Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Valentina
The room is dim when they finally let me in.
Not dark, but softened, the harsh hospital lights turned down low so that the machines don’t glare and the monitors cast only a faint blue glow across the white sheets.
The steady beep of Dante’s heart rate fills the space like a metronome, slow and deliberate, proof that the bullet didn’t win.
I stand just inside the door for a long moment, hands formed into fists at my sides, letting the antiseptic chill settle over my skin, letting my pulse match the rhythm of the machine before I trust my legs to carry me forward.
He lies against the pillows, one shoulder and half his chest wrapped in thick white bandages that already show the faintest shadow of seepage at the edges. Tubing snakes from the IV pole into the back of his hand, and a clear oxygen line rests beneath his nose.
The gray pallor beneath his olive skin makes my stomach knot all over again.
This is Dante Moretti—my husband, the man who fills every room with command and heat—and right now he looks impossibly still. Vulnerable in a way that twists something deep inside me I didn’t know I possessed.
I cross the cool tile floor.
The chair beside his bed is unyielding, but I sink into it anyway, elbows on my knees, hands clasped so tightly my knuckles ache.
For a long time I simply watch the rise and fall of his chest, each breath a small victory I count like rosary beads.
I close my eyes and the scent of gunpowder and copper floods back so strongly I have to swallow hard.
Then, deliberately, I bring myself back to the present. Dante needs me here, with him. By his side.
For a second, I let my fingers hover above his hand. Then I force myself to allow them to settle.
His skin is warm, thank God, warmer than I expected after the blood loss and the surgery. With relief, I exhale.
Then I slide my palm beneath his, lacing our fingers together carefully so I don’t tug the IV line. The simple contact sends a tremor through me, relief so sharp it borders on pain.
“You scared me,” I whisper, the words slipping out before I can stop them. They feel too small for everything that happened tonight, too fragile for the weight of what I almost lost.
His fingers twitch against mine.
The movement is faint, barely there, but it jolts straight through my chest. I tighten my hold instinctively, anchoring him.
His brow furrows, a tiny crease forming between his dark brows as he fights whatever fog the anesthesia left behind.
Long moments later, his eyelashes lift, slow and heavy, and those rich brown eyes find me. Recognition sharpens them instantly, the haze clearing like mist burned off by morning sun.
“Valentina.” His voice is rough, scraped raw from the tube they removed only an hour ago, but it is still his—low, steady, threaded with that quiet authority that has always made my pulse jump.
The sound of my name on his lips breaks something open inside me.
“You stayed.”
As if I’d do anything else.
Tears I didn’t realize I was holding back spill over, hot and silent, tracking down my cheeks. I don’t wipe them away. “I thought I lost you,” I manage, my throat closing around every syllable.
His mouth curves, the faintest ghost of that dangerous half-smile he gives me when he knows he’s won. “Not a chance.”
The words cost him; I see the tiny flinch as the movement pulls at his stitches, but he doesn’t look away from me.
I shake my head, the motion making more tears fall onto our joined hands. “You idiot.” The accusation comes out soft, almost tender. “You threw yourself over me.”
His fingers tighten around mine with surprising strength for a man who just came out of surgery. “Of course I did.” He draws a careful breath, the machine beside him registering the small effort. “Better that than me trying to live without you.”
The confession lands between us like a vow spoken in church.
“Oh, Dante.” I press my forehead to the back of his hand, feeling the faint pulse beneath his skin, letting the warmth of him seep into me.
“I love you, Valentina Moretti.”
The room fades—the beeps, the sterile smell, the distant murmur of nurses in the hallway—until there are only the two of us. The two of us and the truth I have come to accept.
“And I love you.” The words leave me on a shaky exhale, but once they are out they feel right, inevitable.
“God help me, Dante, I love you. Not because you forced the marriage, not because of the alliance or the ring or any of the reasons we started this. I love you because you are stubborn and protective and you make me feel alive even when the world is trying to kill us both.”
Silence stretches for a heartbeat, two. Then his thumb strokes the inside of my wrist, slow and deliberate, the same way he has touched me a hundred times in the dark.
“I won’t live without, wife.” His voice is quieter now, but every word is carved from stone.
“I have loved you for longer than I knew how to admit. Even when I was dragging you out of that Dallas bar, even when I was telling myself it was only strategy, something in me already knew you were mine. Not just my wife. My heart. My future.”
Fresh tears slip free, but these are different—lighter, mixed with a joy so bright it almost hurts.
I lift my head and meet his gaze, letting him see everything I feel.
Relief crashes through me again, wave after wave, until my shoulders tremble with it. He is here. He is breathing. He is looking at me like I am the only thing in his universe.
He turns his head just enough to press a kiss to my knuckles, the gesture so gentle it undoes me all over again. “The doctors told me you were calm and competent. I’m proud of you, my wife. So damn proud.”
The praise settles warm in my chest, but it also stirs the darker thoughts that have been circling since the doctor left the waiting room.
I glance toward the window where the Austin skyline glimmers against the night, distant and indifferent.
We’re at war now. And no doubt my family will be joining in.
“Things won’t be easy.”
They are already hard.
His fingers squeeze mine again, steadier this time. “But we will face the future together. You and me.”
I nod, but my mind drifts to Gina—Dante’s mother—sitting so composed in the waiting room earlier, her spine straight even though her son was fighting for his life.
I remember the quiet strength in her eyes when she cupped my cheek and told me Dante knew how much I cared.
How many nights has she sat in rooms just like this one, waiting, praying, holding the family together while the men bled?
And how can I be that strong?
The thought of carrying Dante’s child—our child—sends a flutter of fear through me. Will I be able to smile through the terror, to raise a baby who might one day wear the same bruises and scars?
The question lingers, but I don’t voice it.
Tonight is for healing, not borrowing tomorrow’s worries. This is the life I live, with the man whose side I will stand at.
I lean closer, resting my cheek against his uninjured shoulder, breathing in the faint trace of his cologne beneath the hospital soap.
He shifts his arm, careful and slow, until his hand rests at the small of my back.
The touch is possessive even now, even weakened, and it grounds me.
“I was so scared,” I admit against his skin. “When the shots started and you covered me…” When I felt his blood… When I thought that was it. “I was afraid I’d never get to tell you how much you mean to me.”
“You’re telling me now.” His voice rumbles beneath my ear, warm and sure. “And you stayed. You chose us.”
“I choose you, Dante.”
We stay like that for long minutes, the machines keeping time, the city lights flickering beyond the glass.
Tears come again, but this time, they are from relief and joy and the quiet, overwhelming knowledge that we love each other.
Eventually his breathing evens into something deeper as the pain medication pulls him under again.
I don’t move. Instead I stay, listening to the steady beep of his heart.
Outside, war has started.
Enemies are closing in.
The future will demand strength from us.
But right now, in this dim room with its soft lights and quiet machines, none of that matters.
He loves me. I love him. And whatever comes next—children, bullets, alliances—we will face it the way we were always meant to.
Together.