CHAPTER 41
Marcello
Ireland felt colder than London. Sharper in a way that didn’t sit right. My phone rang before I even stepped out of the car. An unknown number flashed across my screen. Not the same one as before. I answered anyway.
“Yes.”
There was a pause—brief, measured. Then—
“Marcello.”
The accent was unmistakably Irish.
“This is Sean.”
I stilled. I knew exactly who he was.
“What is it?”
On the other end, I heard him draw a slow breath, like he was choosing his words carefully.
“You’ll want to get to St. Vincent’s.”
My grip tightened around the phone and my heartbeat picked up pace.
“Why?”
“Your woman’s here.”
The words landed clean. Too clean. And just like that, everything in my chest locked, sharp and immediate.
An image flashed—metal, impact, her body too still against the road.
It had been nothing then. A scratch. A scare.
It didn’t feel like nothing now. My pulse thudded hard in my ears, drowning out everything else.
“Where’s Santino?” I asked.
“He took a hit,” Sean said finally, the words flat, unembellished.
Just the fact. My jaw tightened.
“You should get here.”
The line went dead.
The hospital smelled like a blend of antiseptic fear and hope. Sean met me at the entrance and took me inside. He didn’t slow as he led me inside, but I caught his arm before we crossed into the waiting area.
“What the fuck happened?”
His gaze flicked to me, unimpressed. “Mind the tone, lad.”
My grip tightened slightly. “Answer the question.”
A beat passed. Then, quieter, more measured.
“Someone had been asking questions about Roxanne. We tracked it back. Turned out to be someone closer than we expected.”
“Who?”
“Family,” he said.
My jaw locked.
“He went after her,” Sean continued. “Didn’t get far. Santino stepped in. Took the hit. Returned it.”
My gaze hardened. “And the rest?”
Sean shook his head once. “Whatever happened in there—you’ll get it from her. Or him. If he survives.”
I saw her before anyone spoke. She sat completely still, as though time had moved around her, and she had simply stopped within it.
Her hands were stained with dried blood, dark against her skin, the same streaks marking her shirt and her face.
Tear tracks cut through it in uneven lines, evidence that she had already broken long before I arrived.
For a moment, I didn’t move. Because this version of her—was not the woman I knew. Not the one who challenged me, who laughed against my mouth, who met me with equal force and fire.
A nurse stood a few feet away, speaking low to someone else.
“She’s been like that for over an hour,” she said. “Won’t respond. She was—”
I didn’t hear the rest.
“Roxanne?”
She didn’t respond. Just kept staring ahead as though she was waiting for someone to appear. She had never looked this fragile.
It looked as though life had carved everything out of her and left only the shell behind. And I didn’t know how to reach her.That frightened me more than the blood staining her hands.
The only times I had ever seen her unguarded were in the quiet aftermath of us—when her body relaxed against mine, when sleep took her before she could rebuild her walls. Even then, it had never felt like weakness. This felt like absence.
I had seen her withdraw before. Small, fleeting moments where her gaze went distant, where she slipped somewhere I couldn’t follow. I had learned not to push then. Learned to wait until she came back on her own. But this—
For the first time since I had known her, I didn’t know how to reach her.
“Amore?”
I kneeled in front of her and gently stroked her cheek. Slowly she looked at me. Like pulling her back from somewhere she hadn’t come back from yet. For a second she just stared, as though she were looking right through me, not at me.
When she finally saw me, it wasn’t gradual.
There was no transition, no control—just a complete collapse, as though whatever had been holding her together had given way all at once.
The sound that left her didn’t even resemble a sob.
It sounded torn out of her—deeper, raw and unfiltered, as she stumbled forward and clutched at me like I was the only thing keeping her upright.
“Promise me,” she choked, her fingers tightening in my shirt as if she could force the answer out of me. “Promise me he’ll be okay.”
The words landed heavier than they should have. I didn’t know. I didn’t have that answer. But she wasn’t asking for truth. She was asking for a lifeline to hold onto.
“Promise me… please—” she hiccoughed.
“I promise,” I said.
I had no idea if it was true. But she looked at me with the desperation of a drowning woman. And drowning people don’t need truth. They need hope to hold onto.
The moment the words left me, she broke completely, her body giving in to the weight of it as she collapsed into me, sobbing in a way that had no restraint left in it.
“I—he—” she tried.
“I didn’t tell him,” she choked out. “I was going to tell him, and I didn’t.”
The words dissolved into another sob. I held her steadily.Even then, a realisation had begun taking shape.
Her fingers curled into my shirt instinctively, gripping like she needed an anchor beneath her hands, a reality that wouldn’t disappear.
It was a familiar movement—one I had felt before in the quiet of the night, when she would reach for me in her sleep without waking, as though some part of her always needed to confirm I was still there.
But now she clung to me as though she was already losing something. Or someone.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” I said gently.
I had built my life on control. On knowing how things moved, how people broke, how situations turned before they happened. Everything had a pattern. Variables. Systems. Rules. Things I could understand. Things I could control.
But her—she had never fit inside anything I understood.And despite that, I had never once considered letting her go.
She looked toward the corridor leading to the operating rooms and clutched me tighter before moving. I guided her forward, past Sean without a word, the quiet acknowledgement between us enough for now. There would be time for questions later. Time for answers. Time for consequences.
But as I walked beside her, feeling the way she clung to me like she might fall apart again if I let go, only one thought stayed with me—steady, unrelenting, impossible to ignore.
What happened to her?
And why did it feel like I was already too late?
I led her into the small washroom myself, closing the door behind us, shutting out the noise, the movement, the world that had already started spinning again.
She didn’t resist. Roxanne had never been passive—not with me, not with anyone. But now she moved when I guided her, stopped when I stopped, sat when I told her to. As though the fire inside her had died.
I turned the tap on, the sound of running water filling the space between us. For a moment, I just stood there, watching the red stain her hands, dried and cracked against her skin. Then I reached for her. Slowly. She flinched. It was small—barely there—but I felt it immediately.
My hand paused for a fraction of a second before I continued, gentler this time, guiding her hands beneath the water, letting it run over her skin.
The blood began to loosen, fading slowly.
She stared at it as it washed away, like she didn’t quite understand what she was seeing.
I reached for a cloth, wet it, and brought it to her face, wiping carefully, clearing the streaks from her cheek, her jaw, the edge of her mouth. She still wouldn’t look at me.
“Roxanne,” I murmured.
No response. Just the sound of her breathing—uneven, shallow, wrong. I tilted her chin slightly, trying to get her to meet my gaze. That was when she broke.
“I hurt you,” she whispered.
The words came out fractured, barely formed. They felt wrong. Not like guilt, but like grief. Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks.
“I hurt you… I hurt you…”
Her hands came up suddenly, gripping onto me, unsteady, desperate. For a second, I didn’t understand what she meant. The certainty in her voice shifted the meaning entirely. As though she had already condemned herself for something irreversible, deciding the damage belonged to her.
“Amore—”
Her knees buckled before I could finish. I caught her easily, pulling her against me as her body gave way completely, shaking with a force she could no longer contain.
“I hurt you, and you’ll hate me when you know,” she repeated, her voice cracking further with each word, collapsing into a sob.
“I hurt you—”
“Hey—” I steadied her, one arm around her, the other bracing her weight. “Roxanne—look at me.”
She didn’t. She pressed her face into my chest instead, her fingers clutching at my shirt, tightening like she was trying to hold herself together through me.
“I hurt you,” she whispered again, broken, like she had nothing left behind it.
My jaw tightened from realisation. Because people don’t break like this over mistakes that mean nothing.
“You didn’t hurt me,” I said evenly, my voice controlled despite feeling a dread within. “Whatever happened—we’ll deal with it.”
She shook her head against me, as though my words couldn’t reach wherever she’d gone. Like she had already decided what this was before I ever arrived. I didn’t push. I couldn’t. Not like this.
I stayed there until the shaking eased, until her grip loosened just enough that she could stand again without collapsing.
When she finally pulled back, her eyes still didn’t meet mine. I guided her out, my hand at her back, steadying her as we stepped back into the corridor.
She stopped just outside the door. For a moment, she said nothing.Then—
“I want to go to Mumbai.”
The words were absolute. She still wasn’t looking at me. Her gaze had fixed somewhere past my shoulder, as though I wasn’t standing right in front of her, as though I had already become something peripheral in her world.
A weight settled beneath my ribs.
Whatever had happened had shifted the ground beneath us. I could feel it without understanding it yet, like a fracture beneath the surface that hadn’t fully revealed itself. And for the first time since I had known her, there was a distance I couldn’t immediately close.
“Now?” I asked.
“Yes.”
No hesitation. No explanation. Just that. I kept looking at her, waiting—for anything. A reason. A glance. Anything that told me this was still within my control, that whatever this was could still be contained, understood, managed.
She gave me nothing.
And for the first time since I’d known her, I understood that whatever had happened in that warehouse had changed more than the blood on her hands.
I just didn’t know how much.
“Alright,” I said finally. “I’ll make arrangements.”
She nodded once, still not looking at me. And that stayed with me longer than anything else. More than the blood. More than the silence. More than the unanswered questions.