IT'S COMPLICATED: THE MAFIA'S HEIRS

Chapter 28: War

I woke up in a room I did not immediately recognise.

White ceiling. The specific smell of a medical space, antiseptic and recycled air and the particular silence of a place where people are being monitored rather than living. A monitor somewhere nearby doing something rhythmic and steady. A window with the curtains partially drawn, evening light coming through the gap in long orange lines across the floor.

Then the weight of a hand over mine on the bed.

I turned my head.

Luca was sitting in the chair beside me, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his hand over mine, and he was looking at me with an expression I had never seen on his face before. Not the composure. Not the thing underneath the composure. Something that existed past both of those, something raw and unmanaged and completely specific to this moment, the expression of a man who has been sitting beside a bed waiting for someone to open their eyes and has just watched them do it.

"The twins," I said. The words came out before anything else, before my own name or the room or what had happened in the garden.

"Are fine," he said. His voice was quiet. "Both heartbeats strong. Dr Reyes checked everything. You fainted from stress and dehydration and your blood pressure dropped. She wants you monitored overnight but the twins are not in danger."

I closed my eyes for a moment. Let that land. Let the specific relief of it move through me and settle into the places that had been clenched since the garden tilted.

"Bryan," I said.

"Conscious," Luca said. "Broken arm. Three broken ribs. Lacerations from the glass. He was kept in overnight for observation but Maya is with him and the doctors say he will make a full recovery."

I opened my eyes. Looked at the ceiling. Thought about Bryan in a hospital bed with three broken ribs and a broken arm because he had visited me on a Thursday afternoon and driven home on the wrong road at the wrong time.

"This is my fault," I said.

"No," Luca said. Immediately. Without hesitation.

"Luca..."

"No," he said again. "The Ferrano family made a choice. They targeted someone connected to this compound because they wanted to get to me and they could not reach you directly. That is their fault. Not yours." His hand tightened slightly over mine. "Bryan being hurt is on them. Not on you. Not on me. On them."

I looked at him. "You believe that?"

"Yes," he said.

"Then why," I said carefully, "does your face look like that?"

He held my gaze for a moment. Then he looked away. At the window. At the orange light coming through the gap in the curtains. At something that was not in the room.

"Because I knew," he said quietly. "Not specifically. Not the road or the vehicle or the timing. But I knew the Ferrano family was looking for pressure points and I knew Bryan was a visible connection to you and I should have told him to vary his routes and I did not." He paused. "I was managing the situation inside the compound and I underweighted the risk outside it. That is on me."

The room was very quiet.

"Luca," I said.

He looked at me.

"Fix it," I said. "Whatever you have to do. Fix it."

Something shifted in his expression. Something that was not quite what I had asked for and was considerably more than it. The specific shift of a man who has been given permission to be the version of himself he keeps in reserve for situations that require it, the version that even Marco stepped back from, the version that had built an empire on the principle that everything could be managed if you were willing to go far enough in the managing of it.

"Already in progress," he said.

I looked at him for a moment. At the composure that was back in place now, settled back over everything like a coat put on after being briefly removed, cleaner and colder than it had been before the garden. "What does that mean."

"It means," he said, "that by the time you are discharged from this room, the people who made that decision will understand that it was the worst one they have ever made."

I held his gaze. "Are you going to tell me what you are doing."

"No," he said. "Not the specifics."

"But it is handled."

"It will be," he said. "Before morning."

I looked at the ceiling again. At the white of it, the specific blankness of a medical ceiling that gave you nothing to look at except the inside of your own head. I thought about Bryan in a room somewhere in this building or another one, with Maya beside him and a broken arm and ribs that were going to hurt every time he breathed for weeks. I thought about the truck being hit on a road two kilometres from a compound he had visited because I asked him to text me when he got home and he had always said always.

"I need to see him," I said.

"Tomorrow," Luca said. "When Dr Reyes clears you."

"Luca..."

"Tomorrow," he said. Not cruel. Not negotiable. "You fainted. You are connected to two people who need you to be careful right now and both of them need you stable more than Bryan needs you in his room tonight when Maya is already there and he is already sedated." He held my gaze steadily. "Tomorrow. I promise."

I looked at him for a long moment. At the steadiness of him, the absolute unmoveable certainty of it, and I thought about how many times that steadiness had been the thing that kept me from falling apart completely, the specific solid quality of a person you could lean against when everything else was moving.

"Stay," I said. "Tonight. Don't go do whatever you are going to do and leave me in this room alone."

Something moved in his expression. "Natalie..."

"Whatever you are doing can be done from here," I said. "Marco can handle the operational pieces. Petra can handle the rest. You have people." I held his gaze. "Stay."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he sat back in the chair. Did not let go of my hand. Took out his phone with the other and typed something brief and put it away.

"Marco," he said. "He will handle the operational pieces."

I felt something in my chest loosen slightly. "Thank you."

He nodded. Looked at our hands on the bed. Then at me. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I fainted in a garden and woke up in a hospital," I said.

"Beyond that."

I thought about it. About what beyond that felt like, past the immediate physical inventory of the room and the bed and the monitor and the orange light. "Scared," I said. "And angry. And guilty even though you told me not to be." I paused. "And grateful that you caught me before I hit the ground."

"You were not going to hit the ground," he said. "I was not going to let that happen."

"You cannot always..." I stopped. Looked at him. At the absolute certainty in his face when he said it, the specific conviction of someone who has made a decision about a thing and considers it settled. "You really believe that?"

"Yes," he said simply.

I looked at him for a long moment. At this man sitting in a hospital chair in the middle of the night with his hand over mine and a war being conducted on his behalf somewhere in the city outside these walls, and I thought about what it meant to be loved by someone like this, the specific overwhelming weight of it.

"Luca," I said quietly.

"Mm?"

"When this is over," I said. "When the Ferrano situation is resolved and Don Adriano has told us whatever he is going to tell us and the twins are here and everything has settled into whatever it is going to settle into." I paused. "I want a day. Just one. Where none of this is happening and it is just us and we do something completely ordinary."

He looked at me. Something moved in his expression. "What kind of ordinary?"

"I don't know," I said. "Something that normal people do. Something that does not involve security protocols or mafia politics or men putting trucks off roads." I held his gaze. "Can you do that?"

He was quiet for a moment. The considering kind.

"One day," he said.

"One day," I confirmed.

"I will need advance notice to arrange the security parameters for an ordinary day," he said, which was so specifically him that something warm moved through my chest despite everything.

"Of course you will," I said.

He almost smiled. The thing near it.

My phone buzzed on the bedside table. Maya.

I reached for it.

He's asking for you again. He keeps saying tell her I'm okay. He has said it four times. I think he knows you're scared.

I stared at the screen. At those words. At the specific Bryan of them, the way even from a hospital bed with broken ribs he was managing upward, making sure I was okay before he worried about himself.

I typed back: Tell him I know. Tell him I'll be there tomorrow. Tell him I'm okay.

I set the phone down.

Luca was watching me. He had seen the messages from the angle he was sitting at and his face was doing something complicated and entirely honest, the expression of a man who loves someone completely and understands that loving them completely means holding space for the parts of them that belong to someone else.

"He is a good person," Luca said quietly.

"Yes," I said. "He is."

"He did not deserve this."

"No," I said. "He didn't."

Luca nodded once. Looked at our hands. "I will make sure it does not happen again."

I believed him. I had learned, over months of this life, that when Luca Wolfe said something in that voice it was not a reassurance.

It was a promise.

And somewhere in the city outside these hospital walls, in rooms and cars and the specific dark spaces where consequences were delivered, the Ferrano family was about to learn the difference between threatening Luca Wolfe and threatening something he considered his.

They were not the same thing.

They had never been the same thing.

And by morning, they would understand that completely.

My phone buzzed one more time.

Not Maya this time.

An unknown number. A number I did not recognise. A number that was not in my contacts and had no name attached to it.

One message. Four words.

We are not finished.