Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Adrian
I lie flat on my back in the dark and count the ways I hate this.
There are several.
The room is quiet, the lights off except for the thin spill of hallway glow coming under the door and the faint silver edge of moonlight slipping through the curtains.
It is not my room. Not my house. Not my perimeter, even if my own people are the ones holding the outer line tonight.
That matters, but not enough.
The mattress is too soft. The sheets smell clean, which tells me Elena changed them before I was allowed in here.
There is a glass of water on the nightstand, two bottles of pills I have no intention of taking unless the pain gets bad enough to compromise function, and a folded towel under my left side.
The doctor came and went a while ago.
Dr. Alfonsi. Retired, older than I expected, sharp-eyed in a way that made it clear retirement had not dulled his hands or his instincts. He confirmed what I already knew.
Through and through. Clean enough. No obvious organ involvement.
No immediate signs of anything catastrophic.
He cleaned it properly, stitched what needed stitching, dressed it, gave instructions, and then looked me directly in the eye and told me I should still go to a hospital for imaging and observation.
I told him no.
He expected that.
I could see it in his face.
So now I’m here.
Cleared enough not to die tonight, advised strongly enough that everyone has something to throw at me tomorrow, and immobilized enough that my mood has been getting worse with every passing minute.
Dinner happened after that.
I avoided it.
For once, getting shot worked in my favor.
Not that I have a problem with big groups. I don’t. I can sit in a crowded room, read every angle, track twelve conversations, and still know who’s closest to the door without turning my head.
But that particular group tonight was too much.
Too many Contis. Too much blood, and fear, and anger dressed up as logistics.
Too many women trying not to cry, too many men trying not to show what almost losing one of their own had done to them. Too many children in the same house because everyone had decided—correctly—that splitting up was worse.
The whole place had the feel of a war room pretending to be a family dinner.
I was happy to miss it.
Teresa brought me a plate.
She came in with food balanced in one hand and a look on her face that told me she was still deciding whether to hug me, yell at me, or smother me with a pillow for refusing the hospital. Maybe all three.
She set the plate down, checked the bandage without asking, made me drink water, then stood there like she was going to say something she had been holding back all night.
She didn’t.
In the end, she only said, “Eat,” in the same tone my mother used when I came home too tired to even think about food.
So I ate.
Mostly because arguing would have taken more effort than chewing.
Now the plate is gone. Teresa is gone. The doctor is gone.
Elena has stopped coming in every ten minutes under the pretense of checking whether I need anything.
Olivia has stopped hovering near the doorway to make sure I don’t bleed out.
Luca came once, stood in the room for exactly thirty seconds, asked if I was alive, received the answer, and left.
Which is about as much as I can ask from a first meeting with the Don after getting shot for his daughter.
Caterina has not come in.
That should be good.
It is good.
She has had enough for one night, and she needs her rest.
She is alive. She is inside the house. Her entire family is under the same roof. My people have taken care of security outside. And now that the rest of the men in the family are back, the inside is fully stocked as well.
For tonight, she is as secure as I can make her.
And I am still not happy.
I hate being down.
It is not pride. Not exactly.
Pride would be simpler.
This is older than pride and harder to reason with. A bone-deep refusal to be the thing that slows the operation down. The injured man in the bed. The one other people have to step around and account for. The gap in the line.
I’ve been that before.
I don’t recommend it.
Pain shifts low and hot through my side when I breathe too deeply, so I keep my breathing shallow and even. Not enough to starve myself of air. Enough not to pull hard against the stitches.
The doctor said minimal movement. Elena said absolutely no movement.
Teresa said if she catches me out of bed, she will call my mother.
That was the first threat tonight that gave me real pause.
Still, I made one thing clear before I let anyone herd me in here.
I wanted the room next to Caterina’s.
That caused another argument.
Naturally.
Elena said every room in this house was secure. Vito said his sister was under his roof and therefore protected.
Luca said nothing at first, which was worse. Caterina stood in the hallway with her arms crossed, not saying a word.
I didn’t care.
I said, “Shot or not, I have a job. I’m next to her.”
That was it.
No negotiation.
If I’m injured and stuck in a bed, then distance matters more, not less. I need to hear movement in her room. I need to hear the hall. I need to be close enough that if something goes wrong, I can get there before things go sideways.
Even if I’m slower tonight.
Especially because I’m slower tonight.
Luca looked at me for a long second after I said it.
Then he looked at Caterina.
Then back at me.
He nodded once.
That settled it.
Vito didn’t like it.
Caterina looked like she didn’t know whether she liked it or hated it.
I wasn’t asking either of them.
So now I’m here, in a dark room that shares a wall with hers, staring at the ceiling and listening.
There is a certain kind of quiet in a house full of people trying not to make noise. It is not silence. It’s layered restraint.
Footsteps down the hall. Low voices somewhere below. A door closing softly two rooms away. One of the babies crying for less than ten seconds before being soothed.
A murmur. A floorboard. Nothing urgent.
Through the wall to my right, nothing.
Caterina’s room.
No pacing. No drawers opening. No movement I can hear.
Either she is asleep, which I doubt, or she is lying still and staring at the ceiling the same way I am.
That thought settles in me with an irritation I refuse to examine too closely.
She should sleep.
She nearly got killed tonight. She ran barefoot through a service corridor and up a stairwell while men shot at her. She saw blood. Death. The inside mechanics of the threat her family had been trying to soften around her.
She should sleep.
So should I.
Neither of us is likely to.
I shift my left hand over the bandage and feel the tight pull of tape under my palm. The wound throbs in time with my pulse. Not unbearable. Not enough to ignore either. The pain is useful in some ways.
Keeps me awake. Keeps the body honest. Reminds me not to make sudden moves unless I have to.
I’ve worked through worse.
I told Caterina that earlier and saw exactly when she understood I meant it.
I also saw what happened when she looked at the scars.
That is another thing I refuse to examine too closely.
There are a lot of things tonight that I am putting in that category.
The way she looked at me when she realized I had been hit before the stairs and kept going.
The way her hands shook when she unbuttoned my shirt.
The way she sat beside me while Elena cut away the dressing and did not look away from the wound, even when her face went pale.
That matters.
I don’t want it to.
She is my client.
That line still exists. Absolute. Nonnegotiable. It did not vanish because she was brave tonight or because she looked at me like the blood on my shirt meant something more than injury.
If anything, the line matters more now.
Emotion makes people sloppy. Gratitude makes people confused. Fear makes people reach for the nearest solid thing and call it something it isn’t.
I know better.
I have seen it before.
Principal and protector. Crisis and attachment. Adrenaline turned into intimacy because survival can rewire your brain, and nobody thinks clearly when death has just missed by inches.
That is exactly how mistakes happen.
I don’t make those mistakes.
Especially not with her. Especially not now.
A sound finally comes through the wall.
A footstep.
Then another.
She is awake.
I turn my head toward the wall without thinking, listening.
A moment later, I hear the sound of her door opening, though she’s trying to be quiet.
Every muscle in me goes tight.
She’s leaving her room.
My hand finds the edge of the mattress, fingers curling into the sheet as I brace to sit up.
Where the hell is she going?
The hallway is secure. The house is locked down. My men are outside. Her family is under the same roof. None of that means she should be wandering around alone with this fear still working through her system, and half the family too exhausted to think straight.
“Damn it,” I mutter.
Pain blooms hard in my side as I start to move.
Before I can swing my legs over the edge of the bed, my doorknob turns, and the door opens silently.
A thin wash of hallway light slips across the floor.
Caterina stands in the doorway, one hand still on the knob, hair loose over her shoulders. The rest of her is silhouetted by the light behind her, but I can make out a simple T-shirt and a pair of sleep shorts.
She looks smaller like this. Less like the Conti daughter in charge of a casino empire and more like a woman who almost died a few hours ago and can’t sleep.
She hesitates.
I don’t move. My side is on fire from the aborted attempt to get up, a hot, radiating reminder that Dr. Alfonsi was right and I might be an idiot.
She takes a small step into the room.
“Are you awake?” she whispers into the dark. The words are so quiet they’re almost swallowed by the stillness.
I consider pretending to be asleep.
It would be the smart thing to do.
The safe thing.