Page 166 of Sin & Sapphire

My answering laugh hurt so fucking much, and I didn’t care. I grabbed her wrist as she stood back up. “Please, just let me know if she’s okay.”

The nurse eyed me for a long moment, then nodded and turned to my parents. “He’ll be ready to go home tomorrow.”

I wasn’t going anywhere. Not until I laid eyes on my girl.

“Come home, Luca,” my father said. “Where you belong.” His eyes, so fucking familiar, a mirror image of my own, were haunted. “I’ve already lost Ginevra and Sofia. I can’t lose you too.”

My mother took my hand. “Come back to us, come run your father’s empire by his side.”

“Ourempire,” my father corrected, looking at my mother with more softness than I’d ever seen before. “I could never have done it without you,mia cara.”

“No,” I refused. My father’s gaze snapped to mine, his anger only sharpening my resolve. “I don’t want the empire if Ana’s not part of it.”

64

ANA

I woke in the dark,surrounded by the faint glow of machines, terrified and unable to discern where I was. Had I dreamed killing Tchérnov? Had he survived and captured me?

My heart hammered, and I tried to sit, only for pain to wrack my body as I pushed up from where I lay on my stomach. The machine beside me beeped in time with my heart, and the door opened, allowing the glow from fluorescent lighting into the room as nurses in blue scrubs ran in.

A hospital. I was in a hospital. No.No!I was supposed to have found Enzo in the confusion the explosion caused. A car would have been waiting for me, stocked with a disguise, a bag of cash, and stolen plates—my ticket to freedom.

Flashes of memory returned to me. Boris taunting me, cutting off my escape route. The explosion. Thepain. A quiet Russian accent in my ear. “Russo better fucking pay me back for this.” Moaning, unable to protest. Dmitri Lebedev dumping me in the trunk of his car. And then it went black, that’s all I remembered.

I collapsed back onto the bed, bitter disappointment coating the back of my throat.

“She’s awake!” someone called, and they flicked the light to my room on.

I moaned when pain stabbed me in the eyes.

“Where am I?” I croaked, trying and failing to push myself to sitting, shrieking in surprise at the agony in my shoulder.

A young female nurse squeezed my good shoulder. “Yorkfield General Hospital. I’m going to help you move to sitting, but it’s going to hurt.”

I nodded.

Every muscle in my body screamed in protest as she rolled me to my side. She tried to move me to my back, but I stopped her, the pain too great, as if I were being flayed alive. “That’s enough,” I gasped, and remained on my side. “No more.”

The nurse helped me back to my stomach, where I lay panting, trying to recover from the pain. “Let me take your vitals, and I’ll call the doctor.”

She shined a flashlight in my eyes, took my temperature and my blood pressure. “He’ll be able to prescribe more painkillers. Your back must be killing you,” she said before stepping away from me.

“You should know that there’s a man in the waiting room who gave me ten thousand dollars cash to tell him when you woke up. I won’t do it unless you tell me it’s okay.”

“Who?” I asked, barely able to form the word, I hurt so fucking bad.

“Me.” Valentin’s rich voice washed over me like a tide on the sand. I twisted awkwardly, every movement a deep agony as I strained to see him where he stood in the doorway. “And she’s not the only nurse I bribed.”

I turned my face away, the softening of his expression as he watched me too painful. I couldn’t bear a future where I dropped to my knees for this man, day after day after day, my heart aching for the faintest bit of praise, when he didn’t love me back.

“May I go get Angelo?” he asked.

“No,” I said softly. “Get out.”

“Princesse—Ana, please.”

The nurse walked away from me, and I heard the door shut firmly. “You have a lot of people desperate to see you, my dear.”

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