Chapter 10 - STAY WITH ME
“Massimo!”
I dropped beside him.
Blood covered his side.
His eyes were open.
“Hey.”
“Don’t talk.”
“You usually complain when I don’t.”
“Shut up.”
He smiled weakly.
“There she is.”
I pressed my hand over the wound.
His face tightened.
“Through-and-through,” I said. “I think.”
“You think?”
“I’m a physical therapist, not a trauma surgeon.”
“Excellent time to mention that.”
“Stay awake.”
Across the pier, Luca coughed.
He was alive.
His shoulder was bleeding.
Vittorio was gone.
“Where is he?” Massimo asked.
“Don’t move.”
“My father.”
“He escaped.”
Massimo closed his eyes.
“Damn it.”
“Open your eyes.”
“Tessa.”
“Open them.”
His eyes found mine.
“I love you.”
I stopped breathing.
“What?”
“In case I die.”
“You’re not dying.”
“Very romantic answer.”
“Massimo.”
“I love you.”
Tears blurred my vision.
“You selfish bastard.”
“Is that a yes?”
“You don’t get to confess this while bleeding on a dock.”
“Bad timing?”
“The worst.”
Sirens approached.
His eyes drifted closed.
I slapped his cheek.
“Massimo.”
Nothing.
“Massimo!”
The next forty-eight hours became a blur.
Surgery.
Waiting rooms.
Coffee I never drank.
Luca with his arm in a sling.
My mother refusing to go home.
Elena crying silently in a hospital chapel.
Camila calling me twenty-seven times.
Massimo survived.
But when he woke up, the surgeon gave us bad news.
The fall and blood loss had triggered severe inflammation around his existing spinal injury.
He had lost much of the progress we had made.
Maybe temporarily.
Maybe not.
Massimo listened without reacting.
When everyone left, he stared at the ceiling.
I sat beside him.
“We start again.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
I leaned closer.
“You don’t get to quit.”
“I’m tired.”
“So sleep.”
“I mean all of it.”
My chest tightened.
“Massimo.”
“I stood for twenty seconds.”
“You stood long enough to fight your father.”
“And now I can barely feel my foot.”
“So we start there.”
“No.”
His eyes filled with something worse than anger.
Defeat.
“You told me I wasn’t broken.”
“You’re not.”
“What if you were wrong?”
I took his hand.
“Then I’ll be wrong beside you.”
He looked at me.
For a moment, I thought he might cry.
Instead, his phone vibrated.
A message.
Unknown number.
Massimo opened it.
One sentence.
YOU TOOK MY EMPIRE. I’LL TAKE HER.
Attached was a photograph.
Me.
May you like
Taken through the hospital window.
Seconds earlier.
