Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
RAFAEL
Darkness isn’t black. It’s a heavy, suffocating grey that smells like burnt rubber and iron.
I’m drifting in a goddamn soup of morphine and regret. My mind is a fractured mess, looping the same three seconds over and over again. The crack of the rifle. The white dress. The way the air seemed to crystallize around Gia as she stood there, holding my fucking phone like a death warrant.
Move. You have to move.
I try to reach for her in the dark, but my arm is a dead weight, pinned to the earth by a thousand rusted nails. A groan tears through my chest, vibrating against my ribs, and the pain follows immediately—a white-hot, jagged lightning bolt that incinerates the fog.
I force my eyes open.
The light is a clinical, unforgiving fluorescent hum. It bites into my retinas, making my head throb with a rhythmic, pulsing heat. I’m in a room that smells like bleach. A Brotherhood clinic. I’ve been here before, usually to watch someone else bleed out.
"Rafael?"
The voice is a thread of silk in a room full of glass.
I turn my head, and the movement makes the world tilt on a sick, greasy axis.
Gia is there. She’s sitting in a plastic chair pulled right up to the edge of the bed.
She looks like she’s been put through a goddamn industrial shredder.
Her hair is a mess, her face is dirty, and her eyes.
.. fuck, her eyes are rimmed with red that has nothing to do with sleep.
But it’s her dress that stops my heart. The white fabric is ruined, stiff with dark, rusted patches of my blood.
She’s covered in me.
"Gia," I rasp. My throat feels like I swallowed a handful of dry gravel. I try to push myself up, my right hand clawing at the railing of the bed, the metal cold under my palm. "Are you... were you hit? Did they—"
"Don't move! Rafael, stay down!"
She’s on her feet in a second, her hands hitting my chest to pin me back.
She isn't gentle, and I love her for it. She’s shaking—a fine, violent tremor that I can feel through the thin hospital gown.
I grab her wrists, my fingers fumbling, searching for a pulse, searching for any sign of a wound I might have missed.
"Look at me," I growl, the effort of speaking making the room spin again. "Did they touch you?"
"No," she whispers, a watery laugh escaping her. She doesn't pull away. She leans into the bed, her face inches from mine. "I’m fine. I’m perfectly fine. You... you took it all, you idiot. Every bit of it."
I sink back into the pillows, the adrenaline leaving me in a slow, sickening wash. I let my eyes travel over her—her neck, her shoulders, her ribs. She’s intact. The world is still turning because she’s still breathing.
Fuck. I actually did it. I kept her whole.
"The boys," I mutter, my grip on her wrists slackening as the morphine tries to pull me under again. "Matteo. Where are they?"
"They’re right outside. They haven't left the door in eighteen hours." She reaches for a cup of water on the side table, her fingers brushing mine. "Drink this. Slowly."
I take a sip, the cool water hitting my parched throat like a miracle. I can hear the muffled sounds of the clinic outside—the beep of monitors, the heavy footsteps of soldiers. The reality of the hit starts to sharpen in my mind, cutting through the haze.
"Get them in here," I say. "Please."
Gia hesitates, looking at the bandage on my shoulder, then nods.
She walks to the door and pulls it open.
A second later, Matteo, Dante, and Enzo filter into the small room.
They look like they’ve been in a goddamn war.
Matteo’s suit is gone, his white shirt stained with grease; Dante has a fresh cut across his cheek; and Enzo.
.. Enzo looks like he’s ready to burn the city to the ground.
"You look like shit, Rafe," Dante says, though his voice is thick with a relief he’s trying to hide.
"You should see the other guys," I mutter. "What’s the count?"
"Two of our guys down. Three in the infirmary," Matteo says, leaning against the wall. His face is a mask of grim efficiency. "We counted six O’Rourkes in the treeline. We didn't leave any of them breathing enough to talk."
I spit the word out like it’s poison. "How the fuck did they know? That warehouse was a ghost site. It wasn't on any of the manifests. It wasn't even on the goddamn GPS."
The room goes silent. The kind of silence that happens right before someone gets executed.
"We're looking into it," Enzo says, his jaw tight. "The coordinate was encrypted. Only the inner circle and the transport leads had the ping."
"Then the inner circle is leaking," I snap, and the movement makes my shoulder scream. I grind my teeth, the pain a jagged white light behind my eyes. "Fredo wasn't the end of it. He mentioned a 'Ghost.' I thought he was hallucinating, but this... this was a goddamn setup."
"Rafael, you need to rest," Matteo says, stepping forward. "The doctors said you lost a lot of blood. The bullet nicked the artery. If you hadn't been so goddamn stubborn, you would have bled out on that concrete."
"I’ll rest when I know who sold us out." I look at Enzo.
"Double the guard at the estate. I want the perimeter swept every hour.
No one goes in or out without my personal clearance.
And Gia..." I pause, my chest feeling tight for a reason that has nothing to do with the bullet.
"She doesn't leave the house. Not for a coffee, not for a walk, not for a goddamn breath of air. Do you understand?"
"We've already moved her security to Level One, bro. Don’t worry." Enzo nods.
"Make it Level Zero," I growl. "I want her in my sight or behind a locked door at all times."
I look back at her. She hasn't moved. I want to tell the boys to leave. I want to pull her into this bed and find out why she looks so broken. Is it fear? Or is it something else?
"I want to be alone with her" I whisper.
Matteo looks at me, then at Gia, and nods. They file out, the heavy door clicking shut behind them.
Gia finally turns around. She looks at me, and there’s a vulnerability in her eyes that I’ve never seen before. It’s not the sassy heiress or the stubborn brat. It’s a girl who just watched the only man who ever protected her almost die.
"You should sleep, Rafael," she says, her voice trembling.
"Come here," I command, reaching out with my good hand.
She hesitates, then walks to the bedside. I grab her hand, pulling her down until she’s forced to sit on the edge of the mattress. I don't care about the tubes or the monitor. I just need to feel the heat of her.
"Why did you do it?" she whispers, her thumb grazing the back of my hand. "You didn't have to jump. You could have stayed behind the door. You could have let the glass take the hit."
"I don't play 'could have,' Gia." I pull her hand up to my lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. My skin is pale, hers is smudged with my blood. "I saw the rifle move. I saw the target. There wasn't a choice."
"There's always a choice."
"Not for me." I look deep into her eyes, searching for the truth.
She’s the only thing that matters.
She leans down, her forehead resting against mine. I can feel her breath, warm and uneven, on my lips. For a second, the pain in my shoulder disappears. The O'Rourkes disappear. The leak, the betrayal, the 'Ghost'—it all fades into the background.
"Don't do it again," she breathes.
"I can't promise that."
"Rafael—"
"Right now... you’re the one thing that belongs to me."
I fall back into the fog, but this time, the grey isn't suffocating. It’s warm. Because I’m still holding her hand, and for the first time in I don’t know how long, I’m not afraid of the dark.
I’m just afraid of what happens when I have to let go.