Page 110 of Dark Mafia Bride

The words beat in my head, relentless, like a drum I can’t escape. I run toward the waiting car, my wife unconscious in my arms. Her limp body presses against mine, and I hold her as if she’s the last thing tethering me to reality, the last breath of fresh air in a world that’s drowning.

My world is drowning.

Her hair brushes against my neck, soft and familiar, but it feels like a ghost against my skin. I press my lips to her temple, whispering things I don’t even hear, my heart pounding too loudly to make sense of the words.

“Please,” I choke out. “I’m sorry…please, Mirabella. Just stay with me.”

Her lashes tremble, but her eyes stay closed. Her skin is too pale, and the bruise already forming on her jaw—so dark, so wrong—makes my stomach churn. I see her family and mine standing in the distance, their faces frozen in shock and fear. Nonna’s voice rings out, frantic, echoing into the night, but I don’t hear her, nr the way Isabella clutches Giulia in her arms while they both sob.

I don’t hear anything except the urgent thud of my own heartbeat, the cold pressure of her body in my arms.

All I can think isI need to get her to a hospital. I need her to wake up. I need her to live.

I climb into the back seat, holding her tight against me, cradling her like a fragile thing. Luca slams the car into gear and speeds through the streets, weaving between traffic with a ferocity that borders on madness. The world blurs around us—lights, shadows, the low hum of the city. My pulse races, a wild, desperate thing beating against the confines of my chest.

My hands are firmly clutching Mirabella’s cold ones as she lies in my arms. The way she never squeezes back when I squeeze her, the way her cold skin feels against mine, sends me into a fit of panic that I try to keep on a leash.

I’ve never felt anything like this before. This panic, this horror, thisfear.

Is this what love truly feels like? How could something so sweet and wholesome, something that made my heart full in ways I’d never experienced, something that made me feel more alive than I have ever felt in my thirty-two years of living, be the same thing that digs painfully into my spine, the same thing that spreads like acid in the pit of my stomach, the same thing that makes the air thinner and thinner as I struggle to breathe?

I’ve faced enemies, betrayals, gunfire, but this... this feeling of complete helplessness is more terrifying than any bullet. I take lives and let people live, yet I can’t do anything to save the woman I love.

Seventeen minutes, forty seconds.

That’s how long we’ve spent so far in the literal hell that is this drive. As every second drags on, heavy and relentless, like a countdown. I want to scream, to punch something, anything, to let out the storm raging inside me. Guilt gnaws at me, sharper than any knife, twisting in my gut.

It’s all my fault.

The thought claws at me, relentless. If only...if only I’d said something else, done something different. If I hadn’t let my anger make me say things that cut deeper than I realized.

You got exactly what you wanted, you monster.

I run my thumb across her cheek, a trembling gesture, desperate. I need her to open her eyes. To scream at me, to hate me. Anything.

Just don’t let her slip away. Not like this. Not because of me.

I keep touching her with the same hands that have spilled blood, the hands that don’t deserve to be anywhere near her tonight. But I can’t stop. Maybe—maybe if I keep touching her, she’ll come back to me.

“Stay with me,amore,” I beg, my voice cracking, raw. “Don’t you dare leave me. Not now. Not ever.”

Nineteen minutes, two seconds.

The hospital looms ahead, its bright lights cutting through the night like a beacon. As the car screeches to a stop outside the emergency entrance, I burst through the doors, my voice raw and frantic as I shout for help.

“Please, someone! Help us!”

My words are a desperate scream, but I don’t care. I can barely hear myself over the pounding of my heart. In seconds, medical staff rush forward with a stretcher, an oxygen mask, and a portable oxygen tank. For the first time in the last torturous twenty minutes, I am forced to let her go.

They take her from my arms, and I feel the cold emptiness of my hands. Her limp body is transferred to the stretcher, and they wheel her away from me, urgency in every step they take. I want to scream, to chase them, but I can’t. My legs feel like lead as I stagger after them.

They push her through double doors, and I try to follow, but two nurses block my way.

“I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t go in?—”

“You’ll be sorry if you don’t let me in,” I growl, the words slipping out before I can stop them. But before I can move, Luca’s grip is on my shoulder, firm and unyielding.

“Boss,” he says quietly, but there’s an edge to his voice. For the first time since he started working for me, I hear the emotion there.

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