Chapter 8
Valentina
Iwoke slowly, consciousness returning in fragments.
Soft bed. Clean sheets. The smell of pine and wood smoke. Sunlight filtering through unfamiliar windows.
Not the penthouse. Not the car. Somewhere else entirely.
My body felt heavy, sluggish, like I was moving through water. My neck throbbed where—
The dart. The garage. Collapsing in Alessio's arms.
I sat up too fast, the room spinning. Strong hands caught my shoulders, steadied me.
"Easy." Alessio's voice was rough with exhaustion. "You're safe. We're at Domenico's cabin. You've been out for about eight hours."
Eight hours. I'd lost eight hours.
"The attackers—"
"Evaded. Domenico's team ran interference while I got you out of the city." He pressed a water bottle into my hands. "Drink. Tranquilizer causes dehydration."
I drank, studying him over the bottle. Dark circles under his eyes. Still wearing the blood-stained clothes from last night. He hadn't slept, hadn't changed. Just watched over me while I was unconscious.
"You stayed," I said softly.
"Where else would I be?"
The simple certainty in his voice made my chest tight.
"How long are we staying here?" I asked.
"A week. Maybe longer, depending on how fast Marco mobilizes." He brushed hair back from my face, thumb tracing my cheekbone. "Long enough to regroup. Domenico stocked the place with a generator, supplies, and a medical kit. Had a field medic stitch my shoulder while you were out."
I glanced at his shoulder, noticed the bulk of proper bandaging beneath a clean shirt. He'd changed at some point while I slept, the blood-soaked clothes gone. Small comfort, but comfort.
I caught his hand, held it against my cheek. "Thank you. For getting me out. For keeping me safe."
"Always," he promised.
And I believed him.
The cabin became our world.
The first night, he found me at the window at 2 a.m., wrapped in a blanket, watching snow fall through the dark glass.
"Can't sleep?" His voice was soft, careful not to startle me.
"Thinking too much." I didn't turn around. "Not about Marco. About us."
He moved beside me, close enough that I felt his warmth through the thin wall of air between us. "What about us?"
"Whether this is real." The words came out before I could stop them.
"You saved my life. You're protecting me, risking everything for me.
And I'm—" I pressed my forehead against the cold glass.
"I need to know I'm not just clinging to the first person who made me feel safe.
That what I feel isn't survival instinct wearing a prettier dress. "
The silence stretched long enough that I thought I'd broken something.
"You think I haven't wondered the same thing?" His voice was quiet. Raw. "Whether I'm keeping you close because I care about you, or because you're the first person who looked past the Don and decided the man underneath was worth something."
I turned. He wasn't watching the snow. He was watching me with an expression I'd never seen on him—not the controlled mask, not the predator's focus, not even the heat that flared between us when we got too close. Just uncertainty. Stripped bare and honest.
"The night we met," he said, "you pointed a gun at my chest and told me to go to hell. You were terrified and outgunned, and you still fought. That had nothing to do with me saving you. That was just who you are."
"And who are you?" I whispered. "When you're not the don?"
"I don't know anymore." His jaw worked. "But whoever I am when I'm with you—the man who makes you coffee and sits on porches and talks about things that have nothing to do with this life—he's the closest I've come to finding out."
I reached for his hand. Found it already reaching for mine.
"Then maybe we don't need an answer yet," I said. "Maybe we just need to know that when this is over—when there's no Marco, no danger, no reason to stay—we'd still choose to be standing right here."
"I would." No hesitation.
"So would I."
We stood like that, hands linked, watching snow fall on a world that didn't know we existed. No kiss. No grand declaration. Just two people being honest about the terrifying thing growing between them.
He squeezed my fingers once, then let go. "Get some sleep, Valentina. Tomorrow's another long day."
But as I returned to my room, I felt his gaze following me.
And I knew sleep would be impossible.
Morning training had become our routine. Alessio positioned himself behind me, hands on my hips, adjusting my stance for the target practice.
"Feet wider. Weight forward."
His touch was careful, professional, but I felt the heat of his palms through my clothes. The way his breath ghosted across my neck when he leaned close to check my sight line.
I fired. Hit the tree trunk, missing the center by inches.
"Better," he murmured. "Again."
We spent mornings like that—him teaching me to shoot, to think tactically, to survive. I taught him about Renaissance art during lunch, my photographic memory reciting facts about paintings he'd never cared about until I made them interesting.
"Caravaggio used prostitutes as models for his Madonnas," I said one afternoon, showing him images on my phone. "The church was scandalized, but he insisted real women—women who'd suffered—understood divinity better than virgins ever could."
"He sounds like he understood hypocrisy."
"He understood that beauty and darkness could coexist. That grace could come from unlikely places." I met his eyes. "That monsters could create magnificent things."
Something shifted in his expression. "Are you calling me a monster, principessa?"
"I'm saying you're more complicated than you think. And that maybe creating something beautiful is still possible. Even for us."
The afternoons brought strategy sessions, planning the gala infiltration with meticulous detail. The evenings brought something softer.
The nightmare woke me gasping: Marco's hands around my throat, Richard's voice promising I'd never escape, the wedding dress turning red with blood.
I stumbled to the kitchen for water and found Alessio already there, staring into the darkness.
"You too?" he asked without turning.
"Marco. Richard. All of it replaying." I moved beside him, accepted the glass of water he poured without asking. "Does it ever stop?"
"The nightmares?" He glanced at me. "No. But they get quieter. Less frequent. Twenty years later, and I still dream about Eva's death. But I also dream about her laugh now. Her terrible singing. The good parts survive if you let them."
We stood in comfortable silence, shoulders touching.
"I dream about my mother sometimes," I admitted. "Before she left. Her reading to me in Italian, making pizzelle at Christmas. Then I wake up and remember she chose to leave me with him."
"Maybe she didn't have a choice." Alessio turned to face me fully. "Marco's the kind of man who'd make someone choose between leaving alone or staying and dying. Your mother might have left to save you both."
The possibility—that she'd loved me enough to leave—cracked something open.
"I never thought about it that way."
"Because Marco wanted you to believe she abandoned you. Made you easier to control if you thought you'd already been left once." His hand found my face, thumb brushing away tears I hadn't realized were falling. "But you're not abandoned, Valentina. Not anymore."
"Promise?"
"Promise." He pulled me into his arms, and I let myself believe him.
We stayed like that until the sky started to lighten, wrapped in each other and the quiet understanding that we were building something neither of us had ever had before.
Trust.
The training exercise went wrong faster than either of us expected.
My foot slipped on wet leaves during weapons practice, and the gun discharged into the dirt—six inches from Alessio's boot.
The crack of the gunshot echoed through the forest, then terrible silence.
"I could've killed you," I whispered, hands shaking so badly I couldn't hold the weapon anymore.
He took it gently, set it aside, his movements calm despite what had just happened. "But you didn't."
"I could've—if you'd been standing one step to the left—"
"Valentina." He gripped my shoulders, forced me to meet his eyes. "You didn't. I'm fine. We're both fine."
But I couldn't stop shaking. Couldn't stop seeing the alternate reality where the bullet found flesh instead of earth. Where I'd killed the man I—
The man I loved.
He pulled me against his chest, one hand stroking my hair while I fell apart.
"I've killed people," he said quietly. "In this life, that's what you do to survive. But you? You're not built for violence. You're built for better things—art and beauty and creation. And I'm terrified I'm turning you into something you're not."
I pulled back to look at him. "You're not turning me into anything. You're teaching me to survive long enough to become who I'm meant to be. There's a difference."
"Is there?" His voice was raw, vulnerable in ways I'd rarely seen. "Because I look at you holding that gun and I think about Eva. How the violence found her, even though she wanted nothing to do with it. What if I'm doing the same thing to you?"
"You're not." I cupped his face, made him see me. Really see me. "Eva didn't choose this world. I did. I chose to run from Marco and Richard. I chose you over the easy path. And I'm choosing to learn how to fight back. That's not you corrupting me—that's me becoming stronger."
His forehead pressed against mine, and I felt him trembling slightly. This dangerous man was shaking because he was afraid of hurting me.
"You're already the strongest person I know," he whispered.
"Then trust me to make my own choices. Including this one." I held his gaze. "Including you."
"Even though I'm dangerous?"
"Especially because you're dangerous." I smiled despite the tears. "Because you're using that danger to protect me instead of controlling me. That's the difference between you and Marco."