Chapter 30 Massimo
MASSIMO
After Katarina passed out, I lifted her carefully into my arms, pocketed my gun, and made my way from the church.
I called in some favors to have the place cleaned.
The fucking detective had taken so long to process my paperwork and let me go, that by the time I’d charged my phone enough to check the tracking app, Katarina had already been on her way to the church.
Even a few minutes later, and that motherfucker would have married her.
What the fuck was going on? I’d grabbed his wallet before carrying my unconscious bride from the church, and now, in a cab, I went through it.
He was her so-called fiancé. He had been mentioned in her admission paperwork, though I hadn’t thought of his name again until today.
So, he was Ivan Markovic. Well, it had been him. Now, he was just a body on the floor, soon to be chopped up and disappeared by professionals. I took a picture of his ID and sent it to Giada to look him up properly.
Then I turned to feast my eyes on Katarina. She slept sweetly against me. Fuck, I’d missed her. Even in the short time we’d been apart, I’d really fucking missed her.
She didn’t remember me. Someone had drugged her again.
I’d suspected it when I’d seen her outside Hallow Hall during the fire.
There’d been a far-off look in her eyes that hadn’t been right.
One thing about Katarina was how sharp she was.
She didn’t just see everything, she saw beyond what others wanted to show. She saw inside.
The woman in the church wearing a bloodstained wedding dress hadn’t seen anything.
She hadn’t been herself, and it hurt somewhere in my chest to think she was confused again.
Alone, locked inside her own mind, when I’d told her she wasn’t alone anymore.
Whoever had drugged her was trying to make a liar out of me. I wouldn’t stand for it.
As soon as we got home, it would be time to figure out why Blackwood and the holy trinity of fuckwits at Hallow Hall had kept her locked up for so long without killing her, or, given their MO, knocking her up and selling pieces of her off after she’d delivered.
Nothing about Katarina Dmitrova’s story made sense.
We took a cab across town. I held her in my arms. The fucking bullet that the fucker in the church had gotten lucky with had landed somewhere in my thigh.
A non-vital place, clearly, since I wasn’t losing much blood, so I ignored it.
It had started to snow again. The stately streets of Torino shone with orange lamplight against the murky sky and falling snow.
We stopped at a bustling ER, and I sent a message to an old Army buddy.
Half an hour later, I was carrying her into an exam room, and Filippa, one of my squad mates a lifetime ago, closed the door and eyed me.
“You don’t call or write, and then text me from the parking lot that you need help with some woman who’s injured? Mass, you know there are rules in a hospital, right?”
“And they don’t apply to this patient,” I snapped at her, my patience with the bullshit of the last few days growing dangerously thin. “She gets what she needs, when she needs it, or I’ll go out to your waiting room and kill anyone who would be before her in your triage system, understand?”
Filippa sighed. “All too well. Why do you think I smuggled you in here? Put her on the bed.”
I carefully lowered Katarina to the paper-covered bed in the corner, sliding my hand into hers to keep some form of contact between us during her exam.
Filippa eyed that touch curiously but wisely didn’t comment while she took Katarina’s vitals.
“She’s out of it on something. Something strong. A sedative?”
“She was standing up and walking around earlier,” I supplied in case it helped.
“Maybe she has a bit of resistance to it, but it got to her in the end. What else does she take, any regular medications?”
“She was taking carbidopa and levodopa for a while.”
Filippa frowned. “Does she have a Parkinson’s diagnosis?”
I shook my head.
Filippa tutted. “Then why in the hell would she be taking that combination? It can literally cause psychosis in patients who don’t require it. Confusion and memory issues, lost time, nightmares, paranoia, voices in your head, you name it, it can—”
“Voices in your head?” I interrupted.
Fillippa nodded. “It can cause a psychotic break that some never recover from. Trigger psychosis-like symptoms; it’s a massive risk. Why was she taking it? Who would even prescribe that?”
“I don’t know, okay? I don’t know why, but I’m going to find out. She was off it for a while, and she seemed fine,” I said. Except for the voices.
Filippa went to a drawer and pulled out a syringe and a tourniquet.
“I’ll take a full panel and get her blood tested for everything I can think of. It’s a starting point. Other than that, I’m going to give her a drip of fluids and saline. She’s dehydrated and might not have eaten in a few days.”
My gut clenched at the words. That fucker in the church had starved my angel.
He had kept water and food from her, imprisoned her somewhere, when she’d already suffered that exact fate for three fucking years.
Black anger billowed from my heart, the same cold, black hue as the smoke that had risen from the top of Hallow Hall as it burned, taking all the evidence of Pavol’s, Vargas’s, and Benedict’s crimes with it.
“What can I do?” I asked hoarsely.
Filippa eyed me cautiously. I stood over them, fists clenched hard enough to draw blood.
“Go and calm down somewhere. Get a cup of coffee or some ice water. Try the matcha tea from the cafeteria. We’ll be here awhile,” Filippa snapped.
I turned away, my frustration not allowing me to make a civil comeback. I took two steps when she lashed out.
“Stop right there! You come to a goddamn hospital with that much bleeding . . . from what? A stab wound? And don’t think to get yourself patched up?”
I stared down at my thigh. Oh, right.
“It isn’t a stab wound,” I told her coolly. “It’s a gunshot.”
My blood had been pooling around my boot, apparently, while I was standing over Katarina.
“Mass.” Filippa seemed to be at the end of her tether with me.
She stopped right in front of me and gave me the once-over.
“What are you doing? Getting shot? Running around the city with unconscious women? I’m not even going to ask about the robes or the fire damage .
. . Are you still doing all of this? Do you still not care if you live or die? ”
Her voice broke on the last word. She was emotional like that; she always had been. A bleeding heart wrapped in a cool and analytical doctor’s body.
“I do care. I’m here because I care about something finally,” I said quietly.
Filippa sighed. “Revenge?”
I shook my head. “Her. That woman there. I care about her—enough to . . .” I was unsure where I was going with that sentence.
It was a fundamental shift, soul deep. For so long, I’d lived with emptiness inside, knowing the end was only ever one bad call away.
Most of the time, I welcomed the knowledge that life was fleeting and fickle and at any moment it could all be over.
Until now.
I care about her enough to live.
“Who is she?” Filippa asked, curious.
“She’s my responsibility,” I heard myself say. “Mine to protect. Mine to save. Mine to heal. Mine.”
Filippa raised an eyebrow at Katarina’s sleeping face. “She must be someone special to have broken through your bullshit and made you see sense.”
“Which is?”
“Life is for the living. Now, I’m going to check that bullet hole, so I can sleep tonight knowing I did everything I could to actually give you a chance to live a real life for once . . . with the woman you love.”
Love?
Filippa pushed me into the chair beside Katarina’s bed and bustled around, setting up supplies for cleaning the gunshot wound. I studied my sleeping angel’s face.
Love. So, that’s what this terrible, precious thing was in my chest, the hope and fear all rolled into one. Love.
“Right, no bitching, or it’ll take longer,” Filippa said, wheeling over a tray and her chair. She tapped the bed beside Katarina’s hand. “Foot up here.”
I followed her commands. She pushed my robes out the way.
“Okay, in the interest of passing the time, I want to know. Why the fuck are you dressed like the priest from hell?”
By the time I left Filippa’s hospital, it was late afternoon.
The snow had stopped again, but there were only a few souls braving the white streets.
It was freezing. I’d borrowed blankets from the hospital to wrap around Katarina, but she couldn’t stay outside for long.
She needed a warm bed, hot food, and a fire burning in the hearth.
But first, I needed something. Something simple. Archaic. Something selfish.
But then, I didn’t know any other way to be.
Our destination glowed orange on the white wall of buildings, all caked with snow. The lights burned through the small windows of the church, inviting passersby who were cold to come inside.
Inside, I quickly made my way down the aisle, the heavy scent of incense filling my senses. It was quiet within, with only a few people drifting around the hallways. I knocked on the closed door of the chapel before a familiar voice rang out.
“Come.”
I pushed the door open and turned sideways to carry Katarina in without banging her head. The tiny chapel was dimly lit. Vittorio, dressed in very plain robes, straightened from his prayer position as I entered.
He was only slightly older than me, but there was a calm peace about him that I’d never achieve.
“Massi?” he said, looking over me and my armful of woman. “Please tell me she isn’t unconscious.”
“She’s had a long day. They drugged her. Be mad at them, not me, Father.”
I carried her down the short aisle to the altar.
Vittorio watched me with a pained expression.
“You left that out when you asked me to marry you both.” He shook his head. “I cannot marry her while she’s unconscious. She needs to wake up to agree.”
“She agrees, she told me to tell you before she passed out.” I sighed and tossed Vittorio a tired grin before my attempt at humor faded away.
“Honestly, she’s drugged, she won’t agree to anything until it wears off.
She won’t know me . . . but we can’t waste time.
She needs to marry me so I can keep her safe. ”
“And you need to marry her why?” Vittorio asked.
“To keep her. I need to marry her just to keep her. Vittorio, she’s mine, and I’m hers. I knew it the moment I met her. End of story. Don’t make me hold a gun to your head.”
Vittorio blinked at me, surprised by my vehemence.
Yes, I was well aware of how much of a hypocrite I was, having just shot two men an hour ago for attempting to do what I was about to, marry my little stray without her consent .
. . but I’d already condemned my soul to burn . . . what was one more sin?
He studied Katarina’s sleeping face, and his gaze drifted down to my dog tags around her neck, tangled in her hair and only just visible.
“Very well, I’ll do it, but if you’re lying, you take the sin on your own soul, not mine.”
“Deal. Let’s get started.”
I shifted Katarina in my arms, cradling her close. Vittorio went to stand behind the altar.
He started to speak in a low rush of Latin, crossing himself vigorously and gesturing toward me. Like I could be cleansed of the sins of my life. I’d long ago given up any idea of being saved. I didn’t need salvation, or want it. I gazed down at Katarina.
I just needed her.
“What’s happening?” Katarina murmured, her eyes blinking open groggily.
Vittorio glanced at me, but I nodded at him to continue.
She was waking up but not all the way. She hovered somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, the drugs tugging her downward.
I tightened my arms around her. “You’re dreaming. This is all a dream.”
Her eyes fixed on mine for only a moment before they slid shut again.
“Keep going, Vittorio. I can still shoot you in the head,” I warned my friend.
He huffed but continued.
“Do you take this man?” Vittorio tossed to Katarina, but she’d gone under again.
“She does, and I take her. Get to the end, Father,” I prompted him.
He shook his head, crossing himself again, and nodded.
“In the power vested in me by God, I pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride, if you can,” Vittorio said.
I looked down at my sleeping angel. My little stray, scrappy and determined and so full of stubborn, relentless hope, she shone.
I leaned forward, raising her face toward mine, and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
It was chaste. Respectful . . . the only concession I could give considering I’d just married her without her knowledge.
I was the devil she’d always accused me of being, and I couldn’t bring myself to care.
Not now that I had her in my arms and our names together on a registry. I’d do it again, to keep her.