I look up. It's him.
"Luca," I say. The word comes out like something I have been holding for a decade. "Is it really you?"
He is looking down at me and his face has finally cracked. I feel his arms tighten around me and I close my eyes and I think,there he is, and everything goes dark.
Chapter Nineteen
Luca
"The drug in her system," the doctor says, snapping his bag shut, "was not a small amount. Whoever put it in her drink wanted her completely unconscious. Another hour and it would have been dangerous." He looks at Luca over his glasses. "The injections will clear it but she needs several hours of rest. Her body has been through a lot of stress."
Renzo walks him to the door and I hear the low exchange of voices in the corridor, the soft close of the door, and then Renzo's footsteps coming back and stopping somewhere behind me.
I examined her on the bed. The pink dress, the hair half undone now from whatever happened in that room, her face pale in the way that has no color behind it at all. I reach down and pull the blanket up. I clench my fists at my sides until I feel my knuckles.
I had decided not to come to New York when the job came in three weeks ago. It was an ammunition deal with a powerfulunderground supplier. I had looked at the city on the brief and I had said no, send someone else.
Renzo exercised enormous restraint not to deliver out loud, and he said. "This one needs you specifically."
I said no again. He brought it back up four days later.
I had caved because the alternative was admitting why I wouldn't go, after all it was an important deal. I told myself that New York was a large city and the chances of crossing paths with her were negligible and I was a grown man, I did not rearrange business for personal reasons.
Like avoiding the woman who had made her way into my life and taken over it in a matter of weeks.
I adjust the blanket on her shoulder.
So I came down to New York and spent two days negotiating the deal and tonight, we signed. The client made us stay for a few celebratory drinks that I obliged out of professional goodwill and just as I was about to return to Las Vegas, I ran into her.
She looked more elegant than I remembered. Her chin was higher. Her eyes, when they found mine, were emptier than I had expected. That was the thing that stopped me for longer than the sight of her, the absence of what I expected to find in her face.
She walked past me and I walked out. Renzo wanted to speak to her but I saw him swallow it.
I got into the car and Renzo started driving. Then Renzo had stopped at a light and said, without looking at me, "I got word from the grapevine. She's getting engaged. To a Senator's son, last name Hartley. It's obviously a political marriage, but I bet that they'll spin it as a love story. Her father and her father-in-law-to-be are subtly dropping hints."
"I don't care," I replied.
Renzo had said, "Then we go back to Las Vegas tonight. I'll book the flight."
There was heavy silence as he drove.
"We're turning back," he had said eventually. "You need to talk to her. I don't care what you say to her or what you decide. But I cannot keep watching you walk like a lost soul."
He turned right back and I didn't argue but I walked back into the hotel with absolutely no idea what I was going to say. As we got closer to the VIP room, I heard a smash from behind the door and I had stopped thinking about what to say. I kicked the door open and she fell right into my arms.
I knew she was drugged. Renzo had taken care of the degenerates inside, and I got a doctor.
Renzo's cough brought me back to the present.
"Both of them are asking to talk."
He is talking about the two people who had the nerve to drug her.
Renzo is in the doorway, his arms folded.
I look at Nathalie's face.
"She'll be alright." He pauses. "She smashed a wine bottle over the boy's head before the drug fully took hold. He was in a poor state before our men added to it."
