Chapter 20 #2
Again her crushing grip digs into my hand, her pulse hammering wildly against my wrist, and again she does not move an inch. I lean closer, pressing my wet temple flat against hers, tangling my fingers in her dark hair, letting her feel every ounce of my weight, my warmth, my presence.
SNAP-CLACK!
“Sample three secured,” Vance announces, dropping the final tissue core into the glass jar. “Needle out. Applying direct manual pressure now.”
Gia lets out a long, shuddering exhale that trembles through her entire frame. Her grip on my hand doesn’t loosen. She stays frozen on the table, her forehead pressed against mine, her ragged breathing slowly synchronizing with the heavy, steady rise and fall of my chest.
For five agonizing minutes, Dr. Vance holds firm, steady pressure over the site with folded gauze. The silence in the nook is thick, heavy, broken only by the sound of Gia’s recovering breath and the quiet hum of the ultrasound machine.
“Bleeding is controlled,” Dr. Vance says finally, lifting his hands.
He applies a thick, sterile pressure dressing over her left breast, securing it with strips of heavy medical tape, before placing a gel ice wrap directly over the bandage.
“You will experience localized soreness, deep bruising, and stiffness over the next forty-eight hours, Dr. Santoro. Keep the ice pack on for twenty minutes out of every hour.”
Gia slowly sits up, her face pale as linen, her left arm held stiffly against her side to protect the fresh dressing.
“And the tissue?” I demand, standing over Vance as he seals the formal jars containing her breast tissue cores.
“The samples are being picked up by a private medical courier within the hour,” Dr. Vance explains, placing the jars into a locked biohazard transport box.
“They go directly to the senior breast pathology and oncology lab. We are running full immunohistochemical stains, hormone receptor panels, and genomic testing.”
“How long?” I ask, my voice gravelly and dangerous.
“Forty-eight hours,” Vance says quietly, looking up at me through his wire-rimmed glasses. “Pathology takes time, Don Valentino. We do not rush a tissue analysis when a woman’s life is on the line. I will call you the exact second the chief pathologist signs the final report.”
Gia reaches for her plum silk blouse on the chair, her fingers trembling slightly as she tries to navigate the buttons with her right hand. Her pride is still fighting, still trying to put her armor back on before anyone sees her bleed.
“Let me,” I say softly.
I step between her and the doctor. I take the silk blouse from her hands.
I gently guide her arms through the sleeves of her blouse, my massive fingers carefully working the small silk buttons up the center of her chest, making sure the cloth doesn’t pull against the fresh pressure bandage on her chest. Then I strip off my heavy wool suit jacket, still holding the deep, radiating heat of my body, and drape it over her shoulders.
The dark wool swallows her small frame, and she closes her eyes for a brief second, breathing in the cedarwood and river water clinging to the fabric.
When the last button is fastened, Gia tries to swing her legs off the table and stand up under her own power. The moment her leather flats hit the floor, her knees buckle. The local shock of the procedure and the emotional exhaustion catching up to her all at once.
Before her knees can touch the wood, my arms shoot out.
I don’t ask for permission. I don’t check her contract. I scoop my right arm beneath her knees and my left arm behind her back, lifting her straight up into my chest.
“Luca—put me down,” she gasps, her hands instinctively wrapping around my neck to steady herself, her face flushing with a sudden flare of Santoro indignity. “I can walk. I am not an invalid.”
“You are my wife, and you just had a needle driven into your chest three times,” I say, my voice cool, absolute, and leaving zero room for argument. “You can yell at me when we get home. Right now, you stay in my arms.”
I carry her out of the exam nook, past Dr. Vance’s desk, and down the carpeted hallway.
Gianni holds the rear oak door open, his enforcers forming a tight, armed wall around us as we step out into the rain.
I keep her tucked against my chest, shielding her body from the downpour with my own frame, until I slide her safely into the leather back seat of the car.
The drive back to the Valentino estate across the river is made in total, heavy quiet.
Gia rests her head against the leather headrest, her eyes closed, her right hand holding the gel ice wrap firmly against her chest dressing. The rain continues to hammer against the car’s tinted glass, a bleak, gray wall isolating us from the rest of New Orleans.
When we pull through the iron gates of the compound, I don’t let the house staff meet us at the portico. I open her door, lift her back into my arms, and carry her up the grand winding staircase toward the east wing.
She doesn’t fight me this time. She rests her pale cheek against the wet lapel of my dress shirt, her breath slow and shallow against my neck, her body completely spent.
I carry her into her master bedroom, the massive, dark-paneled suite featuring the king-size velvet bed and the adjoining connecting door that leads to my private bedroom.
I lay her down gently on top of the dark silk duvet. I unlace her leather flats, remove her shoes, and pull a warm cashmere throw up over her legs, making sure her left arm is propped comfortably on a velvet throw pillow to relieve pressure on her chest incision.
I take a bottled water from the sideboard, grab the mild analgesic Dr. Vance prescribed, and set them on the nightstand right beside the black-ink copy of her contract.
Gia opens her dark eyes, watching me through the dim amber light of the bedside lamp. She looks small against the velvet headboard, her hair slightly messy, her plum blouse unbuttoned at the throat to allow room for the thick pressure bandage.
“You can go back to your office now, Luca,” she says softly, her voice raspy, trying to re-erect the boundary wall between us. “Fausto needs you at the port. The Russo file isn’t going to audit itself.”
I look down at her. I look at the paper contract on her nightstand, the five items she wrote in black ink to keep me out of her life, to guarantee her separate rooms, to keep me at a distance.
“Fuck the port,” I say flatly.
Against my hip, my encrypted phone vibrates violently. A sharp, triple-pulse notification from Fausto. I slide the device from my pocket, glancing down at the glass screen.
Don Luca. Berth 9 just went dark. Russo enforcers intercepted the pharmaceutical shipment ten minutes ago. They bypassed our outer perimeter using our internal manifest codes. The port leak just detonated. Moretti is calling an emergency council.
My jaw tightens until my molars ache. The Old Guard is screaming. Cosa Nostra is on fire. Russo is testing my gates.
I don’t call Moretti back. I don’t order an immediate strike. I type a single, ice-cold response onto the server: Lock down Berth 9. Contain the perimeter. I am offline for the next forty-eight hours.
I leave her door open and go down to my study.
Sitting on the corner of my mahogany desk is a thick leather binder containing municipal permit applications, border land deeds, and architectural schematics for the trauma hospital I bought in secret months ago. Casa Lucia Hospital.
I pick up the permits, swing the harbor painting back from the concealed wall vault, and enter the code: 04–12–88.
The heavy titanium bolts retract with a soft, mechanical click.
I place the Casa Lucia permits deep inside the private vault, shutting the steel door and locking my grand calculation behind steel and stone.
It is the hospital I am building in secret to give her everything she dreamed of, but right now, my only duty is standing guard over her breath.
I climb back up to her bedroom, grab the massive, dark velvet armchair sitting in the corner, and drag it across the dark herringbone floorboards with a heavy, muted scrape.
I place the armchair directly beside her mattress, two inches from her nightstand, blocking the path between her bed and the rest of the room.
I strip off my wet tie, unbutton the top three buttons of my dress shirt, roll my white sleeves up to my elbows in two clean folds, and sit down in the chair.
I lean back, plant my forearms on the velvet armrests, and lock my dark gaze onto her face.
Gia stares at me, her breath hitching. “What are you doing?”
“I am sitting here,” I say.
“For how long?”
“For forty-eight hours,” I tell her, my dark eyes unblinking, unarmored, and burning with a possessive, unyielding devotion that no contract on earth can erase.
“Until Arthur Vance calls with that lab report, I don’t leave this chair.
I don’t step out of this room. You don’t get to walk through your mother’s ghost alone anymore, principessa. Not under my roof.”
Gia stares at me for a long, agonizing second.
Her jaw twitches, her lower lip trembling for a microscopic fraction of a heartbeat before she bites it back.
She looks at the Don sitting in a velvet chair beside her bed, a man who engineered her family’s debt, signed her rules blind, and is now taking up an iron guard over her pain.
She doesn’t tell me to leave.
She slowly reaches her right hand out from under the cashmere throw, sliding her icy fingers across the dark nightstand until her knuckles rest against the arm of my chair.
I reach out and cover her hand with mine, my scar-seamed palm wrapping around her fingers.
The forty-eight-hour clock begins now. And I am not moving an inch.