Chapter 21
My first thought is Carmela. Ice floods my veins because in this life, late-night visitors mean someone I care about is in danger.
Carmela. I'm at the bedroom door in three strides, relief flooding through me when I see her still asleep, untouched by whatever horror waits outside. Only then do I pull up the security feed on my phone, and my blood turns to ice for a different reason.
The gallery assistant lies crumpled against my doorstep, her bright pink hair now dark with spreading stains. Blood pools beneath her head like spilled wine on concrete, and her left arm bends at an angle that makes my surgeon's training scream warnings. She's not moving.
The metallic taste of fear coats my tongue as I'm down eight flights of stairs and through the lobby in under ninety seconds, my bare feet hitting cold concrete.
I drop to my knees beside her, the gritty pavement cutting into my shins.
Emma's blood smells like copper pennies mixed with the sharp scent of adrenaline-sweat.
Pulse, weak but present. Breathing, shallow, labored. Head trauma, possible internal bleeding, definitely a broken arm.
"Emma." I touch her shoulder carefully, checking for spinal damage. "Can you hear me?"
Her eyes flutter open, unfocused and glassy. "Van?" The word comes out slurred, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. "They… they said to tell you… message for the Rosettis."
Guilt tears through me like shrapnel, hot and jagged, reminding me that everyone I touch ends up bleeding.
This is the second time this innocent woman has paid for my connection to this family.
The second time someone who shouldn't be involved got hurt because I exist in their world.
Emma, sweet, laughing Emma from the gallery, bleeding on my doorstep because someone wanted to send Carmela a message through me.
The Torrinos are escalating, and now they're using people who should be safe.
The thought of Carmela crumpled on anyone's doorstep, bleeding because of me, sends violence coursing through my veins like poison. I need her in my arms, need to feel her pulse against my throat, need to remind myself she's safe and no one will ever use her to send me messages.
I try to lift Emma, and that's when the flashback hits.
Sand and screaming. The smell of burning fuel mixing with blood.
The phantom rope burns across my wrists erupt like fresh wounds, agony so real I can smell the hemp fibers cutting through skin.
My hands remember the helplessness more than they remember how to heal, restrained and useless while Valdez convulsed on that blood-soaked table, begging me to save him when I couldn't even save myself.
Emma's face morphs into his. Same slack features, same blood at the corner of the mouth, same trust that I can fix what's broken when I fucking can't even fix myself. The taste of failure and dust coats my tongue like poison.
"Please," Valdez whispers, just like Emma whispered. "Please, Doc, help me."
But I can't move. Can't reach him. Can't save him while the restraints hold me in place.
The phantom rope burns pulse with remembered agony, skin memory of hemp cutting deep while my patients' screams echoed off compound walls.
I can taste the dust and diesel fuel, smell the cordite and fear-sweat that marked every day in hell.
My jaw clamps shut so hard I taste copper.
The city sounds around us start morphing into compound sounds: sirens becoming helicopter rotors, car engines becoming generators, Emma's labored breathing becoming Valdez's death rattle.
I try to reach under her head to check for skull fractures, but panic seizes my chest like a vise. Not again. Not again. I can't watch another person die because I'm frozen, because I'm broken, because when people need me most, I turn into a useless piece of…
"Van." The voice cuts through the compound sounds, sunshine breaking through smoke. "Van, you're not there. You're here."
Carmela's voice grounds me like an anchor dropped in churning water. I didn't hear her arrive, don't know how long I've been locked in the flashback, but she's kneeling beside me now, one hand on my shoulder. The relief of seeing her whole and safe nearly breaks me completely.
"You're not in Afghanistan," she says, her voice steady and sure. "You're not restrained. You're here, in Chicago, and you can save her."
The images recede enough for me to focus on Emma's actual injuries instead of Valdez's ghost. Carmela's belief in me cuts through the trauma like a blade through rope, clean, surgical, freeing.
But then something stronger than trauma roars to life in my chest. Not just love. Possession. She's mine, and she believes I can save people, and that belief makes me capable of things that should be impossible.
"I can save her," I repeat, the words becoming real as I speak them.
"You can save her," Carmela confirms. "You're Van Reyes. You save people. That's who you are."
Her hand slides down my arm to my wrist, right over the rope burn scars, and her touch makes the pain disappear.
Love is stronger than trauma. Love is stronger than imaginary pain. Love is stronger than the part of me that breaks when innocent people bleed.
"Help me get her upstairs," I say, surgeon mode snapping into place. "Call the family. Tell them we need a cleanup crew and someone who can make this disappear from any police reports."
My hands shake as I clear the dining room table, but I force myself to calm. Emma needs a doctor, not a broken veteran having flashbacks. I can fall apart later. Right now, someone's life depends on my competence.
Part of me wants to handle the Torrinos the way I handled threats in Afghanistan. Direct, permanent, final. My hands might sometimes shake, but they remember how to kill just as well as they remember how to heal.
"Carmela, I need you to boil water and find clean towels. Check my bathroom medicine cabinet for suture kits and any surgical tape." My voice comes out clipped, professional. Orders snap from my mouth instantly, muscle memory overriding trauma.
I grab a kitchen knife and sterilize the blade with vodka from my freezer.
Not ideal, but I've operated in worse conditions.
Emma's skull looks intact, but there's a deep gash along her hairline that needs immediate attention.
The bullet, because I can see the entry wound now, grazed her shoulder instead of hitting center mass. Lucky.
"Talk to me, Emma," I command, using medical authority to keep her conscious. "What's your full name?"
"Emma Patterson," she mumbles, eyes tracking better now. "Just Emma Patterson."
Good. No major brain trauma. I thread the improvised suture through the needle, grateful when my hands steady.
This is what I was made for, saving lives when everything goes to hell.
The purpose of surviving three years of PTSD becomes clear: so I could be here, now, when someone needed my particular skills.
Carmela appears at my elbow with supplies, moving like she's done this before. Her presence keeps me grounded, keeps the compound sounds at bay while I work.
Twenty minutes later, Emma's bleeding is controlled and her arm is stabilized. She'll need a real hospital, but she'll live.
The ambulance takes Emma away with a story about a mugging gone wrong. Dante's people work fast and thorough. I watch the red lights disappear into Chicago traffic, leaving me standing on the sidewalk feeling broken and numb.
Emma will live, but she'll carry scars from a war she never signed up for. Another innocent person damaged because I chose to honor a debt to the Rosettis. Another person who paid the price for my choices.
"They're escalating," I tell Carmela, my voice coming out flat and emotionless. "The Torrinos are moving to desperate measures. This wasn't about information or intimidation. This was about sending a message that no one connected to us is safe."
She nods, her face pale but determined. "What does that mean?"
The control I've maintained all night snaps like a broken wire. The adrenaline, the terror of almost losing her, the rage at the Torrinos for using innocent people, it all crashes together in a wave of possessive need that obliterates rational thought.
I back her against the brick wall of the building, my hands braced on either side of her head, caging her in. She gasps, her bright green eyes going wide, but she doesn't pull away. Doesn't tell me to stop. The pulse at her throat speeds up, and I can smell her arousal mixing with the night air.
"It means," I growl against her ear, my voice rough with fury and need, "that I'm done playing defense. It means I'm going to find every single Torrino who thinks they can threaten what belongs to me, and I'm going to remind them what happens when you corner a man with nothing left to lose."
My hands slide down to her waist, gripping her tight enough to leave marks. She melts against me, her breath hitching in that way that means she needs this as much as I do. The violence and desire tangle together in my chest, inseparable and equally consuming.
"When I'm finished with them," I continue, pressing my body against hers so she can feel how hard my cock has gotten from the adrenaline and her closeness, how much the thought of losing her drives me to the edge of madness, "they'll understand that touching anyone connected to Carmela Rosetti means signing their own death warrant. "
Her hands fist in my shirt, pulling me closer instead of pushing me away. "Van…"
"No." I cup her face in my hands, forcing her to meet my eyes. "You need to understand something, princess. I'm not the man I was when we met. You've turned me into something possessive and dangerous and completely fucking devoted to keeping you safe. The Torrinos think they're escalating?"
I lean down until my mouth is a breath away from hers, until she can taste my words. "They have no idea what escalation looks like when they threaten the woman I love. But they're about to learn."
The promise hangs between us, dark and absolute. When I claim her mouth in a kiss that tastes like violence and devotion, she kisses me back with matching intensity, burning away everything except the certainty that she's mine to protect.
And God help anyone who tries to take her from me.