy and pale, his beard longer, shaggier, his body leaner, too lean. I wondered then if his fitness routine had actually saved him. He’d survived a bullet—more than one.
I leaned close, thankful for our privacy when I pleaded, “Please wake up. I need you. I-I can’t live without you.” I swallowed hard, then confessed, “I love you.”
The EKG machine continued beeping in a steady, uninterrupted rhythm, his chest rising and falling.
I swallowed, my throat thick. I leaned closer. If my love for him couldn’t wake him, perhaps dirty talk would do the trick? He mightn’t love me but he sure as hell loved sex. “I want to be surrounded by your heat. I want to feel every inch of your cock as you pound deep inside of me.”
I blinked at the monitor, at his breathing, at his still lashes that lay like flat fans beneath his eyes. My chest squeezed and I felt suffocated suddenly, claustrophobic, like his world had narrowed down to nothing more than a box and there was no escape once again.
Except this time I really would be leaving.
It took everything I had to shake off the terror, the panic attack that had almost overcome me. Why had I imagined I’d be the one to wake him, anyway? I’d been his lover, yes, but I’d also been his prisoner, a woman he’d planned to one day get rid of.
I wasn’t anyone special to him. When he’d killed the men who’d left me for dead in the ocean, he’d been showing his possessive nature, nothing more.
It didn’t stop me from putting my head on his chest, away from the tubes and wires, my vision blurring before a tear plopped onto his skin. “Just know that I really do love you…that I’ll always love you.” I hiccupped. “I just…I wish things could have been different, but you were right, we were never going to work.”
The machine kept on beeping, his entire body lying still and unresponsive. I sniffled, then lifted my head away from his. If I was being honest, even being his captive had been better than not being with him at all.
I swiped away my tears. “I guess this really is goodbye this time.” I sniffed again, my eyes burning and my emotions barely held in check. I didn’t want to leave him, but I couldn’t stay. We couldn’t work, and I couldn’t risk bringing danger to him and everyone else in this house again. “Goodbye, Valentino.”
My love.