Chapter 2
Valentina
More than two weeks after the fire in the woodshed, Enzo was moved from the medical center upstate to a hospital in New York City.
Days after the move, I was permitted to see him during visiting hours.
I’d managed to get permission by letting hospital staff believe we were married.
As long as I kept up that charade, I could make sure that Enzo got the best care.
I was the one person advocating for him the whole time, despite my heart being torn.
Despite the anger that threatened to consume me like an out-of-control fire.
As I stepped into his private hospital room, I was shocked to find him out of bed. Not only was he out of bed, he was in the final stages of getting dressed—shrugging into a denim jacket that matched the jeans he wore.
I gasped when I saw him. No longer strapped to a bed for his own safety. No breathing tube. All that remained was the IV drip he seemed to have detached from his arm.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, marching up to him.
He was angled against the hospital bed, putting his jacket on. I’d brought some clothes several days earlier, but I hadn’t thought that he’d be getting into them this quickly.
“Doctors say I’m good to go. Tube’s been out for a couple of days now,” he answered in a hoarse rasp. The smoke from the woodshed fire was still affecting his voice.
“I’m certain they’ve said no such thing,” I countered.
“The doctors said that I’m healing. They’ve just been keeping me for observation these past couple of days to see how I am without that fucking tube. If I’m healing, what’s left to observe?”
Even with the jacket on now, Enzo looked leaner than he did before the fire.
The weight loss just served to highlight his cheekbones, sharp enough to cut glass.
His jaw was chiseled as ever, his arrogant mouth more prominent with the weight loss.
He was still handsome in spite of everything his body had been through since the fire.
I found that deeply infuriating. Of course he still looked good enough to tempt even me.
Me, the fiancée who despised him for his betrayal.
“You can’t just leave,” I said, shaking my head in frustration. “You’re not ready.”
“As long as I’m conscious and able to speak, I make my own decisions, Mrs. De Luca,” he said pointedly. “Besides, according to the doctors, I have three days left I this hellhole.”
I felt my face flush with heat at him calling me Mrs. De Luca.
Although we were still technically engaged, there was something extra intimate about him referring to me as his wife.
It signaled an emotional and physical bond that only spelled danger for my heart if I continued down this road.
“I let them think we were married so that I could visit you and make sure you were in good hands.”
“I figured,” he said, arms crossed as he leaned against the hospital bed. He clearly hadn’t regained all of his strength and he was trying to hide it.
“Can you even walk?” I demanded, trying to get through to him before he made some ridiculous decisions out of misguided male pride.
“Anybody who’s been in a hospital bed for two weeks is going to have a tough time walking,” he said. “Including anyone who’s completely healed. I’ve been out for almost a month. That cannot continue.”
“This is a bad idea,” I said flatly.
“I’ve been stuck in the hospital, in the dark about everything, while who fucking knows what’s been happening—”
“I have things under control,” I interrupted. “Nobody knows that you’re in the hospital. Everyone thinks that things are going on like normal.”
While I had made sure that his move to the new hospital was successful, I had also kept up appearances for my parents and Enzo’s family.
I let my parents think that we were still perfectly secure, hiding out in the safehouse upstate, biding our time until the wedding.
Doing that had been a gamble because Enzo, in what I could only describe as being in an agitated state, had accused my father of sending someone to start the fire in the woodshed.
If my father was responsible, he’d see right through my lies.
But I couldn’t deal with Enzo’s condition and my father, so I had taken a chance and settled on pretending that everything was fine.
I’d deal with the fallout once Enzo fully healed.
Then, there had been Enzo’s father, who I had lied to by sending text messages from Enzo’s phone. I’d kept the texts short and to the point, letting Don De Luca think that Enzo was still at the safehouse tracking whoever it was that had been coming after us.
And whoever had been coming after us had showed no mercy so far. A hitman had targeted my father weeks earlier, shooting him in Enzo’s apartment. Then there had been the fires set at Enzo’s car dealership, the bombing at a nearby bank, and an attempted poisoning during a wedding cake tasting.
All of it seemed to point to a common enemy—somebody who was out to destroy both my family and Enzo’s.
The Romanos and the De Lucas has been at war for years, and only my arranged marriage to Enzo could put an end to this bloody feud.
But ever since the agreement to our arranged marriage, someone had been coming after both the Romanos and the De Lucas alike.
Except, Enzo believed that my father had orchestrated the fire at the safehouse.
If we had a single, common enemy, how could my father be the one to blame for the fire?
“Look, I appreciate you doing all of this for me, but you don’t have to anymore,” Enzo said. “I’ll take it from here.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded.
“I’m grateful,” he said. “But you don’t need to keep pretending to give a shit about me. I don’t deserve it.”
So, he didn’t like owing me. Not now that I knew his true motives for pursuing a marriage to me.
Knowing what he was really up to put me at an advantage and it was clear that Enzo didn’t like that one bit.
He wasn’t just trying to get away from the hospital.
He was obviously trying to get away from me specifically.
“This isn’t about what you deserve,” I retorted. “You’re useless to me dead. That’s why I’ve fought so hard to keep you alive.”
I noticed the flash of disappointment in his dark-brown eyes.
Clearly, he’d been hoping that I’d stuck by him because I cared.
I refused to give him the satisfaction of me caring about his sorry ass.
At least, I refused to do that to his face.
Little did he know, that was exactly why I’d taken care of him the way that I did.
I had stayed with Enzo through his ordeal in the hospital because I did care.
I cared very deeply. Worse, I loved him, for all the good that it had done me.
“Still need an attack dog?” he asked smoothly, the disappointment vanishing so quickly I wasn’t entirely sure that I’d actually seen it. Maybe I’d only seen disappointment because that was what I wished to see.
“I need witnesses, proof, and another brain to help me figure out who’s been coming after us.
” I wanted to grab him and shake him, but that would be letting him see way too much of my frustration.
Besides, even with the weight loss, Enzo was too massive for me to shake.
I was a wisp of smoke compared to him. Only courage, cunning, and weapons on my part had ever evened the playing field between us.
Enzo narrowed his eyes. “One of them is your father, so you’ve already solved that one.”
The urge to defend my father would only serve to heighten tensions and make me too emotional to get my point across. I needed to face Enzo with sense and reason. Not as an emotional woman falling to pieces in front of him.
But the emotional turmoil that raged inside me threatened to take over and rule over my reactions to him. Because there was so much between us. Despite the brief length of time that we’d known each other, we have gone through so much together.
Now that bond was being tested. There was a very good chance that neither of us would come out of this unscathed. My heart had already been broken.
I had been tricked into believing that Enzo had agreed to marry me to end the war between our families.
But he’d had his own agenda. His own motives.
Mainly his agreement to marry me so that he could manipulate me into giving him my family’s mafia empire.
He’d bargained that my love and trust for him would have gotten me to do his bidding without question.
“Another one of your lies,” I finally said, anger simmering inside me.
“I’m not lying. You know I’m not,” he said forcefully.
“I know of no such thing,” I returned, fighting to keep my tone calm and even. “You made a bad bet, Enzo. Your attempt to manipulate me into a one-sided marriage failed. Just like this latest manipulation of yours will fail.”
“It’s not a tactic,” he insisted.
I wanted so badly to believe him. Not only did he sound convincing, my treacherous heart also wanted to believe him.
I had truly thought that as my feelings for him had grown, that had meant he’d felt the same way.
He had been so protective, so genuine. The passion between us had been explosive.
And when we’d finally had sex for the first time at the safehouse, it was like we were finally baring our souls to each other.
There had been no holding back. At least, I hadn’t been holding back. I’d thought it was the same for him.
Turned out he’d only had sex with me to get me to fall in love with him.
He’d been playing the part of a chivalrous fiancé and slept with me to make it seem real.
If I hadn’t learned the truth after a phone call from his father, I’d still be falling head over heels for him.
Now that I knew every word out of his mouth was a lie, I could guard my heart.