90 "**“STOP WAVING YOUR HANDS! YOU'RE EMBARRASSING ME!”

The clock in the grand hallway chimed eleven times.

Each strike echoed through the mansion like a funeral bell.

I couldn't sleep. Isabella had drifted off hours ago, curled up beneath her lavender duvet with her velvet bear tucked under her chin. I had sat beside her bed until her breathing grew slow and rhythmic, stroking her hair until the anxious creases on her small forehead finally smoothed away.

Now, I was pacing the grand salon on the ground floor, clutching a mug of chamomile tea that had gone stone cold an hour ago.

The mansion was suffocatingly quiet. Outside, through the heavy velvet drapes, I could see the occasional flash of a security guard's flashlight sweeping across the frozen grass.

Every shadow seemed to stretch. Every creak of the old floorboards sounded like an intruder.

*What was happening at the Drake Hotel?*

Had Antonio Bellini brought guns? Had Luca walked into an ambush?

The thought of Luca—bleeding, wounded, or worse—sent a sickening spike of panic through my chest that terrified me. I had only known him for two years as a distant, terrifying employer, and for four days as something entirely different. A protector. A broken father trying to heal his child. A man whose touch made my soul tremble.

Suddenly, the heavy iron gates at the end of the long driveway groaned open.

I rushed to the salon window, parting the drapes by an inch.

A convoy of three black armored Suburbans roared up the circular driveway, their tires crunching violently over the gravel. They didn't have their headlights on; they were running completely blacked out.

The vehicles screeched to a halt before the marble steps.

The doors flew open, and half a dozen armed men spilled out, rifles raised, taking defensive positions around the perimeter.

Then, the rear door of the middle Suburban opened.

Luca stepped out.

My breath hitched.

He was alive.

He walked up the front steps with his long, predatory stride, but as he entered the foyer under the chandelier light, my relief instantly morphed into horror.

His white shirt was torn at the shoulder, soaked in dark, glistening crimson. A jagged cut sliced across his left temple, bleeding sluggishly down his cheek, staining his collar.

Marco followed him inside, his own arm wrapped in a makeshift tourniquet, his face pale and grim.

"Get the medical kit from the safe room!" Marco barked to one of the younger guards. "Now!"

"I don't need a damn kit," Luca snarled, shrugging out of his ruined black suit jacket, wincing visibly as the fabric pulled against his shoulder wound. "Check the perimeter. Make sure we weren't trailed."

"Luca!"

The cry tore from my throat before I could stop myself.

I dropped my cold mug onto a side table and ran into the grand foyer.

Luca froze as I approached. When he saw me, his fierce, lethal expression softened by a fraction, but he immediately tried to angle his bleeding shoulder away from my sight.

"Claire," he rasped, his voice rough. "What are you doing downstairs? I told you to stay with Isabella."

"She’s asleep," I breathed, my eyes darting frantically over the blood covering his shirt. "My God, Luca... you’re shot!"

"Grazed," he muttered dismissively, though his jaw was clenched against agonizing pain. "A high-caliber round took a piece of the deltoid. It’s flesh, nothing more."

"You're bleeding through your clothes!" Panic seized me, stripping away all hesitation. I grabbed his uninjured right arm, pulling him toward the ground-floor sitting room. "Sit down. Right now."

Marco looked at me, then at Luca, raising an eyebrow in shock. No one gave Luca Moretti orders. No one dared touch him with such frantic authority.

To Marco’s utter astonishment, Luca didn't fight me. He let out a low, ragged sigh and allowed me to lead him into the sitting room, sinking down onto the leather Chesterfield sofa.

The guard rushed in with a heavy trauma kit, setting it on the glass coffee table before Marco signaled for him to leave.

"The Drake was a setup, boss," Marco said grimly, leaning against the doorframe while clutching his bandaged arm. "Antonio didn't come to talk. He had six shooters waiting in the service elevators. If you hadn't spotted the reflection in the mirror..."

"Antonio is dead," Luca said, his voice flat, icy, and final.

The room went dead silent.

I froze, my hands hovering over the trauma kit.

"Dead?" I whispered, looking up at him.

Luca met my gaze without flinching. "He broke the sacred code. He threatened my household, and he ambushed me under a flag of parley. He drew his weapon first. Marco and I put an end to Antonio Bellini tonight."

A cold chill ran down my spine. This was the dark reality of the world Luca ruled. Blood for blood. Life for life.

"And Vanessa?" I asked, trembling.

"She wasn't there," Luca replied, his eyes narrowing into cold slits. "She was waiting at their family estate in Lake Forest. But the moment the news hits the street that her father fell, the Bellini syndicate will crumble into chaos. Her cousins will tear the empire apart trying to claim the throne."

He took a sharp breath, wincing as he leaned back. "Vanessa is alone now. Stripped of her father’s army. But a cornered viper with nothing left to lose is when she’s most dangerous."

"Let me clean this," I said softly, refusing to let the violence of his world push me away from his pain.

I opened the trauma kit, pulling out sterile gauze, antiseptic wash, and surgical suture tape. With gentle, steady fingers, I unbuttoned the rest of his bloody shirt, easing the ruined fabric off his broad, heavily muscled shoulders.

My breath caught.

His torso was a map of violence and survival. Old bullet wounds, faint blade scars, and breathtaking, dark tattoo work covering his chest—an archangel with outstretched wings holding a sword over his heart.

The bullet graze on his shoulder was ugly—a deep, jagged furrow that had torn through muscle, bleeding heavily, but thankfully missing the bone and major arteries.

I poured antiseptic onto a pad. "This is going to burn."

"Do it," he murmured, his eyes fixed entirely on my face.

I pressed the pad against the wound.

Luca didn't flinch. Not a sound escaped his lips. But his right hand shot out, grasping my wrist—not to push me away, but to steady himself against the blinding burn. His grip was scorching, his thumb pressing against my racing pulse.

"You're not afraid of the blood," he noted softly, his voice a low rumble in the quiet room.

"I took care of my brother through three major ear surgeries and a severe skull infection when he was seven," I replied, focusing my eyes entirely on cleaning the wound, trying desperately to ignore how close our bodies were, how the heat radiating from his bare chest seemed to envelop me. "Blood doesn't scare me. Losing the people I love does."

Luca went very still.

"Do you care for me, Claire?" he asked. The question was unvarnished, direct, stripped of all mafia pretension.

My hands trembled slightly as I applied the sterile butterfly sutures to close the torn flesh. I swallowed the lump in my throat, forcing myself to look up from his shoulder into his piercing hazel eyes.

"You gave my brother his dignity back," I said, my voice thick with emotion. "You treat your deaf daughter like she is the most precious treasure on earth. In a world full of cruel men who mock those who are different... you protect them. How could I not care for you?"

Luca stared at me. A raw, profound vulnerability flickered across his rugged features, softening the terrifying edge of his persona.

He lifted his uninjured hand, his large, calloused fingers gently cupping the side of my face. His touch was impossibly tender, as if he were terrified that a man with blood on his hands might break something as gentle as me.

"Claire," he breathed, his thumb brushing over my cheekbone. "I spent my whole life surrounded by people who only wanted what my name could give them. Vanessa wanted a crown. My enemies wanted my head. I thought the only way to keep Isabella safe was to build higher walls and become more ruthless than the monsters outside."

He leaned in marginally, his forehead almost resting against mine. The scent of rain, gunpowder, and his dark cologne filled my senses.

"Then you stood up in that ballroom," he whispered. "A girl with no weapons, no army, risking everything just to give my little girl a voice. You showed me that a house isn't protected by walls. It's protected by love."

My heart pounded so hard I was certain he could hear it. Every instinct screamed that this was madness—that getting close to a mafia don was walking into an inferno. But as his fingers slid into the loose strands of my hair, tilting my face toward his, I didn't want to run.

"Luca..." I whispered, my lips parting.

"Boss!"

Marco’s voice cut through the silence like a gunshot.

Luca instantly pulled back, his hand dropping from my face, his protective walls snapping back into place in a microsecond.

Marco stood in the doorway, holding a secure satellite tablet. His face was gray.

"What is it, Marco?" Luca barked, his voice cold again, standing up from the sofa despite the fresh bandage on his shoulder.

"Vanessa," Marco said grimly. "She didn't stay in Lake Forest. An hour ago, before the news of her father’s death broke, she took four of her personal security loyalists and cleared out the family’s private armory."

Luca’s eyes flared with lethal fury. "Where did she go?"

Marco looked up from the tablet, meeting Luca’s eyes with dread.

"She went dark near the school district in Oak Park. And boss... she hired Victor Vance."

Luca’s face lost all color. For the first time since I had met him, I saw a flicker of absolute horror in his eyes.

"Who is Victor Vance?" I asked, fear clawing at my throat.

Luca turned to me, his voice trembling with an emotion I never thought I would hear from him: terror.

"A freelance butcher," Luca said. "A man who specializes in family retaliations. Vanessa isn't coming for me, Claire. She knows she can't kill me."

He looked toward the staircase leading to the second floor, where Isabella was sleeping.