Page 122 of Diary of a Mafia Princess

That worked better, and he greedily swallowed water until he coughed and spluttered.

I took the glass from him. “Go slowly. You’re going to choke.”

He shook his head, trying to get the glass back from me with weak fingers. “More.”

“In a minute.”

He slumped back against the bed. “You’re bossy.”

“Yeah, well, I’d rather you didn’t aspirate water into your lungs. I can’t fix that with a first aid kit.”

“No,” he admitted. “But if you pass me a blanket, you can fix the fact I’m still naked.”

“Shit, sorry.” I honestly hadn’t even realized. The state of him was all I could see. I grabbed a throw blanket from the end of his bed and dropped it over his lap, giving him a bit of privacy. For the first time, I noticed the goosebumps on his flesh, and I stood, went into his closet, and searched it for something warm. “Jesus, Luca. Do you literally own nothing but suits? Nobody needs this many pairs of Italian leather shoes either, for the record. It’s just wasteful. Do you not have a hoodie in here somewhere?”

“Right in the back.”

I pushed my way past his suit collection that probably cost as much as a regular person’s car, and finally found his sweats, tucked away neatly on a shelf. I grabbed an oversized gray one that was soft and hopefully comfy and then brought it back to him, tugging it down over his head for him because he seemed too weak to even do that himself.

His head poked through the hole. “Okay, I have clothes on. Can I have more water now?”

I picked it up for him. “You could say please, you know.”

“Please,” he said quietly.

I held it to his lips again, this time, without the tremble in my hand.

He drank it slower, and when he’d had enough, he moved his mouth away and dropped his head back so it rested on the mattress.

I ran my teeth over my bottom lip, before popping it free. “When you said you were going away for a few days, I thought…”

He shrugged. “Yeah. I didn’t go far.”

I swallowed hard. “Luca. Why…”

It was all I could get out, because I was almost positive I didn’t want to know the answer.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t really want the answer to, princess.”

But I did. I needed to know if my suspicions were true. “Because of me, right? They did this to you because you helped me?”

His gaze caught mine, his dark-brown eyes dull in a way I’d never seen before. “I took the punishment you were supposed to receive. Three days down there.” His gaze dropped to my chest, where my robe had loosened enough to show off my bandage. “How’s the burn? Did the doctor come to you like I asked him to?”

I nodded. “I’m fine. But you…”

If this was what Carlos and Enzo had planned to do to me, I don’t know that I would have survived it. I’d been half delirious with pain and freezing with the cold after less than twenty-four hours.

Luca had done three days down there, alone, in the dark, with nobody but Enzo and Carlos torturing him for company.

“I didn’t know,” I whispered to him.

“I know. I didn’t want you to know. There was nothing you could have done. If you’d tried to help me, they would have just put you back in there right next to me. Or worse, someone you cared about.”

“You knew that you would be punished for helping me, didn’t you?”

He stared at me for a long moment, then nodded. “Yes.”

“Why would you do that then?”