Chapter Six
SHE'S SMALL IN THE bed.
That's the first thing my brain offers me when the nurses leave us alone, and it's a stupid thing for a man to think about a woman he has known for half her life.
The hospital they brought her to is on the seventeenth floor of a building I own a piece of without anyone knowing I own a piece of it.
The room has also been swept twice, and Rollo's at the door with two of his men in the corridor.
The hospital staff have been told not to ask questions, and so they don't.
In these pocket worlds I own, I'm king, and my word is law.
I sit in the chair beside the bed and look at her hand on the blanket. I want to take it in mine, but I don't. Not after what happened. Not after seeing how me storming into her life caused her to faint on my feet, for all the wrong reasons.
My gaze moves to her face, and my jaw tightens at the dried tear tracks on her cheeks.
Almost two fucking decades, I've waited for this moment.
Planned for it. But I just...I'm not good at doing normal things.
Especially normal things that are good. And so I ended up making her cry, and for all the wrong reasons again.
Is this the part where I should accept that she can never be mine again?
That thought was the only thing that kept me going all these years.
Mia. Mine.
She doesn't know this of course, but every damn year I've been celebrating our anniversary even though our marriage didn't even last a day. Once a damn year, I give myself the luxury of closing my eyes for a few days and remember her.
Her hair under my hands. Her lips. The way she'd put her hand on my chest like she belonged there. I remember everything about her—but I also know better than to carry any keepsake of her.
No photographs, no anything that can be traced back to Juniper Lake. That's just Crime 101 when you're racing against time, and you want to get to your enemies before they get to you. You don't ever keep anything that can be used as ammunition against you.
Juniper, moglie mia. My wife.
That's the last thing I always think of before falling asleep.
A soft knock at the door, followed by Rollo's quiet voice, alerting me. Doctor incoming.
I rise to my feet, my mask sliding back into place as I hear another knock. I turn just as the doctor comes in.
“Mr. Sestini?”
The doctor is a woman in her fifties, gray hair pulled back, a clipboard tucked under her arm.
“Dr. Jimenez.” We've spoken earlier, and she's worked here long enough to know who I am...without actually knowing who I am. She knows enough not to ask what I don't want her to ask, is what I'm saying. “You have her results?”
“I do, yes, and it pretty much confirms what I suspected.
Your wife had what we call a stress cardiomyopathy event.
The medical name is Takotsubo cardiomyopathy.
It can also be called broken heart syndrome, and that's the term you're more likely to see if you decide to look it up later, which I imagine you will.”
Is that for real? I can feel a muscle start ticking in my jaw. A broken fucking heart syndrome?
“It's triggered by an acute emotional event.
The heart muscle weakens temporarily, and on imaging it can look very similar to a heart attack.
But there is no permanent damage to the cardiac tissue, and recovery is generally complete.
Mrs. Sestini's case is at the milder end of the spectrum. We expect her to be discharged within three to four days.”
“What does she need?”
“Rest. Quiet. No further acute stressors for a period of weeks. Anti-anxiety medication if she wants it, which is her decision. Continued monitoring with her regular physician for a few months. And the obvious.”
Dr. Jimenez looks at me sternly. “Whatever caused this—she shouldn't be exposed to it again.”
The woman has guts, I'll give her that. And so, even if her words sting, I force myself to nod. “Duly noted. Anything else?”
A slight smile cracks her expression. “You've already agreed not to have her exposed to the same causes, and I know a man like you takes your word seriously. That's more than enough. Have a good day, Mr. Sestini.”
The muscle in my cheek continues ticking as the door clicks shut behind her. Outside the room, Rollo's silhouette resumes its position on the other side of the frosted glass.
I glance back at my wife.
Broken heart syndrome.
It almost makes me laugh. But I don't. If laughter that doesn't come from the heart is enough to land Juniper in the hospital, I have a feeling it will kill someone like me...even if I don't have a fucking heart.
The phone on the bedside table rings, and I pick up the receiver. “Hello?” The voice on the other end is anxious.
Typical.
Odessa has been friends with my wife since their high school days, and when I checked Juniper's phone earlier for emergency contacts, it was a small (and admittedly undeserved) comfort to see the two women still in contact even after all these years, and despite her now working in Lisbon.
“Odessa, this is Juniper's husband—”
“Nate?”
“I had my assistant inform you about Juniper.”
“How is she?” Odessa questions anxiously. “Your assistant says she's in the hospital? Are you in the hospital? Is she—”
“She's asleep. It's nothing serious.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, Odessa.”
“Thank good—wait. Why are you—how are you—”
“I'll leave that for Juniper to explain once she's well.”
“No, wait—”
“Goodbye, Odessa. It was nice talking to you again.”
I hang up the phone. Odessa is the only one who knows about my marriage to Juniper. The best friend any woman could ask for. But be that as it may, she's also the complete opposite of Juniper, and I can only handle her exuberance for token minutes at a time.
I'm about to turn away when the phone rings again.
Don't answer it.
But since that would be a cowardly thing to do—
“I need you to listen to me, Nate, because I swear I'll kill you—I swear I really will if you ever do something to hurt her again.”
My fist slowly clenches as Odessa's next words paint a picture that I've imagined...but now I know for certain.
You destroyed her, Nate. You made her forget how to smile. You made her stop believing...in anything. Anyone. Even in herself. Please just go away if you're going to hurt her again. Please just go. I don't think she can ever survive if you break her heart again.
This time, it's Odessa who hangs up, and I can hear her crying as she does.
I go back to my place, sitting next to Juniper who's still pale and unconscious. And smaller than ever. And, after what Odessa said—
More fragile, too.
More tender-hearted.
That it just makes me start asking questions that terrify the hell out of me.
E adesso? What now?
Alone with my wife in her hospital room, I hear three monitors beeping at separate frequencies and the soft hush of a machine that's working overtime to inflate a cuff on Juniper's arms. And underneath all of this, I hear the sound of my wife's heart...still breaking to pieces.
It's been breaking for almost two decades, and what I do next can either put all those pieces back together...or destroy what's left of it. For good.
It was not supposed to be like this, dammit.
My chest clenches as I watch her chest rise and fall under the blanket. She's sleeping peacefully now, but will it be the same if I ask her to come back to my bed? Will she still find peace if she's back in my arms?
I have loved her since the first day I saw her—a girl seated on a stone bench, alone on a Tuesday afternoon in an Italian cemetery, and reading a book that's as morbid as her surroundings.
And I loved her even more when I married her under a name that wasn't mine.
And I had to remind myself I love her, I love her, I love her—while forcing myself to go through with my plans.
Pay a woman to be in my bed. Break my bride's heart. Then walk out of her life without looking back.
Mia moglie. Ti amo.
Eighteen years, I've dreamt and worked hard for this day.
But unlike all my plans to take down my enemies—nothing about my plans for getting my wife back has worked.
All it's earned me are the things that I would never ever want, like the tears that have dried on my wife's cheeks and the sound of her voice breaking as she asks me if we're even married.
Why can't I ever do things right for the one and only girl I've ever loved?
I look at my wife. On a hospital bed, unconscious, because of me. And there's just no escaping the question I have to ask myself.
Can I let her go if that's what it means to love my wife?