Page 97 of The Kingpin’s Bride

“You said if you were late I should wait for Santino. I waited.” Her mouth trembled once and then she forced it still. “I waited until he came upstairs and told me they had taken your knee instead of your life, and that I was not allowed in here until you woke up enough to look at me.”

I swallowed. “Rena, I’m sorry...”

She sat on the edge of the bed without asking. Careful of the brace. Close enough that I could feel the heat of her through the sheet. Her hand hovered over the bandaging and did not land, as if touching it might make it more real. I reached up. My fingers found the side of her neck, the bare place where the collar used to sit. Her pulse hammered under my thumb.

“I know why you left.” She leaned into my hand, just enough. “You couldn’t stand being made quiet. You never could.”

“They marked me so you would see it.”

“I see it.” Her forehead dropped to mine. Her breath was warm. “I also see you. That’s the part they didn’t plan for.”

I closed my eyes. For a second the clinic disappeared. There was only her mouth close to mine.

“Leo brought the cane,” I said against her skin. “Chiara had it made.”

Morena pulled back just far enough to look at the skull. “Kind of suits you.”

She kissed me then. A closed-mouth, shaking, furious kiss that tasted like she had been holding it in the hall the entire time Santino kept her on the other side of the door. I kissed her back as much as the drugs and the brace would let me, my hand sliding from her throat into her hair, anchoring her there because I could not stand the idea of her stepping away yet. When she broke it, her eyes were wet and angry.

“Camilla asked if you were having a bad day like your bird,” she said.

“Kind of,” I smiled. “Take me home, baby.”

“You can’t walk yet.”

“Then get the chair. Get Santino. Get whoever,” I said.“I am not spending another night here.”

Her mouth curved. “ Always such a controlling bastard.”

“Yours,” I said. “If you still want the version that comes with a limp.”

She picked up my free hand and pressed it flat over her stomach, over the secret she had already given me.

She stood. She did not let go of my hand until she had to.

“I’ll get Santino,” she said. “And then you’re coming home.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Morena

Three weeks later

The bruises on my feet had healed. The cut on my cheek had faded to a thin pink line. Camilla had started sleeping through most nights without the bad dreams. Matteo moved through the penthouse with the black-and-gold cane, the crowned skull flashing under the lights every time he shifted his weight.

The limp had not improved. He did not complain about it. He simply adjusted, the same way he adjusted to everything else that had tried to break him.

My diary was almost full. Most of the pages were just variations of the same sentence: I hate him.

I turned to a clean page and wrote one last line, slower than the others.

Mrs Morena Ventura.

Then I closed the notebook and left it on the nightstand where he would see it if he looked.

He had given me space. He worked from the study. He took calls with the cane braced against his thigh. He sat on the floor with Camilla in the evenings and let her show him the drawings she made.

He never asked to get physical. He never pushed. The ring stayed on the nightstand where he had left it that first morning, brilliant-cut diamond catching the light every time I walked past it.