Chapter 62
LUCIAN
She’s light in my arms. Too light.
I can feel the heat bleeding out of her with every step I take up those narrow basement stairs.
Her head rests against my shoulder, her breath a thin, trembling thing that barely brushes my neck.
I keep whispering to her - Nadia, come on, stay with me, sweetheart, just breathe for me - but I don’t know if she hears me.
The walls blur. The smell of my grief mixes with the salt of my sweat as I push through the door at the top. The house feels tighter now, smaller, like it’s folding in around us. Every echo, every creak, every shadow screams that I’m too late.
Scar’s voice cracks through the radio somewhere behind me, ordering Mason to clear the perimeter. Jayson’s shouting for the medic to move faster. None of it matters. My whole world has narrowed to the small, limp body in my arms.
Her skin is ice against mine by the time we reach the top of the stairs. I take one step out, and then she just - stops.
No sound. No breath. No heartbeat against my chest.
Her body goes limp in my arms, heavy in that awful, final way. For a heartbeat, I tell myself she’s just unconscious. That it’s the drugs, the blood loss - anything but this. I shake her once, twice, gentle at first, then harder as panic tears through me like shrapnel.
“Nadia.” Her name breaks out of me, rough, desperate.
I pull her closer, fingers digging into her back like I can hold her spirit in place through sheer force.
“Don’t you fucking do this,” I whisper against her temple, my voice splintering.
“You hear me, Nadia? You don’t get to leave me. Not like this.”
She doesn’t answer.
“Nadia!”
Nothing.
The sound that comes out of me isn’t human. It rips up from somewhere deep and ugly - a wounded, breaking thing that doesn’t care who hears it, who feels it. I drop to my knees, clutching her to my chest. My heart’s hammering so hard it hurts, like it’s trying to beat for the both of us.
“Mason!” I roar, my voice cracking, raw and inhuman. The room erupts with motion as the Gatti med team floods in like a blur of white and black. They pull me back, and I fight them like an animal until Mason himself grabs me, slamming a hand against my chest.
“Lucian. Let them work.”
I don’t want to let go. I can’t. The second I put her down, it feels like I’m handing her over to death itself.
“She’s not gone,” I say, even as my hands shake. “She’s not - she’s just-”
The medics are already pressing pads to her chest, the machine whining to life.
I’m still kneeling on the ground, hands smeared with her blood, watching the medic start compressions. One, two, three - her body jerks under the force, her hair falling across her face, her lips parted slightly like she’s about to speak.
“Come on, sweetheart,” I choke out. “Don’t do this to me.”
The medic shouts, “Clear!” and her body jumps under the shock.
Once. Twice. No response.
I can feel something inside me splinter - clean, final.
Jayson’s hand lands on my shoulder, grounding, but I shrug it off. I don’t want comfort. I want her.
“Again!” the medic yells. Another shock. Her body arches, then falls still, and the medic falls back on the balls of his feet.
And then I’m gone.
The rage comes first. It’s pure and colorless, a heat that burns everything else out of me.
I stand, pacing away from the team because if I stay too close, I’ll start breaking things - people - everything and anything.
My fists slam against the wall, hard enough to crack plaster. Once. Twice. Again.
Scar calls my name, sharp. “Jude - ”
“Don’t,” I snarl, voice shredded raw. “Don’t fucking tell me she’s gone.”
But she is.
I know it the way you know a storm before it hits - the air is too still, the sound too quiet. I turn back, and she’s lying there on the ground, small and still, the defibrillator whining flat.
I drop beside her again, fingers tracing the curve of her cheek, wiping blood and dirt away like it matters. Her skin is cooling fast. My voice breaks apart when I whisper, “You were supposed to be safe with me. I was supposed to protect you.”
And that’s the truth that guts me - not the loss, not the blood, but the failure. The unbearable weight of it pressing down until I can barely breathe.
I press my forehead to hers, whispering her name over and over, as if I can call her back through sheer will. Around us, the world goes on, but I don’t hear any of it.
It’s just me and her.
And the silence that follows when the person you’d die for stops breathing.
Then, faint - a sound. A hitch. A puff that’s barely a breath.
“Wait,” the doctor says, voice tight.
I lift my head.
The medic leans forward, pressing fingers to her neck, then his eyes snap wide. “She’s got a pulse!”
For a moment, the world stops again - not from grief this time, but from the impossible light flickering in the dark.
I grab her hand, hold it against my chest. “That’s it,” I whisper, every word breaking. “Stay with me, Nadia. Stay the fuck with me.”
And as she’s lifted onto a gurney and wheeled into the makeshift hospital room the med team has set up, I swear I feel it - the faintest squeeze of her fingers against mine.
It’s enough to pull me back from the edge.
Enough to make me believe again.
“She’s got a deep abdominal wound,” the doctor tells us. “Deep, through the wall. We need to open her up. Now.”
“How bad is it?” My throat burns.
The doctor doesn’t answer. He’s too busy calling for saline, clamps, pressure.
But I know the look in his eyes. The pity. The calculation. The quiet verdict. No one survives a wound like that.
“No,” I whisper, shaking my head like I can undo the world. “She pulled through before. She’s going to make it.”
Blood stains my hands, my sleeves, my soul. I can’t tell where she ends and I begin. Mason keeps a hand on my shoulder, steady and heavy, the only thing keeping me from falling face-first into her death.
She moans, barely there, but it’s enough to gut me, and I’m beside her in an instant, refusing to let go.
“Hey,” I whisper, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “Open your eyes, Nadia. Look at me. Look at me, sweetheart.”
She doesn’t. Her lashes flicker once. That’s all.
“Her blood pressure’s tanking!” someone yells. “We’re losing her again - ”
“No!” I slam my palm against the wall, the sound cracking through the hall. “You’re not losing her! Do your fucking job!”
Mason’s voice is low, breaking in ways I’ve never heard, as he holds me back from the med room.
“They need space, Jude. Let them fight for her.”
“She is my fight,” I rasp. My throat feels like I swallowed glass. “You don’t get it, Mason. They took everything from me once. I won’t let them take her too.”
He doesn’t argue. Maybe because he knows there’s nothing left to say.
I collapse against the wall, sliding down until I’m sitting in her blood. My shaking hands cover my face. I can still feel her heartbeat on my palms, still taste the salt of her skin, still hear her laugh from another lifetime.
I begged the devil once to bring me peace. He gave me Nadia instead.
Now he’s come to collect.
Minutes blur. Hours. Time bleeds out like her life on that floor.
The surgeon finally steps out, his face streaked with sweat. His eyes don’t meet mine.
“She’s still in surgery,” he says quietly. “It’s bad. The blade hit her stomach, liver, and possibly her artery. We’ll try to repair what we can, but…”
He hesitates.
“But she might not make it.”
My world caves in.
Mason’s hand is still on my shoulder, but I barely feel it. I’m somewhere else - back in the cell where I counted the years by her name. Back in the dark where I dreamed of her face every night, where survival meant imagining that one day I’d find her again.
And I did.
I found her.
Only to lose her like this.
I stand, numb, and stare through the doorway into the makeshift operating room. They’re cutting her open, hands moving fast, frantic, desperate.
The beeping is erratic.
The line trembles.
“Come back to me, Nadia,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “You hear me? You don’t leave me like this. Not again.”
When the monitors flatline, I stop breathing.
And when they bring her back with a jolt, I drop to my knees and start to pray.
Not for mercy.
Not for forgiveness.
Just for her.
Because the world can take everything else.
It can take my name, my peace, my goddamn soul.
But if it takes Nadia too - then it’s me they’ll need to bury next.