Chapter 3

That night, Luca stayed.

He sat on the edge of my bed in the medical suite, pressing a damp cloth to my swollen cheek with the same hands that had signed my beating into existence hours earlier.

He brought me water. Adjusted my pillow. He even murmured — voice low, almost tender — that he'd arrange nurses for my mother, regardless of whether the paralysis was "real or not."

I watched him through half-closed eyes and understood exactly what this was.

Performance. Not for me — for himself.

The Don couldn't stomach the image of a wife he'd shattered, so he was rearranging the scene into something he could live with.

A misunderstanding. A rough night. A husband caring for his woman after things got out of hand.

I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep.

It took him less than five minutes to drift to the other bed. Serena's bed.

Through the thin membrane of faked sleep, I heard everything. The rustle of sheets. Her whispered laugh. His voice sinking into a register he never used with me — low, teasing, intimate.

They murmured back and forth like lovers who'd forgotten anyone else existed in the room.

Or maybe they simply didn't care.

I lay still. Breathed evenly. Counted the hours until my flight.

The next morning, I went to the ICU.

My mother was awake. The ventilator had been removed, but she still couldn't move anything below her neck. Her eyes — sharp, dark, untouched by the catastrophe of her body — found me the instant I stepped through the door.

Then they locked onto my face.

The bruises. The stitches. The swelling no amount of concealer could hide.

Her voice was barely a rasp. "Aria... who did this? Was it Luca?"

I took her hand — the hand that couldn't squeeze back — and forced a smile.

"It's nothing, Mama. A misunderstanding. Looks worse than it feels."

She didn't believe me. But she was imprisoned in a body that could no longer fight for me, and the helplessness swimming in her eyes cut deeper than any blow.

"Listen," I said, leaning close. "Tonight, I'm getting you out of here. I've arranged transport to a clinic in Zurich — they specialize in nerve regeneration. It's going to take time, but you're going to walk again."

For the first time in days, something resembling hope surfaced in her face.

Then the door crashed open.

Luca strode in flanked by two soldiers. Serena was right behind him, her bruised jaw now accessorized with a silk scarf — a wounded queen on a righteous mission.

My stomach dropped.

Serena spoke first, one lacquered finger aimed at me like a weapon.

"The operations ledger is missing. The one tracking every offshore distribution this family has made in the past eighteen months."

She turned to Luca, her voice cracking with perfectly rehearsed distress. "I discovered it gone from the safe this morning. The only person with partial access besides you and me — is her."

I stared at her. "What ledger? I've never touched your books."

"Aria." Luca's voice was a blade. "That ledger could dismantle this entire family. If it reaches the Feds, we're finished."

"I didn't take it. I don't even know the combination to —"

"Then you won't mind if we search."

It wasn't a question. He jerked his chin at the soldiers.

They swept through the ICU room like men clearing a building — systematic, indifferent. Every drawer opened. Every equipment cart checked.

My mother's personal bag rifled through without ceremony.

My mother lay frozen, eyes wide, unable to even turn her head away from the men dismantling her space.

"Stop it," I said. "She can't move. How could she possibly hide anything?"

Serena hovered near the bed. Her gaze swept the room with theatrical urgency — then stopped.

She pointed at the pillow beneath my mother's head.

"There. Something's under there."

"Don't you dare —"

The soldier moved before I could intercept. He seized the pillow and wrenched it sideways in one brutal motion.

A leather folio tumbled onto the mattress.

But the pillow wasn't the only thing that moved.

My mother's central IV line — the catheter threaded into the vein at her neck — snagged on the soldier's sleeve. The tube ripped free with a wet, sucking sound.

Blood — dark, arterial, instant — began streaming down her neck, pooling in the hollow of her collarbone.

"Mama!"

I lunged for her, pressing both hands against the wound, feeling the warm pulse of her life slipping between my fingers.

Behind me, Serena lifted the folio like evidence at a tribunal. "Right where I said it would be."

Luca looked at the folio. Then at me — crouched over my bleeding mother, hands slick with red.

"Aria. Explain."

I couldn't speak. I was trying to staunch the bleeding with a bedsheet, screaming for a nurse, watching color drain from my mother's face.

"I'm talking to you." He grabbed my arm and hauled me upright.

Something detonated.

My palm connected with his face before I knew I'd moved. The crack ricocheted off the tile walls like a gunshot.

Luca's head snapped sideways. The room went dead silent.

"Get out." My voice was raw, shredded, barely recognizable as my own. "Take your soldiers and your consigliere and get the hell out of this room before my mother bleeds to death."

Luca touched his cheek. His eyes were wide — not with rage, but with something I'd never seen on him before: genuine, uncomprehending shock.

In three years, I had never raised a hand to him. Never raised my voice. Never once deviated from the role of the quiet, obedient wife.

He was staring at a stranger.

I didn't wait for him to recover. I shoved past him and ran into the corridor, screaming for a doctor.