Rafael
Three days in bed and I’ve never hated stillness this much in my life.
The wound aches with every shift of my weight, a deep, pulling pain that flares hot whenever I forget and try to sit up too fast. Dr. Renata warned me it would take weeks to heal properly, not days, which isn’t what a man wants to hear when there’s a war building outside these four walls without him.
I’ve spent my whole life staying ahead of danger through movement, through action, through never sitting still long enough for anyone to catch me off guard.
Lying here useless feels like its own kind of wound, one that doesn’t show up on any bandage.
Portia sits beside the bed, changing the bandage with careful, practiced hands, though I know for a fact she’s never done this before in her life.
She’s learned fast. Everything about her learns fast. She picked up the routine from Dr. Renata’s instructions after only one demonstration, cleaning and redressing the wound each morning and evening with a focus that reminds me exactly why she built a career out of chasing down details other people missed.
“Stop tensing. You’re making this harder than it needs to be.”
“I’m not tensing.”
“You are. I can feel it.” She finishes taping the fresh gauze into place and sits back, studying her work with the same intensity she probably brought to every story she ever chased down for the network. “Dr. Renata says you’re healing well. Better than expected, given how deep it went.”
“I don’t feel like I’m healing well.”
“You wouldn’t. You’ve been shot.” She hands me a glass of water, waiting until I drink before continuing. “Maurizio’s been keeping things running while you’re down. He wanted me to tell you the men are still in position, nothing’s moved on Vito’s end since the port.”
“Good.” I set the glass down, restlessness itching under my skin despite the pain keeping me pinned to this bed. “I hate this. Lying here while everyone else does the work.”
“You almost died three days ago, Rafael.”
“I know exactly what I almost did.”
“Then let yourself heal. You don’t get to carry this whole war on your back alone. Not anymore.”
I study her for a long moment—this woman who spent the night forgiving me with her forehead pressed against mine, who’s spent three days changing my bandages and forcing broth down my throat and refusing to leave my side even when Maurizio offered to take a shift so she could sleep properly in her own bed.
I think about everything she’s given up since Sicily—her career on indefinite pause, her parents lied to for their own safety, a life she built for herself now folded entirely around keeping me alive.
“You didn’t have to do any of this.”
“I know I didn’t have to.” She meets my eyes steadily. “I wanted to.”
The conversation about her role comes later that evening, after Concetta clears away the dinner tray and leaves us alone with the last of the daylight fading through the window, gold turning to gray across the olive grove outside.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said. About wanting an active role. About not wanting to sit here useless.”
Her whole body stills. “And?”
“And you were right.” The words cost me more than I want to admit, old instinct fighting against them even now; every protective impulse I’ve carried since Sicily screaming that keeping her close means keeping her safe, not the other way around.
“I almost died out there, Portia. If I don’t come back from this war alive, you can’t be sitting in a B&B with no idea how to protect yourself, no understanding of how any of this actually works. ”
“So you’re agreeing.”
“I’m agreeing. With conditions.” I hold up a hand before she can celebrate too fast. “You work intel, recon, information gathering—the things you’re actually good at.
You don’t run into gunfire. You don’t put yourself directly in the path of Vito’s men without backup.
And you listen when Maurizio or I tell you a job’s too dangerous. ”
“That’s fair.” She doesn’t argue, which surprises me slightly, though I catch the determination settling into her expression, already three steps ahead of where I am.
“I’ve been thinking about how I can actually help.
My old contacts, sources I built covering the Belluccis before any of this happened.
People who talk to reporters who’d never talk to soldiers. ”
“That could work.”
“I know it could.” A small, satisfied smile crosses her face, the first real one I’ve seen from her in days.
“I’m good at my job, Rafael. You’re about to find that out firsthand.”
“I never doubted it.”
“You kind of did, actually.” She raises an eyebrow, though there’s no real anger behind it now, just the familiar spark of someone who enjoys being right. “But I’ll let it go. This time.”
I reach for her hand, and she lets me take it, lacing our fingers together, the grip still new, still careful, both of us relearning how to hold onto each other after everything that broke between us.
“Thank you. For pushing me on this. For not letting me keep treating you like glass.”
“You’re welcome.” She squeezes my hand once. “Now stop being sappy. It’s weird coming from you.”
I laugh and it pulls at the wound just enough to remind me I’m still healing, still fragile in ways that have nothing to do with the argument we just settled, still learning how to be a different kind of man than the one who wasn’t in this bed three days ago.
The pain medication loosens my guard later that night, wearing down a wall I’ve kept standing for longer than I can remember, mortared shut with years of practice and violence and the discipline it took to survive Vito’s world at all.
“Tell me about that night. What you actually remember. I need to know, Rafael.”
I close my eyes. “I don’t remember much. I told you that.”
“Try… please.”
The dark behind my eyelids shifts, pulling me back toward a night I haven’t let myself look at directly in years, buried under everything I became after—the soldier I was forced into, the mask I eventually learned to wear myself, the split that grew out of surviving things a sixteen-year-old was never built to.
“I was young. Sixteen, maybe seventeen. Still new to Vito’s crew. Still believing every word he told me about loyalty and family and what it meant to belong to an organization bigger than blood.”
“Where were you?”
“A warehouse. Somewhere near the water, I think. I can hear it—the water, lapping against metal, a hull maybe.” My jaw tightens, the memory sharpening despite every instinct telling me to stop pulling at this thread.
“Vito told me to wait outside. Guard the door. I didn’t ask questions back then. You didn’t ask Vito questions.”
“And then?”
“And then I heard it. Screaming. A woman’s voice, and a man’s voice underneath it, both of them cut short too fast.” My chest tightens, breath coming faster now, old panic rising in a body that still remembers even when the mind’s tried for years to forget.
“I should have stayed outside. I should have kept my head down like I was told.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I looked through a gap in the door,” I say. “And I saw him.”
“Saw who, Rafael?”
“The mask. Vito, in the devil mask. I didn’t understand it then. Didn’t understand what it meant, what it would come to mean for the rest of my life. I just saw the leather, the eyeholes, black and empty, and blood on his hands, and I couldn’t move.”
“What else? What else do you remember?”
“Portia—”
“Please.” Her grip tightens on my hand. “I need more. Please try.”
The memory cracks open wider than I mean to let it, pulling harder now, dragging up pieces I’ve spent years burying—a man slumped beside a woman, the particular silence that follows violence once it’s finished doing its work.
My skull starts pounding, pressure building behind my eyes like a second presence clawing its way up from underneath everything I’ve built to keep it contained.
I recognize the sensation even through the pain.
I’ve felt it before, every time Il Diavolo pushed close to the surface, every time the split threatened to take the wheel from me entirely.
“Rafael, you’re shaking—”
“Enough. Do you understand? I cannot push any harder right now.”
“Rafael—”
“I said enough!” The words tear out of me louder than I mean them to, raw and ragged, an old, familiar darkness stirring underneath my skin, closer to the surface than it’s been since long before I learned how to control it.
My hands clench into fists hard enough to hurt, every muscle rigid, fighting the thing clawing up from where I thought I’d locked it away for good.
Portia goes still, eyes wide, watching me with fear and understanding both.
“Look at me. Come back to me.”
I force my eyes open, chest heaving, sweat beading along my hairline despite the cool night air.
Slowly the pressure behind my eyes recedes, the darkness retreating back into the place I’ve kept it locked for years, though not without cost. My whole body feels wrung out, hollowed, the way it always does after fighting the split back down instead of letting it win.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell.”
“Don’t apologize. I pushed too hard. I’m sorry.” She moves closer, careful of my wound, wrapping her arms gently around me instead of flinching away from what she just witnessed, which somehow makes the whole thing worse and better at once.
“There’s more. I know there’s more. I just can’t reach it yet. Not without—”
I don’t finish the sentence. I don’t have to.
She understands exactly what I’m not saying, exactly what almost surfaced in this room tonight, and she holds me tighter instead of asking anything further, letting the silence settle over both of us until my heartbeat finally slows, until my breathing steadies, until the worst of it passes and leaves only exhaustion behind.