Violent.
Immediate.
My spine goes rigid.
The candle flame wavers.
And deep in my very core, before anyone speaks, before any alarm sounds and the house erupts into motion, I know with brutal certainty?—
The war has arrived at my door.
18
LUCIA
The Dragoni lieutenants burst through the front doors with an urgency that obliterates the best laid plans of comfort and seduction.
Giovanni’s name is already on my tongue when I see him, because I know. I know before my eyes fully register the blood soaking through his jacket, the way his body is slack between the hands gripping him, the way his head lolls just enough to tell me this is not a scrape or a warning.
This is serious. This is bad.
Very bad.
“Giovanni,” I croak, and my voice sounds wrong to my own ears, too steady, too controlled, as if my body has decided panic will come later, when it is safer to fall apart.
One of the men swears under his breath in Sicilian, a sharp curse that curls around the edges of the room, and another barks orders that I don’t need translated to understand.
“Trauma suite. Now.”
They move with precision, with the practised efficiency of men who have done this before, which is both terrifying andgrounding, because it tells me that this house was built for moments like this.
I move with them, because no one tells me not to.
No one dares.
The estate reveals itself in layers I did not know existed, walls sliding back, lights flooding on, equipment emerging with the quiet hum of readiness, and suddenly we are no longer in a mansion but in a medical wing that rivals any private hospital I’ve ever seen.
Doctors appear as if summoned by instinct alone, gloves snapping on, voices clipped and professional, their focus entirely on the man on the table.
My husband.
My gorgeous, infuriating, impossible husband.
I stand at his head, my hand finding his without thinking, because this is where I belong and I refuse to be moved.
“What happened?” I ask, and this time my voice carries steel.
One of his men answers, jaw tight. “He went to meet Bellandi.”
The words hit me hard.
“Salvatore has been begging for it,” another adds bitterly. “Weeks of calls. Said he wanted to negotiate peace. The fucker.”
I let out a sound that’s not quite a laugh. Of course he did. Of course Salvatore Bellandi wanted peace. The same way a cobra wants peace.
“And suspected it might be something else but he went anyway,” I say, because this is the part I understand too well. A dragon steeped in the knowledge that he’s infallible. Until he isn’t.
“Yes.”
