Chapter 22
Lorcan's arms are warm. Solid. The kind of warm that's supposed to matter when your world implodes.
They don't.
Nothing matters.
Giovanni is dead.
I'm crying so hard I can't breathe—my lungs doing that hiccuping thing where your body forgets how oxygen works.
I never told him. Never said the words that mattered. Never got to explain that I chose him, not because he broke me, but because he saw every broken piece and kept them anyway.
I'm curled into Lorcan like he's a life raft, but life rafts are for people who plan to survive.
I don't want to survive this.
How do you survive the death of the man who rewired your entire nervous system? The man who taught you that submission could feel like safety?
Lorcan's saying something soft in Irish.
It can't fix this.
Nothing can.
The security gate alert makes my entire body jump.
Lorcan goes rigid against me. His body shifts from comforting to tactical in half a heartbeat—the kind of shift that says threat assessment in progress. He pulls away carefully, like I'm made of glass that might shatter if he moves too fast.
I don't care who's at the gate. Could be the LaRiccias coming to finish the job. Could be the Grim Reaper himself. Doesn't matter.
Lorcan crosses to the security panel, keys open the camera feed and intercom. I watch him freeze.
He presses a button that must open the gate, then opens the front door and waits on the threshold. A few moments later, Jino walks through.
His eyes find me immediately.
I'm up before I decide to move, my body operating on autopilot. I crash into his chest, and the floodgates open all over again. Crying harder now because Jino is here, which means it's real. It's not a nightmare I can wake up from.
"He's dead," I choke out against Jino's shirt, fisting my hands in the fabric. "Is it true? Tell me it's not true—"
"Wait." Jino's voice cuts through my spiral, sharp and confused. His hands grip my shoulders, holding me at arm's length so he can see my face. "Who's dead?"
I blink up at him through tears, my brain short-circuiting.
Lorcan and I look at each other.
"Giovanni turned himself in to Luca LaRiccia," Lorcan says, his voice steady despite the devastation bleeding through his eyes.
Jino's face goes completely blank.
Lorcan continues, his voice steady, but his hands are shaking.
"My Uncle Fearghus got word from New York a few hours ago.
Giovanni drove to the LaRiccia compound in Little Italy.
He threatened them, or something. Fearghus wasn't clear.
Only that the guards pulled him out of his Lamborghini by the throat.
Giovanni hit the ground hard. They dragged his body inside the building.
Took his car." He pauses. "They think he's dead, Jino.
It didn't look good. He was covered in blood. A head injury."
The words hit me again, sharper this time.
Pulled from his car by the throat. Hit the ground. Covered in blood.
My brain builds a movie I don't want to watch—Giovanni's face smashed against concrete, suit torn and ruined, blood matting his dark hair. Those green eyes that could silence a room—empty.
I can't breathe.
We'll never finish our poetry.
Jino's brow furrows, confusion bleeding through his usually controlled expression. "Dead? What? No. Giovanni's not dead. He called me hours ago with specific instructions."
"What?" Lorcan and I say it simultaneously.
Jino looks between us like we've lost our minds.
"He ordered me to bring Dom and Ricky to Boston immediately.
Told me to get them settled in a hotel downtown—keep them out of the way.
Then he commanded me to report here after I dropped them off.
" He pauses, studying our faces. "He didn't mention anything about going to Little Italy. "
"Well," Lorcan snaps. "He definitely went. I saw the fucking—" His words cut out, his gray eyes meeting mine. But quickly slide back to lock on Jino. When he continues, his voice is low, almost a whisper. "I saw the footage, Jino. It looked… bad."
The gate alarm screams again.
I flinch hard enough that my teeth click together.
Lorcan's already moving to the security monitor, Jino right behind him. Their movements are identical—that professional synchronicity that comes from years of being armed and paranoid for a living.
On screen, the Aventador sits at the gate.
Black. Sleek. Unmistakable.
My heart stops, then restarts at triple speed.
The window tint is so dark I can't see inside.
Giovanni could be inside. Alive. Coming for me.
Or his body could be slumped in the driver's seat, staged there as a message.
Or LaRiccia soldiers could be behind that wheel, driving his car because they want us to open the gate thinking it's safe.
Or it could be rigged. A bomb. A threat I can't even imagine.
I don't know.
And not knowing is worse than any answer.
Lorcan and Jino move in perfect tandem—both drawing weapons so fast I barely track the motion.
I stand frozen between them, my heart hammering so hard I can hear blood rushing in my ears.
Lorcan reaches for the remote gate control.
He presses the button.
The steel gates swing open. The Aventador pulls forward. Slowly. Too slowly.
The car stops in the center of the courtyard, engine purring that low, expensive growl.
Still no one can see through those windows.
I hold my breath.
The driver's door opens.
Giovanni emerges.
And I—
I break.
Completely.
Tears flood down my face before I even register I'm crying. Not grief anymore. Relief. So violent and overwhelming I can't breathe, can't think, can't do anything except feel.
He's covered in blood.
Dried blood clumps a gash at his temple, matting his dark hair. More blood crusts his split lip. His expensive suit—always so perfect, always so pristine—is torn across the shoulder, stained dark across the chest.
He moves carefully. Stiffly. Like every breath cracks something inside his ribs.
But he's standing.
He's alive.
He's real, and here, and not dead.
I try to run.
Lorcan's hand shoots out, iron around my bicep, yanking me back so hard I stumble.
"Wait," he commands.
But I don't want to wait. I need to touch him. Need physical confirmation that he's real, that this isn't some nightmare hallucination my grief-soaked brain conjured.
Lorcan holds me in place while Giovanni closes the Aventador's door. He puts his hands up. "I'm alone." Then he's walking towards us.
I strain against Lorcan's grip, thrashing like a hooked fish. "Let me go!"
Giovanni's green eyes find mine across the courtyard.
Everything else disappears.
Lorcan releases my arm.
I run.
I crash into Giovanni's chest hard enough that he grunts—actual pain, the sound punched out of him—but his arms come around me anyway, holding me tight despite the obvious agony it causes.
I don't waste a single moment.
"My King," I gasp against his bloody shirt, my hands fisting in the torn fabric. "My King, my King—"
His hand tangles in my hair, gripping, pulling my head back so he can see my face.
"I am yours," I whisper, the words spilling out raw and desperate. "I choose you. I choose you. I don't want any of this without you. None of it makes sense without you, Giovanni. I don't want it."
He lets out a breath and just stands there, looking at me with those devastating green eyes like he's memorizing every freckle, every angle, every impossible thing about this moment.
Then, slowly—so slowly I feel every fraction of the distance between us being erased—he leans down and kisses me.
It's not like any other kiss I've ever had. From anyone. Ever.
I can count the number of times Giovanni has kissed me on one hand with fingers left over, and every single one of those kisses was a weapon used to get something from me.
Never, not once, has it ever been tender.
But it's tender now.
His mouth moves against mine with a gentleness that makes my chest ache. Like I'm something precious instead of something owned. His fingers cradle my jaw with such careful reverence that tears burn behind my closed eyelids.
It's everything I ever wanted in a kiss and never thought I'd get from him.
When he finally pulls back, his thumb lifts to trace the edge of the collar still locked securely around my throat. His touch is featherlight, almost reverent.
His voice, when it comes, is barely more than a whisper—rough and raw and achingly possessive.
"Miss Take," he breathes against my lips, the words vibrating through the thin space between us before his hands find my waist and pull me closer.
His eyes close as he exhales slowly, like he's trying to center himself, and when he speaks again his voice carries that dangerous edge I know so well.
"I would like to stress here—" and the formal phrasing feels deliberately chosen, like he's struggling to maintain some semblance of control even in this moment of tenderness, "—that the consequences you endured at the hands of my associate last night will not be enough to erase the demerits you earned. "
His thumb strokes across my collarbone, tracing the edge of the collar with maddening slowness.
"You broke all three of my octopus hearts when I saw you come in that chapel without my permission."
Oh, God. I look up at him, blinking. Then I reach up and place both my hands on his face. Because this admission cost him dearly.
He just admitted to being… jealous.
Giovanni Bavga does not do jealous.
I open my mouth to explain, but he kisses me silent. Whispering words past my lips…
"Three hearts that beat beneath the ocean's veil,
Each one I gave to you without consent—
Three times the pain when loving seems to fail.
Like ink that clouds the water, my intent
Was always to conceal what lies within;
A master of escape, yet still I'm spent.
Your absence left me hollow in my skin,
As if I'd squeezed through spaces far too small,
Where only beaks remain—where we begin.
I cannot fit through cracks in your stone wall
Unless you choose to let me break inside.
Three hearts, three times I love you—that is all."
"Yes, my King," I whisper back. "I love you too. That is all."