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“You need to look like you’ve been together longer than a couple weeks.”

Lucia glares at Nico and crosses her arms. “We do.”

“No, you don’t. Not physically.”

He gestures toward me. “Marco, show me how you’ll hold her in public.”

I stand, the effort straining the stitches. I ignore the small noise of protest Lucia lets out as I step behind her and place my hand on the small of her back.

She jerks away.

“Look at that reaction.” I sigh. “This will never work. Maybe we need to rethink this whole thing.”

“I didn’t flinch.”

When I try again, her body tenses in the same manner.

Her clinical side kicks in with a hasty excuse. “That’s a medical startle response. Not an emotional one.”

“In Naples, it will be evidence that we aren’t comfortable with each other.”

She squares her shoulders. “Do it again.”

This time, when my hand rests at the small of her back, she holds still, breathes, and eases into my touch. I leave my hand in place longer than necessary, but she doesn’t waver. Her chest rises and falls while she flashes a bright smile and keeps her gaze on my face.

Over the next few hours, we iron out the logistics, our cover documents, contingency plans, even sleeping arrangements at the Naples villa and how to approach things if we’re attacked. Nico finally leaves well past midnight, and when Lucia and I break apart, we scarcely glance at each other for the rest of the evening.

Back in my quarters, Lucia sits cross-legged on the bed with the printed intel Nico compiled on Clinica Caritas. She thumbs through the pages with quiet concentration.

I’m sitting at the desk going over transport details when my phone buzzes with a message from an unsaved number. It’s a single photograph of the pediatric ward at St. Catherine’s, taken from inside the building.

The message—which just contains that picture—hits me like a knockout punch I didn’t see coming.

Going to Naples now might be a good thing, because it’s clear that these men have their eyes on us and aren’t going to stop. Maybe Naples is even safer for Lucia right now, since at least I’ll be able to keep an eye on her.

Across the room, Lucia flips another page, then looks up.

“Did you find anything useful?”

I lock the phone and set it face down on the desk. “Nothing important.”

Divulging that information to her would mean admitting that the children’s ward—the only place where my hands help instead of hurt—now belongs to this war.

I’m not ready to watch that realization spark in her eyes.

Chapter 13

Lucia

I tell myself the Naples trip is a simple action I must take to dismantle an organ-trafficking network and bring my brother’s killers to justice.

The fact that I’m doing it alongside a man I’ve slept with—a man I think about at a frequency that my medical school professors would describe as “a significant cognitive intrusion”—is entirely incidental.

When I informed Jenna that I was leaving town with Marco for a personal matter, she didn’t believe me.

“Girl, this is definitely not you. What’s happening?”

Since that conversation with her, the question has been reverberating in my mind. The last time I rearranged my life around a man, it was for Mason. What started as attentiveness curdled into him controlling me by tracking my location and vetting my friends. He framed every act of possessiveness as protection. Jenna was the one who sat me down and forced me to see the truth clearly enough to leave.