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“I didn’t know anything until a handful of hours ago,” I admitted. “I drove here as fast as I could.”
Sabrina opened the door wider and stepped aside. “Then you’d better come in. Who knows, maybe you’ll be able to wake him? Nothing else has worked.” Ethan followed me inside, then curled an arm around his wife before she added, “You might be our last hope.”
A shiver of premonition went through me as I followed Sabrina across a huge entertainment room which featured a grand marble staircase and a glittering chandelier the size of a small car. She rattled off Valentino’s medical state, filling me in about his gunshot wounds and his blood loss, his medically induced coma from which he’d yet to wake, despite the fact he should be capable of doing so.
All I cared about was getting to him as soon as possible.
I should have been here from the moment he’d been hurt. Instead I’d been wasting precious time waiting for him to pick up his jeep.
I slowed, my breath stalling as I looked at Ethan. “Has he been charged for any of the murders?”
Ethan shook his head. “Not yet, not in his condition, but don’t worry, I have the best lawyers already working on it if—when—he wakes. His case will be watertight.”
At least I understood Valentino’s loyalty now to his mobster family, to his don in particular. They loved him like a blood brother.
My pulse settled and I even managed a smile as we took an elevator up to the next floor before we stepped out into a parlor. We turned right and traversed a wide corridor that led to some bedrooms.
I knew right away where Valentino was. One of Ethan’s soldiers stood outside the doorway, guarding the man they all adored.
Sabrina nodded. “He’s in there.”
The door opened and a doctor walked out, a frown crinkling his brow. He looked up, his eyes scanning us. “I’m not sure my patient is up for a visit today.”
My breath caught in my throat. Had Valentino deteriorated?
“Try telling Chantilly that,” Ethan said with a wry smile as he nodded my way. He clearly didn’t think Valentino was going anywhere.
The doctor blinked at me. “You’re family?”
“Well, no—“
“Then I can’t allow you visitation rights,” he said in an authoritative tone.
Sabrina huffed. “She has our permission.”
The doctor ignored Sabrina and looked at Ethan. “Is that true?”
Ethan nodded. “It is. She’s more than family to Valentino.”
The doctor’s face turned stern as he harrumphed. “Well then, if he goes backward from this visit I can’t be held responsible.” He all but glared at me. “You have five minutes. No more.”
I didn’t answer, I was already pushing through the door and marching inside, slowing only when I saw all the tubes and paraphernalia Valentino was attached to. “Valentino,” I whispered.
Of course he didn’t answer, he lay as still as a statue even when I caught his hand in mine and held on. His skin was clammy and pale, his beard longer, shaggier, his body leaner, too lean. I wondered then if his fitness routine had actually saved him. He’d survived a bullet—more than one.
I leaned close, thankful for our privacy when I pleaded, “Please wake up. I need you. I-I can’t live without you.” I swallowed hard, then confessed, “I love you.”
The EKG machine continued beeping in a steady, uninterrupted rhythm, his chest rising and falling.
I swallowed, my throat thick. I leaned closer. If my love for him couldn’t wake him, perhaps dirty talk would do the trick? He mightn’t love me but he sure as hell loved sex. “I want to be surrounded by your heat. I want to feel every inch of your cock as you pound deep inside of me.”
I blinked at the monitor, at his breathing, at his still lashes that lay like flat fans beneath his eyes. My chest squeezed and I felt suffocated suddenly, claustrophobic, like his world had narrowed down to nothing more than a box and there was no escape once again.
Except this time I really would be leaving.
It took everything I had to shake off the terror, the panic attack that had almost overcome me. Why had I imagined I’d be the one to wake him, anyway? I’d been his lover, yes, but I’d also been his prisoner, a woman he’d planned to one day get rid of.
I wasn’t anyone special to him. When he’d killed the men who’d left me for dead in the ocean, he’d been showing his possessive nature, nothing more.
