Chapter 22
Valentina
Eight hours.
Alessio had been in surgery for eight hours, and I couldn't breathe properly until someone told me he was alive.
I sat in the hospital waiting room, one hand protectively over my stomach where our twins grew—twelve weeks now, a small bump just starting to show beneath my loose sweater.
My other hand ached to hold Alessio's, to feel his touch grounding me like it always did.
The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, too bright, making everything feel surreal and nightmarish.
I couldn't eat or rest, couldn't think about anything except the image burned into my brain: Alessio throwing himself between me and Marco's gun. The impact. The blood. His eyes fluttering closed.
Please let him be okay. Please.
The waiting room door opened. Sofia walked in, moving carefully, her left arm still limited in its range of motion from the nerve damage she'd sustained when Marco's people shot her. Mostly healed now, but she still favored it when she was tired.
"Valentina." She crossed the room, pulled me into a careful one-armed embrace. "Any news?"
"Still in surgery." My voice came out hoarse from crying. "It's been eight hours."
"Then he's strong. He's fighting." She sat beside me, took my hand in her good one. "He'll come back to you. To all three of you."
We sat together—two women who'd nearly lost everything, waiting to see if the man I loved would survive.
Finally, after what felt like forever, the surgeon emerged. Still in scrubs, mask pulled down, exhausted but not grief-stricken.
That had to be good. Right?
"Ms. DeLuca?" He approached carefully, and I stood on shaking legs. "He's alive."
The relief nearly knocked me over. Sofia's arm steadied me.
"The bullet entered below his left arm and traveled inward—it missed his heart by two centimeters," the surgeon continued, exhaustion heavy in his voice.
"It nicked his pulmonary artery and completely collapsed his left lung.
We had to repair the arterial damage, reinflate the lung, and remove several bone fragments from two fractured ribs.
" He paused, and I saw the weight of what he'd just done written across his face.
"He crashed twice on the table—his heart stopped, and we had to resuscitate him both times.
It was touch-and-go for a while, Ms. DeLuca.
He's incredibly lucky to be alive. He'll need extensive recovery—we're talking weeks, possibly months—but barring further complications, he should make a full recovery. "
"When can I see him?"
"He's in recovery now, still unconscious from anesthesia. Give it a few hours, then we'll take you to the ICU."
I nodded, unable to speak past the tears.
My legs gave out.
Sofia caught me before I hit the floor, guided me back into the waiting room chair I'd occupied for eight endless hours. I collapsed into it, hands covering my face as the sobs finally came—relief and terror and gratitude all breaking loose at once.
Alive. He was alive.
Sofia knelt beside me, her good hand rubbing circles on my back while her own tears fell silently. "I told you," she whispered, voice thick with emotion. "I told you he'd fight his way back to you."
I couldn't answer. Could only cry while she held me, both of us releasing eight hours of fear we'd been holding back.
Our babies would have a father.
The next three months became a strange split existence—the first weeks consumed by Alessio's recovery and endless pretrial motions, then the grinding reality of the trial itself.
On the third day, Alessio finally woke. I was there when his eyes opened, when he saw me, and managed a weak smile despite the breathing tube.
"Hey, principessa," he rasped when they removed it hours later.
I kissed him carefully, mindful of the tubes and monitors. "Hey, yourself. You scared the hell out of me."
"Sorry. Didn't mean to." His hand found my stomach, still relatively flat at twelve weeks, palm spreading protectively over where our twins grew. "How are they?"
"We're okay. All three of us." I covered his hand with mine, interlacing our fingers over our children. "But you need to focus on healing. I've got the trial handled."
The defense filed every delay they could manage. Motions to suppress evidence. Challenges to my competency as a witness. A request for a change of venue that ate up two weeks of arguments before the judge denied it.
December passed in a blur of hospital visits and legal briefings.
By New Year's, Alessio had been moved out of the ICU, working with physical therapists to rebuild the strength the bullet had stolen.
I spent my days shuttling between his bedside and the prosecutor's office, reviewing documents, preparing testimony, watching my belly grow rounder with each passing week.
Jury selection began in late January. By then, I was past the point of hiding my pregnancy—the bump unmistakably visible beneath my courtroom blazer.
Fourteen days to seat twelve jurors and four alternates.
The defense rejected anyone who'd heard of Marco DeLuca.
In Montana, that eliminated half the pool.
The trial itself lasted nearly a month.
The courtroom felt like a gladiatorial arena.
I sat in the witness box, hands folded in my lap to hide their trembling, facing the packed gallery. Reporters in the back rows, sketch artists capturing every angle, FBI agents stationed at each exit.
And there, at the defense table, Marco.
Our eyes met across the courtroom. He looked smaller somehow, diminished in the standard suit they'd given him. No expensive tailoring, no distinguished silver hair perfectly styled. Just a man facing consequences he'd spent forty years avoiding.
Lead prosecutor James Rivera approached the witness stand with careful steps.
"Ms. DeLuca, can you tell the court about the evening of March seventeenth? When did you first discover your father's continued criminal activities?"
I took a breath, steadied myself. This was it. The moment I'd been preparing for.
"I arrived at Senator Richard Caldwell's office at approximately 2:15 p.m. to finalize wedding arrangements…"
I spent four days on the stand across two separate weeks, my testimony broken up to accommodate other witnesses and the defense's endless objections. I recited account numbers. Shipping routes. Dates spanning three years of criminal operations.
"The email was from Miguel Cordero, dated March sixteenth at 11:43 p.m. Subject line: 'Tuesday delivery confirmation.' It detailed two hundred AR-15 rifles, fifty thousand rounds of ammunition, forty kilograms of Semtex plastic explosive…"
Marco's attorney objected repeatedly. The judge overruled every time.
Rivera let me talk, barely interrupting, letting my testimony build an inescapable cage around my father.
The weapons trafficking charges alone required a week of testimony—shipping manifests, customs records, three dock workers who'd been granted immunity in exchange for cooperation.
I sat in the gallery for those days, watching the evidence pile up, watching the jury's faces shift from skepticism to horror.
Marco watched me from the defense table every day, his expression cycling through contempt, calculation, and something that might have been pride. I never looked back.
After ninety minutes of my final session on the stand, Rivera finally asked: "Ms. DeLuca, you've provided extraordinarily specific details about events from months ago. How is this possible?"
"I have eidetic memory. Photographic recall. I can't forget what I've seen, even when I desperately want to."
The courtroom went silent.
"So when you say you saw these account numbers, these shipping manifests, these communications—you're testifying to perfect visual memory of documents and conversations?"
"Yes."
"And you've recalled all of this without notes, without referring to any documents?"
"Yes."
Rivera turned to the jury. "Your Honor, with the court's permission, we'd like to demonstrate the witness's recall abilities for the jury."
The judge nodded. "Proceed."
Rivera pulled up emails on the courtroom screen—the same ones I'd described from Caldwell's computer. "Ms. DeLuca, are these the documents you referenced?"
I studied them for three seconds. "Yes. Email dated March sixteenth, 11:43 p.m., from Miguel Cordero to Richard Caldwell.
Subject line exactly as I stated. Account number 847392-B in the Cayman Islands for payment.
Shipment scheduled for Tuesday, March twenty-first, 6:00 a.m. customs clearance, transfer at DeLuca warehouse on Northern Avenue. "
Every detail was outlined perfectly. Every word matched the documents.
The jury looked stunned.
Marco's attorney stood for cross-examination, trying to shake my testimony. Suggested I was fabricating. Accused me of coaching. Implied my "supposed" photographic memory was a convenient fiction.
I stayed calm, answered every question with the same devastating precision.
The defense's psychiatric expert testified for two days that my "alleged" eidetic memory was psychologically impossible—a fabrication designed to lend false credibility to coached testimony.
Our expert dismantled him in forty minutes, citing peer-reviewed studies and my verified testing records from graduate school.
Finally, desperate, Marco's attorney went for character assassination.
"Isn't it true, Ms. DeLuca, that you've been diagnosed with severe anxiety and paranoid delusions?"
"No."
"But Senator Caldwell's medical experts were prepared to testify—"
"Senator Caldwell fabricated psychiatric records to discredit me when I discovered his criminal activities," I said clearly. "Those 'medical experts' were paid to lie. I've never been diagnosed with any mental illness. My actual medical records, subpoenaed by the prosecution, confirm that."
The attorney's face went red. "Objection, Your Honor—"
"Overruled. The witness may answer." The judge looked at me. "Continue, Ms. DeLuca."