Chapter 30 Giulia
GIULIA
Luca's knees buckle beneath him. He goes down, and I go to my knees next to him, reaching for him as I call out his name. I can feel the warmth of his blood soaking through my clothes.
"Luca!" His name tears out of my throat as I try to shift him and see his face. "Luca, stay with me. Please stay with me."
His eyes are open but unfocused, his breathing shallow and rapid. Terror shoots through every nerve in my body. The wound in his side is still bleeding, and it looks like too much blood.
Romeo appears above us, his face grim and streaked with soot, his left shoulder dark with blood from his own wound. He drops to his knees beside Luca, his hands immediately going to the injury and pressing down with a pressure that makes Luca gasp, and his eyes flutter.
"We need to move him," Romeo says, his voice tight. "Get the car to the east entrance. Carlo, clear the route. We're taking him to the nearest safe house."
Soldiers materialize around us, moving with a quick, focused purpose that feels surreal against the backdrop of bodies and smoke and the acrid smell of gunpowder that's thick enough to taste.
Someone wraps something around Luca's torso, pulling it tight enough that he makes a sound that's half groan, half whimper.
The vulnerability of it breaks something inside me.
It all feels like a movie, like none of this can be real, everything moving too fast and too slow all at once. But it is real, and every time that hits me again, I’m terrified I’m going to lose him.
"I'm here," I tell him, my hands on his face, trying not to think about what it means that his eyes have fluttered closed. "I'm right here, Luca. You're going to be fine. You have to be fine. Do you hear me? You're not allowed to die."
The words tangle in my throat, choking me. There's too much to say and no time to say any of it. His skin is going pale beneath the blood and dirt, and his breathing is getting more labored with each second that passes.
Romeo and another soldier lift Luca between them. I scramble to my feet, my legs shaking so badly I nearly fall, and follow as they carry him through the warehouse toward an exit.
The night air feels sharp and clean despite being near the docks after the heavy, smoke-filled interior of the warehouse.
I shiver as we walk toward the black SUV waiting with its engine running and rear door open.
They maneuver Luca into the back seat carefully despite the urgency of the situation, and I climb in after him.
His head ends up in my lap, his blood soaking into the fabric of my ruined clothing, and I press my hands against the makeshift bandage wrapped around his torso, trying to stem the flow even though I have no idea if I'm doing it right.
It makes me feel like bursting into hysterical sobs—I can plan a dinner party flawlessly, but I don't know how to save the life of the man I love.
Romeo slides into the front passenger seat, barking directions at the driver.
The warehouse falls away behind us as we speed through streets that are mostly empty at this hour.
The city passes in a blur of streetlights, and I can't look away from Luca's face, cataloging every change in his breathing, every flutter of his eyelids.
"Stay with me," I whisper again and again, the words becoming a mantra. "Please, Luca. Please stay with me. I need you. The baby needs you. You can't leave us. Not now.”
I imagine his hand moves against mine, but I know it likely didn’t. He’s unconscious, and I don’t know if he’ll ever wake up again. My heart feels like it’s cracking apart inside my chest.
The drive takes twenty minutes, and every second stretches into what feels like hours, magnified by Luca's increasingly shallow breaths and the spreading warmth of his blood against my hands.
By the time we pull up to a nondescript brownstone in a neighborhood I don't recognize, my entire body is shaking with adrenaline and terror.
The door opens before we’re even fully parked at the curb, and a man in his sixties with silver hair and sharp eyes appears, already pulling on latex gloves.
Behind him, the interior of the house is lit up like an operating room, and I can see medical equipment that looks far too sophisticated for a residential setting.
"Gunshot wound, left side," Romeo says as he and the driver pull Luca from the car. "Took the bullet maybe twenty minutes ago. He's lost a lot of blood."
The doctor nods once and gestures us toward the house. "Bring him to the back room. Quickly."
I feel like my legs will barely support my weight as I follow, covered in Luca’s blood.
The house is warm and smells like antiseptic, and the room they take him to has been converted into something that looks like a surgical suite, complete with an operating table, monitors, and equipment I can't begin to identify.
They transfer Luca onto the table, and the doctor immediately cuts away the makeshift bandage, revealing the wound beneath.
It's worse than I imagined—a ragged hole in his side that's still bleeding sluggishly, the edges torn and angry.
The sight of it makes my vision swim, and my stomach heave.
"The bullet's still in there," the doctor says as he examines the wound. "Looks like it missed the major organs. But he's lost a significant amount of blood, and I need to get in there to assess internal damage and remove the bullet."
"Will he—" My voice breaks on the question, and I have to swallow hard before I can continue. "Will he be okay?"
The doctor glances at me for the first time, his expression neutral. "I won't lie to you—he's in serious condition. But the wound is survivable if we act quickly. I need to prep him for surgery immediately." He turns to Romeo. "Get her out of here. She shouldn't see this."
"No." I bite out the word, suddenly terrified at the thought of being forced to leave and never seeing him alive again. "I'm not leaving him."
"Miss, this is going to be—"
"I don't care what it's going to be." I move closer to the table, to Luca's side, and take his hand in mine. His skin is cold and clammy, his breathing so shallow I have to watch his chest to confirm he's still doing it. "I'm not leaving. I'm staying right here."
The doctor looks at Romeo, who shakes his head slightly. "Let her stay. Just keep her out of the way."
"Fine." The doctor's tone suggests it's anything but, but he doesn't argue further. Instead, he turns to a woman I didn't notice before, and starts rattling off instructions about anesthesia and instruments.
They work around me, prepping Luca for surgery with a speed that suggests they've done this before for our family… probably many times. An IV goes into his arm, and the woman cuts away the rest of his clothes, revealing the full extent of the damage.
I grab his hand once more before Romeo moves me away from the table, my heart pounding in my ears.
"You're not allowed to die," I whisper desperately. "Do you hear me, Luca? You're not allowed to leave me. I’m sorry for everything. I know you kept saying you don’t want to hear that, but it’s true. And I’ll make it up to you somehow. We’ll figure this out.
Even if we don’t, you can’t die. I love you, and even if you don’t love me, even if you never forgive me, I can’t let you go like this. "
His eyelids flutter, and just before the woman slides the IV into his other arm for sedation, I hear a hoarse whisper that sounds very much like my name come from his barely-moving lips.
"Giulia."
My name. He said my name. A sob tears out of me, and suddenly Romeo is there, his hands on my shoulders, trying to pull me away from the table.
"You need to step back," he says, his voice gentle but firm. "Let them work."
"No." I try to shake him off, but he's stronger than I am. He's already moving me backward, away from Luca, away from the table. "No, I need to—he said my name. He knows I'm here. I can't leave him—"
"You're not leaving him." Romeo's arms wrap around me from behind, holding me in place as I struggle against his grip. "You're just giving them room to save his life. That's all. Just room to work."
The fight goes out of me all at once. I collapse against Romeo's chest, my legs giving out completely. He holds me up, and I can feel his own tension in the rigid set of his shoulders. He's scared too—terrified for his best friend, for me.
"He's going to be okay," Romeo says quietly, almost beneath his breath. I don't know if he's trying to convince himself or me. "The doctor's good. The best. He's saved men who were in worse shape than this."
I want to believe him. But I can see the blood, and I can hear the urgency in the doctor's voice as he calls for instruments and suction and things I don't understand, and all I can think is that this is my fault.
If I hadn't created Valentina, if I hadn't lied, if I hadn't gotten pregnant and forced this marriage, Luca wouldn't have been in that warehouse.
He wouldn't have put himself between me and Alessandro's gun.
He wouldn't be on that table right now, fighting for his life while a doctor tries to repair the damage my choices created.
Another wave of sobs hits me, wracking my entire body with a force that makes it impossible to breathe or think, or do anything except cry and watch as the only man I’ve ever loved hovers between life and death, inches away.
And my brother holds me through all of it, his arms a comforting presence as we wait, and wait. Finally, the doctor steps back from the table, stripping off his bloody gloves.
"He's stable," he says on an exhaled breath.
"The bullet missed everything vital—nicked a rib on the way in, but not much else.
I've removed it, repaired the damaged tissue, and stopped the bleeding.
He's going to need significant recovery time, and there's always a risk of infection, but barring complications, he should make a full recovery. "