Page 148 of Double Trouble for the Mafia Prince
I reach for her hand.
Not to pull her in, not to forgive or to ask forgiveness.
Only to feel if there is anything left in this moment that isn’t already broken.
She doesn’t flinch.
And she doesn’t let go.
25
GIANNA
The hallway just outside the suite housing Valentina and Luca smells of antiseptic and bergamot, a strange combination that clings to the walls even after the medics have cleared out. I walk slowly, tracing the edge of the wainscoting with one hand as I pass the doors. The rhythm grounds me. Left, right, another breath. They’ve kept the don and his wife separate so both of them can receive undivided attention. I stop by Valentina’s chamber first.
She is sitting up in bed, propped against a column of pillows with a shawl drawn around her shoulders and a book open across her knees, though I do not think she has turned a page in the past twenty minutes. Her hair is pinned back in a low knot, and someone has brought her tea she isn’t drinking. Her face is pale in the late morning light, but there’s still steel in the way she holds her spine. I step into the doorway, and she lifts her head, offering a thin smile that looks more like a truce than a greeting.
"Are the girls all right?" she asks.
"Yes. They’re with their nanny. We haven’t let them out of the south wing."
She nods once and closes the book without marking her place.
The way her fingers rest on the cover reminds me of how she holds a pistol.
She has not asked about the server.
She already knows.
And I think she believes I haven’t told Dante everything yet. F
or a moment, I consider letting her know that my husband now knows everything, that I’ve chosen this family over the one I was born into.
The words refuse to come, and instead, a wave of tiredness washes over me, so acute that it makes me shiver.
"Have you eaten?" I ask instead, my voice dropping to a low murmur.
"I tried. My mouth still tastes like metal."
I don’t know what to say to that.
I stand with my hands folded in front of me until the silence fills with too much memory.
Then I nod and leave her to the stillness.
Luca is two doors down, in a room with reinforced window locks.
He is awake when I enter, but his color is still off, as if something inside him is lagging behind the rest. He’s sitting in the armchair beside the window, one hand curled loosely around a tumbler of water, the other pressed to the side of his neck.
He looks thinner than he did yesterday, which shouldn’t be possible.
Like the poison stole something beneath the skin that hasn’t returned.
He doesn’t greet me.
Just watches me cross the room. "They dosed it carefully," he says, his voice gravel-rough but lucid. "Not enough to kill instantly. Just enough to make it hurt."
"Dante handled it," I reply. "You’re both lucky he did."
