Matteo's eyes flick to me briefly, but he doesn't comment.
"All right," the doctor says. "I'll show you what to watch for."
He walks me through the warning signs, the things that would mean calling him back immediately, the difference between normal healing and something going wrong. I listen with fierce concentration, absorbing every detail like my life depends on it.
Like Enzo's life depends on it. Because it does.
When he's done, the doctor packs his supplies and looks at Matteo. "I'll be back in the morning to check on him. Call if anything changes before then."
Matteo walks him out.
The room empties slowly. Rafael and Dante leaving to debrief, to deal with the aftermath of the ambush, to handle whatever needs handling. Alessia and Bianca hovering uncertainly before Alessia touches my shoulder gently.
"Do you need anything?" she asks softly.
"No. I'm fine."
"Isabella—"
"I'm fine." I don't look away from Enzo. "I just—I need to sit with him."
She exchanges a look with Bianca that I pretend not to see, and then they leave too, and it's just me and Enzo in the quiet room.
I pull the chair closer to the couch and take his hand again, this time with both of mine, holding it between my palms like I can will warmth back into it through sheer force of contact.
His chest rises and falls. Steady. Mechanical. Alive.
I watch him breathe and I think about the factory, about him getting stabbed, about forty minutes of bleeding while I was drinking wine, and something in my chest cracks wide open.
"You promised you'd come back," I whisper to him. "You promised."
He doesn't answer.
I hold his hand and I wait.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Pain wakes me first.
It’s a deep persistent ache that sits in my side and radiates outward with every breath, a reminder that I got stabbed and survived and my body is not particularly happy about either part of that equation.
Well, shit.
I open my eyes slowly.
The ceiling comes into focus, familiar and wrong at the same time because this isn't my room, and it takes me a second to place where I am. The sitting room. Still on the couch. Morning light coming through the windows in pale grey streams that suggest it is early, maybe six or seven, the kind of light that hasn't decided yet if it's committing to the day.
I turn my head carefully.
Oh, my Angel.
Isabella is asleep in the chair beside me.
She's curled up at an angle that's going to make her neck hurt when she wakes, her head resting on her arm on the chair's armrest, her other hand stretched out toward me like she fell asleep reaching for me.
Her face is soft in sleep, peaceful in a way it hasn't been while awake for days, and I can see the tracks of old tears on her cheeks, dried salt lines that catch the morning light.
She stayed.
