Page 4 of Bound to the Mafia King

He shook his head. “I got here six hours after your crash. I didn’t see a woman here, and the nurses didn’t know anything. But we can talk about all of that later. For now, you need to rest. Your body has been through a lot, and you just woke up.”

I wanted to argue with him, but that’s when the fatigue hit me.

I could feel the medication slowly coming into effect. Andres stood by my side and patted the side of my face in a loving way. He stared down at me with soft eyes. It was a look he had not shown me since we were children.

The emotion roared in his gaze, so much so I saw the thin sheen of moisture that covered his eyeball.

My brother was by no means an emotional man. He was hard to the core and didn’t care for many things. But those things that he did care about, he guarded jealously.

“Don’t tell me you’re about to cry.” I could barely get my little cheap shot out without getting choked up. “I’m fine, Andres. You’re worried about nothing.”

He didn’t speak. He simply stared at me with those eyes of his. I could not even begin to fathom what was storming through his mind. He had a good poker face, far better than mine. Even with me knowing him all my life, I still couldn’t get a good enough read on him. No one ever truly knew how he was feeling, apart from his wife, of course.

Without warning, he leaned down and enveloped me into a hug. I was a little shocked at first, but then I relaxed and returned the sentiment.

We had never been a touchy-feely kind of family. We were told to be abrasive and hard all our lives. Those were the skills that we needed to survive in this world. So, when one of us did things like this, it was often out of the ordinary.

I attempted to pull back out of his hold, but he gripped onto me tighter.

“Just allow me, okay?” he choked out.

I had never heard this man so filled with emotion in my life. I guess losing someone you love would do that to you. I stopped my movements and allowed him to hug me. He needed this moment to take in that I was truly alive, that I was still breathing.

“Okay.”

I didn’t know how long I had been asleep for, but when I woke up a nurse was taking my vitals before she left, leaving me alone in the room.

When I closed my eyes, all I could see were those green ones. They had been the most magnificent mixture of green and blue. It was unlike anything I had ever seen in my life before. My brain tried to retrieve the image of her face, but every time I thought back to the night of the accident, I would just see this blurry image.

Who was she? And why the hell had she not given her name to the staff when she brought me in?

This mystery woman had saved my life. If she had not pulled me out of the rubble, who knew what would have happened to me? She had been my heaven-sent.

I needed to find her.

I didn’t know how much time passed as I thought of the mystery woman, but the next thing I knew, sleep had found me. I was back to dreamland, where there was nothing but pitch black.

The next time I woke, I heard the door to my hospital room open. I sat up and waited to see who was coming in. But unlike the moment when I had woken up, there was no smile on his face or any sign of tenderness. In fact, my brother looked rather agitated and on edge.

“Brother?” I greeted him as he walked to the end of the bed.

Clearly, he had something to say, because his eyes were hard-set on me. He gripped the end of my bed and tightened his fist around the hard plastic.

The tension in the room was so thick I could liken it to sludge. Neither I nor my brother spoke. He just stared at me from the end of my bed with a pensive look on his face.

I could see the judgment, but most of all the disappointment in his eyes. I had no idea why the fuck he was pensive, I was the one in the hospital bed with my body hooked up to various machines keeping me alive.

“Are you just going to stand there like an overbearing father or are you going to speak, brother?” It was best to get it overand done with while I still had the energy. I could already feel the pain slowly starting to make a resurgence, and I had no tolerance for talking. “Speak, Andres.”

“You lied.” His fists tightened on the edge of the bed. “You were on fucking cocaine, Valerio.”

My heart jumped in my chest, but years of torture and interrogation had taught me to school my features. “No, I wasn’t.”

He scoffed and pushed off the end of the bed. “Must you keep making a fool out of me? At least have the respect not to lie to my face. How long have you been on drugs?”

I opened my mouth again to lie, but he held his hand up, stopping me from speaking.

“You were in a coma for nearly two weeks, Valerio. You were on the brink of death as your body detoxed the shit that you put in your system. I wanted to have you airlifted from this shithole the moment you came out of surgery, but they said that your body was going through withdrawal from drugs. Imagine my surprise when I heard. Why, I thought, that’s impossible. My brother told me he is clean.”

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