Page 168 of Sin & Sapphire

Dr. Moyo sighed and scratched the back of his neck, as if embarrassed. “Your men have spent a fortune bribing my hospital staff to try to get into this room. I’d like to promise that your records will stay confidential but …”

He trailed off.

A sharp knock on the door drew both of our attention. A nurse wheeled in a cart covered in a rainbow of flowers, followed by several other nurses. Soon the room was full of them, bright spots of cheer among the bland white and chrome of the hospital equipment.

One of the nurses held a card in front of my face with a roll of her eyes. “They don’t pay me enough for this shit.”

“We don’t pay you at all for this shit,” Dr. Moyo murmured, his lips curving up with amusement. “But I’m going to pretend that I don’t know you accepted a bribe to deliver these.”

The nurse grinned. They’d obviously played this game before with other patients. Fuckin’ Yorkfield.

“I gotta wait until she gives me an answer,” she said.

Carefully, I opened the card—elegant and expensive.Valentin.The rough scrawl inside wasn’t his handwriting though.

Angel,

Let us in. Please.

Angelo

And the flowers? I inhaled. Luca knew I loved the bright colors to hide the corporate blandness of our hotel rooms and that the hospital would be no different.

A tear streaked down my cheek, and I clutched the card to my heart. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’tlove. And after a week of Boris’s cruelty, I knew I couldn’t spend the rest of my life with men who didn’t love me with all their hearts as I loved them.

“I don’t have anything to say to them,” I said to the nurse, embarrassed at how wobbly my voice was.

“They insisted on an answer,” she said, her hands on her hips, as if I owed her a goddamned thing.

“That is my answer,” I said and closed my eyes, feigning sleep. Flowers weren’t the solution. “Wait—I need my phone.”

The nurse tilted her head. “You weren’t brought in with one.”

“I need to make a call,” I whispered.

She indicated the phone beside my bed. “It’ll be charged to your room.”

One more thing I didn’t know how I’d pay for.

The moment the room emptied, I reached for the phone, crying out at the pain in my ribs when I did so. Fuck, that hurt. I dragged the cart to me, and then picked up the headset and dialed Enzo, praying he answered the unknown number.

“Accardi,” he snapped.

“It’s Ana,” I said, then asked, “Why the fuck am I still in Yorkfield?”

The line lay silent for a long moment, too long.

“I’m sorry,” he said, finally. “Dmitri Lebedev got to you before I did and brought you to the hospital. And then your men set up their vigil.”

“I need to get out of here. Without a ring on my finger, I’m still in danger, and more importantly, I’m putting everyone else here in danger.”

Enzo’s bark of laughter surprised me. “You’re a fool, Ana. Your men have that place locked down tighter than Fort Knox. They’re not going to let anyone get to you. Hey!”

“Princesse?” Valentin’s voice, raspy and low, came through the phone.

I hung up. I couldn’t speak to him yet, not until I’d steeled my heart for the conversation that would have to follow, when I told him I never wanted to see him again.

It was a lie.

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