The most feared mafia boss in lower Manhattan walked into my hospital room and stopped as if someone had fired a bullet straight through his chest.
PART 2.
Luca closed his eyes as if my words had struck somewhere no weapon ever could.
When he opened them again, the feared man was gone.
Only the exhausted man beneath the suit remained.
“I thought keeping danger away was the same as loving you,” he whispered.
“It wasn’t.”
His hands tightened around mine.
“I know that now.”
Before I could answer, Dr. Mercer entered carrying my test results.
Her expression pulled Luca instantly to his feet.
“What did you find?”
The doctor looked at me carefully.
“The mass appears operable, but it may not be a tumor.”
She placed the scan beneath the light.
Inside the shadow was a small metallic object.
My stomach tightened.
“What is that?”
“It resembles surgical material from an old procedure.”
“I have never had surgery.”
Luca stared at the faint scar beneath my ribs.
I had always believed it came from a car accident when I was seventeen.
“Who treated you afterward?” he asked.
“My uncle arranged everything.”
“What uncle?”
“Marco Moretti.”
Luca stepped back.
Marco was his closest adviser.
He was also the man who had introduced us three years earlier.
Luca immediately ordered his guards to find him.
No one answered at Marco’s home, office, or private club.
Dr. Mercer turned another page.
“The object is releasing a compound into Anna’s bloodstream.”
“Poison?” Luca asked.
“Not exactly.”
The doctor explained that it was weakening me slowly and making the mass appear more dangerous than it was.
Someone had hidden something inside my body years ago.
Someone had waited for it to begin destroying me.
My phone rang on the bedside table.
The caller ID showed Marco’s name.
Luca answered on speaker.
“If you remove it,” Marco said calmly, “Anna will die.”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
“What did you put inside her?”
Marco ignored him.
“Anna, ask Luca why your father chose him to protect you.”
I looked at Luca.
His silence frightened me more than Marco’s threat.
“What promise did you make my father?”
Luca lowered his eyes.
Then Marco delivered the truth that shattered everything.
May you like
“Luca did not meet you by accident.”
“He married you because your father paid him to.”
