Chapter 42
Chapter Forty Two
Elena
Three shots crack the dark—one, two, three—and a crash answers them, wood splintering, something heavy toppling, the floor shuddering under my cheek.
I squeeze my eyes shut and wait for pain that doesn’t come.
Am I hit? Did he—?
“Elena!” Luca’s voice cuts through the ringing in my ears, rough with fear. “Elena, look at me.”
I open my eyes.
It’s still dark, but I know him by the sound of his breath, the shape of him kneeling in front of me, the heat of his hands when they cup my face.
His thumb finds my cheekbone, careful, and he eases the weight of the gun out of my grip.
I hadn’t realized I was still holding it so hard my fingers ache.
“It’s all right,” he murmurs, voice calm and gentle. “It’s all right now. I’ve got you.”
I drag air into my lungs and risk a glance past his shoulder.
Roberto is a darker shadow, standing over another one on the floor. He kicks Gabe’s gun away with the side of his shoe, crouches, and presses two fingers to the side of his neck.
“Is he—?” My voice is threadbare.
“Yes,” Roberto says, clipped, confirming what my body already knows from the way the room suddenly feels empty of threat.
“Don’t,” Luca says gently, shifting so his shoulder blocks my line of sight. “Don’t look.”
“I have to.” My mouth is dry. “I need to make sure.”
He hesitates, then bends and kisses my hair, a fleeting press. “He’s done,” he says. “You hear me? Done. Are you hurt?” His hands move, barely touching—temples, hairline, throat, down my arms, stopping at my wrists. “Elena, talk to me—are you hit?”
“I don’t think so.” The relief makes me lightheaded. “I’m alive.”
He tilts his head, listening past me, then snaps, “Bring the lights up—now,” into his comm.
“Working,” someone answers, faint through the static.
Luca’s gaze darts to my face, reads whatever is there, and he tucks me closer, angling us away. “Can you sit up?” he asks.
“I can try.” I push with my palms to find the edge of the mattress and swing a leg—and the world white-outs.
“Ah—” The sound rips out of me. “My ankle—”
“Stop, stop.” Luca’s hands are on me again, anchoring. “Where?”
“Right.” I breathe through my teeth. “I twisted it—no, more than twisted.” The room tilts a little, and I press a hand to my belly like I can steady both of us. “I had to—I had to get free.”
“I know,” he says, and pride threads the words even now. “Don’t move.”
To Roberto, without looking away from me: “Make sure we’re clear, then get back up here with a medical kit. Now.”
“On it.” Roberto’s footfalls are swift as he heads to the doorway, gun still in hand, eyes sweeping, then gone.
Luca lowers me back to the rug as if I’m glass. “Breathe with me,” he says, and does it first—slow in, slower out. I follow, matching his pace, until the edges stop buzzing.
“The baby?” he asks, voice careful. “Any pain… there?”
I shake my head and swallow. “No pain, just my ankle.” I press lightly above the curve. “But what— Luca, what if the baby—,” My voice cracks.
“The doctor will be here as soon as we’re clear. Everything will be all right. I promise,” he murmurs and presses a kiss to my hair. “I’m going to look at your ankle, all right?”
A beat later, the generator coughs to life somewhere deep in the house.
The bedside lamp, no longer on the nightstand, flickers weakly.
Despite the dim light, the scene is clear: the overturned cabinet by the door, the shredded rug, the scatter of drawer contents like confetti, the smear of red on the floor, the shape by the foot of the bed that I don’t look at again.
“Shh, don’t look, Panini,” he says gently as he puts one arm under my legs and the other behind my back, lifting me easily. “We’re going into the sitting room, okay?”
As he eases me down onto the couch, Caterina comes barreling in. “Uncle Roberto said to bring a med-kit. What happened?” She catches sight of me. “Oh, my God, Elena. What the hell happened?”
She looks around and sees the same lump at the foot of the bed and goes pale.
“Close the door, sweetheart,” Luca says.
He shifts down, palms warm and sure as he lifts the hem of my robe just enough to see. The skin around my right ankle is already swelling, the bone beneath is angry and shapeless.
He curses ripely. “If that son of a bitch wasn’t dead already…” He stops and takes a few deep breaths, trying to battle his rising anger.
“I’m okay, Luca. I promise,” I say and pull him close, needing his touch more than ever.
He nods once, jaw tight, and forces his focus back to me. His fingers are gentle as he presses along the bone, mapping my pain with feather-light touches. “Tell me where it’s worst.”
“My ankle,” I manage. “My face. He hit me.”
“I’m going to kill everyone he’s ever met,” Luca vows, but his touch stays light. The calm of his actions is at war with the fury in his eyes.
He glances up my shin and winces at the raw stripes where the rug took skin. “Burns,” he murmurs, more to himself. “We’ll clean and dress them.
He sets my ankle down on a throw pillow and reaches for my hands. He flips them over, palm to palm, scraped heels, a crescent of broken skin where a ring cut me, the faint tremor I can’t stop. He kisses the inside of one wrist before he lets go, fast, like he can’t help it.
“Cheek,” Caterina says softly, hovering near the door, face white. “She’s swelling.”
“I’m afraid we need the doctor for this one,” he says. “Probably need to run some tests.”
He lifts my chin with two knuckles. Even that light contact stings. I can feel the puff around my cheekbone blooming by the second. “Any double vision?” he asks, eyes flicking back and forth. “Headache? Nausea?”
“Headache, yes. Not the rest.” My voice is steadier now; the breathing helped.
He touches the corner of my mouth where it split. “We’ll ice it.” He swallows something raw and looks at my throat and collarbones. Fingerprints are waking up there, ugly and purple. His breath leaves him in a low curse he doesn’t quite let out.
“I’m okay,” I say again, useless as a spell, but I need to say it. “I’m okay.”
“I left for two minutes. Two fucking minutes,” he says. “What was I thinking?”
He moves to stand, but I don’t want him to. I wrap my fingers around his wrist.
“You didn’t know,” I say.
“I should’ve,” he says harshly. “Because of me, you…”
He runs his fingers gently over my cheek.
“No, because of Gabe Russo and that bastard Akers. This is not your fault, Luca,” I say firmly. “I know it won’t stop you from blaming yourself, but you need to know that I don’t blame you for any of this.”
He looks me in the eye for a moment, then turns away to continue inspecting my skin.
Tell me,” he says. It’s not a demand; it’s a plea. “From the beginning.”
I close my eyes to see it properly. “I don’t know what woke me up.
It was too quiet, I guess. I tried to turn on the lamp, then I heard shouting somewhere.
I got up to get my robe and find you. Then the door…
opened. So quietly I almost thought I imagined it.
” I pull a breath. “I called for you. No answer.”
His throat works. He nods for me to go on.
“I went for the closet. I thought— If I could buy time, wedge the door.” I swallow and shake my head. “He moves fast for such a big fucker. I saw his scar, and I remembered the picture you showed me earlier.”
“Gabe,” Luca says, flat with hatred.
“Gabe,” I confirm. “He smelled like… cheap cologne and whiskey. Kept calling me ‘counselor’. I threw a hanger. Hit him. Slammed the door on his arm.”
Caterina makes a low sound. Luca’s hand tightens around my knee, just once, before he remembers and eases off.
Then I tell him the rest. We struggled. I went for the nightstand; he pulled me back, pinned me, hit me.
I touch my cheek; the heat there is very much alive. “I bit him. He choked me. I couldn’t get away. I was scared he was going to hurt the baby. He laughed.” The memory makes me shake. “He laughed and called me ‘Mama Bear’.”
Luca’s face goes nearly expressionless, a blank I’ve learned to recognize. The kind he uses when he’s damming off rage he can’t afford to let loose. His nostrils flare, slow. “Keep going.”
“I slammed my head into his face.” I flatten my palm to my stomach. “He loosened just enough. I slid under the bed, but he was fast. He grabbed my ankle. I twisted.” The memory of that snap ripples through me, and I swallow down a wave of nausea.
“You broke your ankle yourself?” Roberto asks.
I startle, not realizing he walked back into the room. Vito is here too, leaning against the doorjamb.
I nod numbly. “I needed him to let go. I had to get away.” The memory of the struggle to get to the other side pulls me away from the present.
“What happened then?” Luca murmurs, rubbing a thumb over my hand.
“He let go. I rolled to the other side, pulled the drawer open, and got the gun.” I lift my shoulders and drop them. “He had his out too.”
I stop.
“And then?” Luca prompts, impossibly gentle.
“Then the door crashed and… shots. I shut my eyes.” I open them to his. “I thought he killed me.”
He bends, puts his forehead to mine for a second. “You’re safe now,” he says into my skin. He lifts, breathes out once, then reaches for the towel Caterina has wrapped around ice.
“Here,” she says, handing it over, keeping her eyes on me. Her hands shake. She covers it by fussing with the med-kit zipper. “I’m going to see how long until the doctor gets here.” But she turns to the bathroom door, and a second later, the tap turns on.
Luca cups the iced towel to my cheek with exquisite care. The cold burns first, then soothes.
“Check on your sister,” he tells Vito. Then to Roberto: “Is it clear?”
“Everything’s clear. The property… and your room,” he says.
Luca nods. “Good. Bring the doctor in as soon as she gets here.”
“Understood,” Roberto says and walks out.
Alone again, he sets the ice down and cups my face with both hands, careful not to press. “You did so well, Elena,” he says, voice roughened with the weight of it.
“I was scared,” I whisper.
“Good,” he says, and when I blink, he adds, “Fear that focuses you keeps you alive.”
A shaky breath leaves me. “I thought of you,” I admit. “Of you coming back and finding—,” I can’t finish it.
He stops me with a thumb against the corner of my mouth. “No,” he says, soft iron. “Don’t say things like that.”
Luca stays crouched in front of me, the iced towel cooling one palm and his other hand braced on the cushion beside my hip like he needs something solid to keep him from coming apart.
“I promised you you’d be safe,” he says, voice low, wrecked. “And you weren’t. That’s on me.”
“Luca—”
“No.” He shakes his head once, sharply. “Listen to me. I brought this to your door. My name did. My enemies did. You were sleeping in my bed, and a man walked into our room and put his hands on you. You had to fight him, stop him from hurting our child because I wasn’t there.
” His eyes flick to my cheek, my ankle, my throat, and something murderous flares and banks again.
“I told you I would keep you safe. I failed.”
The towel wicks meltwater down my temple. I touch his wrist with my free hand. “You didn’t fail.”
He huffs a humorless breath. “Lights cut. Gate compromised. Man in your room. That feels like failure in every sense of the word.”
I tighten my fingers. “You didn’t know,” I say, slowly and deliberately, so it will get through.
“You put men on every door. You locked mine yourself. You were downstairs, stopping the rest of them from getting in. And when you realized—” My throat squeezes; I push through it.
“You broke a fucking door to get to me.”
His jaw flexes like he’s chewing glass. “After you’d already had to fight. After you…” He shakes his head. “After you had to kill a man.”
“I’m still here,” I say. “We’re still here.”
His eyes close for a beat and open brighter. The apology turns rawer, smaller. “Earlier tonight, you told me that you didn’t want this life to change you. Make you someone you’re not. And a few hours later, you had to kill a man, Elena.”
His hand tightens around the towel. “It’s what I feared most,” he says. “This thing touching you, making you do something that will sit inside you. I dragged you into a war.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I say, shocking him. “This isn’t some new version of me. That monster came after me. He came after our baby. It was him or us. I chose us. I chose to stay alive. I chose to keep our baby alive.
“That’s not being changed, Luca. That’s being a mother. That’s being human. That’s being me.”
He swallows, throat working. “It will still mark you.”
“Of course it will.” I hold his eyes. “But marks aren’t the same as rot.
I’m not going to like what I had to do. I’m not going to celebrate it.
I’m going to have nightmares, and I’m going to remember the smell of his breath, and I’m going to hate that forever.
But I know why I did it, and I know I did the only thing I could do.
” I tap my sternum with the hand that isn’t gripping his wrist. “That matters.”
The line of his shoulders loosens a fraction. He drags a palm over his mouth.
“I know why I did it,” I repeat. “And I would do it again if I had to.”
He closes his eyes briefly, then opens them. “Then I’ll carry the rest,” he says.
“I’m not porcelain,” I say, softly.
“No,” he agrees. “You’re steel. But I’m going to take on the extra weight from the woman I love when she’s already carrying enough.” He leans in, touches his forehead to mine, breathes with me once. “Therapy. Whatever it is you need. We do that on my dime or yours, I don’t care. We do it.”
A laugh breaks out of me, small and wrecked. “On your dime,” I say. “I’m temporarily unemployed.”
His mouth twitches. “Done.”
“But we still do it my way with Akers,” I tell him. “We tip it in. We make them look.”
He curses. “Elena, no. Not after this.”
“Yes,” I say firmly. “Even more after this. We link him with the Russos. We don’t just cast doubt. We take everything he cares about. We ruin him. Completely.”
Luca’s eyes darken, a bit of heat jumping in them. “You being vindictive is really doing it for me,” he whispers roughly.
“Perv,” I whisper back.
“For you? Always,” he says a moment before knuckles rap softly at the door. He doesn’t look away from me. “Come,” he calls, and only then turns his head.
Dr. Bianchi slips in with Roberto behind her, a bag in one hand, hair pulled back, eyes already cataloging. Luca eases to the side but keeps one hand on me. As the doctor kneels by my ankle and murmurs her first questions, Luca looks back at me once more.
“I’m sorry,” he says, quiet and clear, as if he needs the words to be recorded by the walls.
“I heard you,” I say. “And I believe you. Now, you have to believe you.”
He nods and tightens his fingers on mine. He does not let go of my hand.