My fingers tighten around his hand.
“There was another ambush,” the man continues. “We handled it but…” He stops, and I want to scream at him.
“But what?”
“Thefigghiu di puttanabrought snipers this time. Close range. The Don took one before we could get him clear.”
“Where?” I ask, already bracing even as a chill invades every fibre of my being.
“Upper chest,” the doctor says calmly. “Missed his artery by millimetres. He lost a lot of blood.”
Millimetres.
That word is going to haunt me for the rest of my life.
The world narrows as they work, voices overlapping in controlled chaos, monitors lighting up, numbers flashing that I refuse to look at too closely because I know myself well enough to know I will memorise every rise and dip.
Someone tells me he’s unconscious, not dead. Another tells me they’re inducing a coma. A third urges me to step back.
I do not.
“You will let me stay,” I say, and the room stills just enough for them to register that I am not asking.
A doctor hesitates, then nods.
I take Giovanni’s hand and bring it to my lips, pressing my mouth to his knuckles, my chest tight with things I refuse to let loose.
“You absolute bastard,” I murmur to him, my voice low. “You do not get to do this to me.”
His face is pale, too still, the sharp perfect planes of it softened by vulnerability I have never seen before.
Time spins past as the doctors work on him, then a machine breathes for him.
I sit. And I do not leave.
Hours bleed into one another, then days, marked only by the quiet rhythm of his breathing and the low murmur of updates from doctors who have clearly been trained to speak to womenlike me, women who are suddenly very important and very dangerous.
Apparently.
On the second day, someone calls me Donna.
On the third, they stop asking for permission and start asking for instruction.
It happens slowly, almost imperceptibly, the way tides change without announcement.
A man I recognise from the dinner party approaches me with a folder and a careful expression.
“There are decisions that need to be made,” he says.
I look up at him. Frown my confusion. “About what?”
“About ports,” he replies. “And routes. And contracts that will not wait.”
I almost laugh. “You’re asking me to make decisions about Dragoni business?” I say, keeping my voice level, half ready to lay into him for joking at a time like this.
“Yes,” he answers simply.
I swallow. “Why?”
