Chapter Thirty
Mario
I keep my arm around Victoria as I guide her toward the street.
Though I want to whisk her away. We can't move too fast, or we'll draw attention
My hand is firm at her waist, her body tucked into my side, my head bent slightly toward hers as if we are simply a couple leaving the park together. Nothing worth looking at. Nothing anyone needs to remember.
She is trembling.
Not visibly to anyone passing by, perhaps. But I can feel the fine, sharp tremors moving through her body as the first hard wave of shock begins to take her.
Her fingers are curled in the sleeve of my jacket, holding tightly since she realized it was me.
“Mario,” she whispers.
“Not here.”
Her head turns slightly, like she wants to look back.
My hand tightens once at her waist. “Eyes forward, cara.”
She obeys.
Behind us, Lorenzo will handle the rest, I have no doubt of it.
He knows what to do, who to move, who to silence, who to pay, who to frighten, and when to disappear before a scene officially becomes a scene.
I do not look back.
There is no need.
My focus is Victoria.
Only Victoria.
Getting her away from this path, this park, this open air where she was almost taken from me in front of strangers who wouldn't have given her a second thought.
My jaw locks.
We should have reached her sooner.
The thought cuts deep and useless in hindsight.
My intel told me that she was going to the park, but not that she was meeting someone, but we knew the moment we saw the woman that there was something wrong with the situation.
But once they had their hands on her, once the gun was against her body, we could not move without risking her. We had to wait, had to let them walk her away.
The plan was to take them in the parking lot, where we could control both the situation and anyone with eyes on it.
Then Victoria flipped the script on us.
She fought.
Dio santo.
She fought.
Terror in her body, no training enough for what faced her, and still she made a decision. She bought us the precious seconds we needed.
Seconds.
That is how close it was.
That is how near I came to watching a bullet tear into her back before we were able to get an angle on the man and woman and take them out.
I push the thought away because I cannot afford to have it here.
Later.
Later, I will let myself feel all of it.
Now, I get her into the car.
The black SUV waits at the curb, engine running, rear door opening before we reach it. Rocco is at the wheel. Another of my people stands near the passenger side, scanning the street.
I get her in first.
My hand stays at her back until she is seated. She moves like her limbs are not fully cooperating, stiff and shaky in a way I hate.
I slide in beside her, and the door shuts.
The SUV pulls away from the curb before I finish drawing her into me.
For two seconds, Victoria sits upright, rigid as glass, staring straight ahead.
Then she folds into me.
She simply turns into me, one hand clutching my shirt, her forehead pressing hard against my chest like she’s forcing herself to hold it together.
I wrap my arm around her shoulders and pull her closer.
“I have you,” I say against her hair. “You’re safe.”
She shakes her head.
“I have you,” I repeat.
Her breath hitches.
Then she whispers, “They knew.”
“Who?”
“How did they know?” Her hand presses suddenly to her stomach, and her whole body goes rigid again.
The world narrows to that movement.
My hand stills on her back.
There are many things that sentence can mean.
This is not the time.
Oh, the time is coming. That, she can be sure of. But this is not it.
“Look at me,” I say.
She does not.
I take her chin carefully and tilt her face up.
Her skin is cold. Her eyes are wet, terrified, unfocused in a way that makes me want to tear the city apart piece by piece until someone gives me some damn answers on how this happened.
A tear slips down her cheek.
She presses her lips together, shaking harder now.
“You are safe,” I say, my voice rougher than I want it.
She closes her eyes.
I pull her back against me, one hand cupping the back of her head, the other locked around her body as if I can keep the shock from taking her if I hold her tightly enough.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
The words are so quiet I almost miss them.
My anger shifts direction with brutal force.
Not at her.
Never at her.
“Do not apologize.”
“I should have—”
“Shh.”
She goes silent.
I soften my hold.
It’s not because I am calm, but because she needs me to be calm.
Right now, I need to get her home.
Home, security, doctor, then answers.
Then blood.
The doctor is with Victoria behind a closed door, and I am trying to hold on to my patience.
I am not an impatient man.
Impatience gets people killed. Impatience makes men careless. It makes them speak when they should listen, move when they should wait, strike before they are sure of the real threat.
I built too much of my life on restraint to throw it away today.
No matter how much I want to break down the door because the doctor is taking too damn long.
Still, my patience is worn thin enough to slice.
I stand in the sitting room outside a guest suite with one hand in my pocket and the other curled at my side, listening to the low murmur of voices I cannot make out.
The doctor is trusted. Private and discreet. A man who understands that some calls do not go through offices, hospitals, receptionists, or records.
Victoria is in good hands.
It should be enough.
But I keep seeing her on that path. Pale and terrified, gun pressed to her side.
Thinking she was alone. Not knowing she wasn’t and hasn’t been since my first night with her.
Every time I think of what might have happened if I had not put people on her, the violence threatens to rear up and choke me.
If she had gone to that park alone. If she had met that woman with no one watching. If Edoardo and Dante were not following from a distance.
If they had not called me the moment Victoria’s routine changed.
The thought is useless now. It did not happen. She is here. She is alive. She is being examined by a doctor in a room in my house, with my people on every entrance and my family below taking apart every piece of the failed abduction.
Because I did have people watching her. Today, I had Edoardo and Dante tailing her.
I’m thankful for that one, though Dante had been irritated by the assignment because Victoria had given no sign of leaving her apartment all morning.
They took position anyway, watched, waited.
Then she left in the middle of the day with no warning and not to the office.
No, she was headed to the park.
It was odd enough that they thought to contact me.
For four days, she had not come to work.
Four days of work sent remotely, messages answered with enough professionalism to build a wall, and no real explanation of the illness that had taken her out of my building, pale and shaken.
Four days of Lorenzo telling me to let her come to me.
Then, suddenly, she’s going to the park in the middle of the work day on a Thursday after days of silence and sickness and fear she refuses to explain.
Letting her come to me was no longer an option. I had reached the end of my line.
Despite Lorenzo’s advice, I left my office with the intention of demanding answers.
Lorenzo followed me because he knew from the look on my face that talking would waste time. He also knew, because he is my brother, that if I reached Victoria before I had myself in hand, I might do damage I could not repair.
I had not come to the park to watch her but to confront her.
To stand in front of her, look her in the eyes, and tell her the silence between us was over. I was done with her avoidance and done with her sending work through associates while pretending whatever was happening to her did not involve me.
I was going to bring her home.
And thank God I was there.
I trust my nephews. I trust my people. I trust Rocco, and I trust the security I put around her.
They would have handled it. I have no doubt of that.
If I had been in my office, waiting for updates, they would have done what needed to be done. They would have done everything exactly the same. They would have brought her back to me.
But I would not have seen it with my own eyes.
I would not have been there to feel her alive under my hands.
Being told and having to wait is not the same as knowing with my eyes and hands.
The door opens.
I turn before Dr. Santoro has taken his first full step into the sitting room.
He closes the door behind him with care, then faces me.
“Well?” I ask.
He has known me too long to waste time.
“She is in good health,” he says. “Her blood pressure is a little elevated, which is expected after what happened, but nothing that concerns me at the moment. No sign of injury beyond minor bruising on her arm where she was grabbed.”
My fingers curl.
The doctor sees it and continues before I can speak.
“She is unharmed, Mario.”
Unharmed.
I take the word in and do not let myself react to it.
“She is shaken,” he says. “Very much so. She needs rest. Quiet. Give her fluids and make her eat. She does not need to be questioned tonight.”
My eyes narrow.
He simply holds my gaze and doesn't turn away.
“I mean it,” he says. “Tomorrow is soon enough.”
As if I intended to interrogate her.
But I simply ask, “And?”
Dr. Santoro’s expression changes.
It’s only for a brief moment, but I have spent my life watching the microexpressions of others.
It was enough. My chest tightens.
“And what?” he says.
I take one step toward him. “Do not do that.”
He sighs, but there is no fear in it. Only patience.
I have had enough of patience today.
“She is my patient,” he says in response.
“She is in my house.”
“Those things do not conflict.”
My jaw locks.
For a second, the old rules rise in me. The ones that say every answer belongs to me because I have the power to demand it. The ones that do not care about a closed door, a patient, a woman’s privacy, or the fact that the woman in that room has already had too much taken from her today.
But those are my father's rules, and they have no place here today.
It costs me, but I force it down.
The doctor watches me do it.
Then he smiles softly.
“You should go in,” he says. “Talk to her.”