Chapter 13: Domenico - Marrying the Mafia Daddy

The fucking thief in the chair hasn’t given me what I want yet. He’s trying, I’ll give him that.

He’s saying words, making sounds that almost resemble answers. But the numbers still don’t add up, and until they do, he stays in that metal chair with the blood drying on his face and the zip ties cutting into his wrists.

The single bulb overhead throws harsh light that shows every drop of sweat, every smear of blood. The drain in the floor has been hosed down twice already, but the copper smell hangs in the air anyway, mixed with sweat and the sharp reek of fear.

You can always smell fear. It never washes out.

His face is split at the brow, the skin there puffy and dark. One eye swollen shut, the other bloodshot and darting between Gio and me like he’s trying to find the softer option. His nose is… well, broken doesn’t seem sufficient after Gio had his fun.

“Let’s try this again.” My voice booms in the room. “Where the fuck is my money?”

I scrunch up my nose in distaste when the man pisses himself.

Gio laughs darkly. “Man can take a beating, but the sound of your voice scares his bladder into submission. Go fucking figure.”

I just shake my head.

The man’s eyes keep dropping to my tattooed forearms, as if he’s afraid the ink might reach out and grab him. I step closer so he has to tilt his head back to see my face.

“You took forty thousand from me,” I growl. “I want to know where it went.”

He swallows. His throat works visibly under the grime and dried blood. “I told you,” he says, voice thick. “Some of it went to my sister. She’s got kids. The rest…” He stops. Swallows again. “The rest I spent.”

“On what?”

“Cards. Some at the track.”

“The whole amount?”

Despite the beating, his face is easy to read. I watch as lies form in his head. “Most of it. Not all. Maybe… maybe I kept a little back.”

“How much?” I demand.

The room stays quiet except for the sound of his breathing and the faint hum of the bulb overhead. I crouch in front of him, bringing myself to his eye level. Close enough that he can see my face, the lack of anything in it.

He’s scared, which means he’s still capable of lying. Fear makes men creative. Fear makes them think they can talk their way out of anything.

I straighten up and turn to Gio. “Give him another few minutes to think.”

Gio nods and pulls out his phone, probably to set a timer. He’s a stickler like that. As if on cue, it rings. I arch an eyebrow at the tone—a soft tune that I know is specifically assigned to his wife, Carly.

The man in the chair goes still, his good eye darting to Gio as the latter silences his phone. The man sees his opening.

“Look,” he says, voice gaining a desperate edge. “I can get the money back. I know people. I’ve got a cousin who can help me. I promise, Don DeLuca.”

I ignore his ramblings because I don’t care about the money. You don’t get to steal from me and walk away. That’s not how my world works.

The phone rings again, and Gio silences it once more, his jaw tightening. A muscle twitches in his cheek.

“Please,” the man says. “I’m begging you. Just let me…”

Third ring.

“For fuck’s sake,” Gio swears under his breath. Then he answers it. “Carly? What’s…”

He stops. Something happens to his face that I’ve never seen on Gio before. He’s… scared.

“Where are you?” he asks, voice clipped.

He listens for two seconds. Then he holds the phone out to me without explanation. His eyes meet mine, and whatever’s in them makes me take the phone.

“Domenico.” Carly’s voice comes through the line, breathless, rushing. “Kira’s mom had a seizure. We’re at the hospital. Kira’s with her now. I didn’t—”

“Which hospital?” I ask, interrupting her rushed ramblings. I listen only long enough to hear her confirm it’s the same hospital Kira visits daily. “On my way.” I end the call without waiting for Carly’s reply.

I hand the phone back to Gio and grab my jacket from the table.

“Deal with him however you see fit. Then come to the hospital.”

If Gio answers, I don’t hear it. I’m already through the door and running for my car. I barely get the door shut before I’m pulling into traffic. A horn blares behind me. I don’t care.

The hospital’s fifteen minutes away with traffic. I make it in eight.

I leave the car at the curb outside the entrance and run inside. I don’t stop until the elevator spits me out on the neurology floor.

I find Vinny outside a room three doors down from the nurses’ station. He’s standing with his back to the wall, arms crossed, eyes on the corridor. He’s positioned himself so he has a clear view of the elevator. Practical.

He straightens when he sees me. “Boss—”

“Why the fuck didn’t you call me?” The words come out low, a growl that doesn’t belong in a hospital corridor. A woman pushing an IV stand three doors down slows her pace, glances over, then hurries past.

Before Vinny can reply, Carly appears from around the corner, her heels clicking against the linoleum. She’s moving fast, her face tight, blonde hair falling loose around her shoulders. She gets between us and drops her voice to a whisper.

“This is on me. I told him not to call until we had details. I thought it would be better if we knew what we were dealing with before we pulled you out of whatever you were doing.” Her eyes meet mine, steady. “I’m sorry if it was the wrong call.”

I look at her for a beat. At Vinny. The anger doesn’t disappear—it just reroutes, finding nowhere useful to land.

“It doesn’t matter,” I snap. Because it doesn’t. The minutes I lost, the drive over, the fact that I wasn’t here when it happened—none of it matters right now. What matters is through that door.

Carly nods. “They’re both in there.” She points at the door Vinny’s guarding as though I hadn’t already figured it out.

I push the door open without knocking.

The room is dim. One monitor casts a pale blue glow over the bed, numbers flickering in green. An IV line runs to Paige’s arm, the bag half-empty, dripping slow and steady. Her chest rises and falls in shallow, even pulls.

Kira is in the chair beside the bed. Both hands wrapped around her mom’s, fingers interlaced, her grip so tight her knuckles have gone white. Her shoulders are drawn up tight, hunched forward as if she’s carrying something heavy.

Her jaw is clenched, lips pressed together, eyes dry and fixed on her mom’s face with an intense focus. It sounds like she’s praying. Low, rhythmic murmurs I can’t make out from here, words slipping between her teeth like she’s counting them off one by one.

She stops when the door closes behind me. As she turns her head, her eyes find mine across the room. That’s the exact moment something in her breaks. Just… breaks. Her composure slips and tears fall in a steady stream.

“Domenico…” My name dissolves into a sob.

Fuck, the sound of it hits me like a physical thing. Not too long ago, a grown man pissed himself because I raised my voice. Now my wife looks at me like I’m the one person in the world she doesn’t have to be strong for.

I don’t know what the fuck to do with that.

Needing to hold her, I cross the room in three strides. As soon as I’m next to her, I grab the back of the chair and pull her to her feet. Her hands slip away from her mom’s as I bring her straight into my chest, one arm locking around her back while the other cups the base of her skull, my fingers threading into her hair.

“I’m here, baby.”

She grips the front of my shirt with both hands. Her face presses into my shoulder, and I feel the damp heat of her tears through the fabric, the shake of her breath against my collarbone. Her whole body is trembling.

It’s not the fine, involuntary kind. No, this is the bone-deep kind that comes from holding something too heavy for too long and finally setting it down.

“I’m s-so s-scared.”

There are very few problems in my world I can’t solve. Money fixes some, fear fixes others—and when neither works, violence usually does. But I don’t know if any of those can make Kira’s mom better. And I fucking hate that.

Instead of insulting her by making promises I don’t know if I can keep, I hold her tighter.

What she needs is something solid to hold on to, and that’s what I am. So I stand there, one arm around her back. The other at the back of her head, fingers working through her hair in a soothing motion.

I look at Paige over her daughter’s head—my mother-in-law, whom I’ve never officially met. This woman is the reason Kira sacrificed herself in the first place. The reason she stood in that church believing whatever happened to her was worth it as long as her mom kept getting care.

And now Kira’s shaking in my arms because even that sacrifice might not have been enough.

Fucking hell.

Kira grips my shirt so tightly it wouldn’t surprise me if the fabric rips, and presses her face into my shoulder and sobs until her breath starts to even out.

Her fingers relax by degrees as the trembling slows. The sobs become hiccups, then ragged breaths, then something closer to steady.

I guide her back toward the chair, but instead of putting her in it alone, I sit and pull her onto my lap. She comes without resistance, curling into me with her cheek against my chest. I keep one arm around her waist and the other hand in her hair.

The room stays quiet except for the soft beep of the monitor and the sound of Kira’s breathing finding its way back.

When she pulls back enough that I can see her face, her eyes are red and swollen, her cheeks wet. She looks exhausted. Like whatever just came out of her took everything she had.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. Her voice is wrecked.

“Don’t,” I say. The word comes out rougher than I mean it to, so I soften it. “Don’t apologize to me, Kira. You’re my wife, so even if you soak all my clothes in your tears, I’m not letting go.”

Her hands are still fisted in my shirt, as if she’s afraid if she lets go, she’ll fall. I tighten my arm around her. I can’t promise her Paige will be okay. I can’t promise her anything about what happens in this room tonight.

But I can make damn sure my wife doesn’t hit the ground. That much I can control.

It feels like an eternity passes before Kira clears her throat and tells me everything that happened. She starts by explaining the call she got just as she and Carly left the café. Wanting her to fill me in at her own pace, I don’t interrupt. I just rub her back and squeeze her when her voice breaks and fresh tears fall.

Her voice is thin, scraped raw from crying, and she keeps stopping to swallow, to breathe, to make sure the words come out in the right order.

“I don’t know if they need to run more tests or if they’re waiting on results.”

“Do you want me to go find out?” I offer.

She shakes her head. “No, stay with me, please.”

“Always,” I vow, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

“They said it could be isolated,” she says after a lengthy silence. “The doctor kept saying that. Isolated. But what if it’s not? What if it’s the beginning of something worse? What if—”

“Stop.” I don’t say it harshly. Just firm enough that she hears it. “We’ll deal with what is. Not what if.”

She nods. Her breath hitches once, then steadies.

We stay like that for hours. The panic of the first hour gradually settling into something quieter, heavier. Exhausted waiting. The kind where you stop checking the clock because the numbers don’t mean anything anymore.

Kira twists around so she can hold her mom’s hand again without moving away from me. Every now and then she speaks softly to her mom. I think she’s even half-singing at some point.

It’s dark outside when Carly interrupts, bringing us a paper bag from… I don’t even know. I wasn’t listening. She sets it on the rolling table without saying much, squeezes Kira’s shoulder once, and leaves.

“You should eat,” I say.

Kira shakes her head. “I’m not hungry.”

“You haven’t eaten since lunch.”

“I can’t possibly think about food right now,” she snips, craning her neck to glare at me as though the mere suggestion is preposterous.

That’s good because that means she’s still in there and hasn’t succumbed to her fear.

“Kira,” I growl. “You need to eat, and so do I.”

“I’m not—”

“So help me God. If you don’t eat, I’ll drag you over my lap and spank you right here.”

“You wouldn’t,” she gasps, jumping off my lap.

Smirking, I stand and reach for the bag. While Kira stretches her legs, I unpack the food and drinks. There are a couple of sandwiches, freshly cut fruit, chocolate cake, and water. Christ, Carly really went all out here.

“You know,” I say, as I move the table closer to the chair and sit back down. “I’ve never met your mom, baby. But I’m pretty sure she’d side with me.”

Kira lets out a humorless laugh and rolls her red-rimmed eyes. “Of course she would,” she relents. Then she sighs and returns to my lap. “Okay, I’ll take a small bite.”

I unwrap one of the sandwiches and hold it in front of her mouth so she can take a bite, which she does. While she chews, I take one. We continue alternating like that until both sandwiches are gone.

Then I feed her all the chocolate cake and fruit, which she accepts without a single protest. Judging by the contemplative look in her eyes, she isn’t fully present. But that’s okay as long as she eats.

Once the food’s gone, Kira’s hand finds mine on the arm of the chair. Her fingers are cold. “I need to text Father Joseph,” she mumbles. “So he can pray for her. And I should text my dad. He needs to know.”

She’s speaking her thoughts out loud, the way people do when they’re too tired to filter. I tighten my hand around hers.

“Whatever you need, baby.”

I don’t mention my recent visit from Harry, or how much I doubt he’ll bother showing up. He’s a selfish, pathetic waste of space. But again, I keep those thoughts to myself.

She pulls her phone from her pocket with her free hand. I watch over her shoulder as she sends two texts before putting the phone away again.

More time passes. The kind that stretches and contracts without a pattern. Kira’s head finds my shoulder. Her breathing evens out. At first I think she’s asleep, but as I ponder if I should get a bed set up for her in here, I notice her eyes are fixed on her mom’s face.

I don’t know what time it is when a nurse enters the room. She checks Paige’s vitals and makes notes on a tablet before adjusting the IV drip.

As soon as she’s done, I ask, “Who’s the attending neurologist?”

She looks up, surprised. Like she forgot I was here. “That would be Dr. Chen.”

“Has he changed Paige’s medication?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” she replies. I glare pointedly at her until she unlocks the tablet and studies it for a minute. “Nope, no changes, Mr. DeLuca.”

Since I’m not a goddamn doctor, I can’t claim to know if there should have been changes. It pisses me off that she didn’t already know, though. I mean, aren’t nurses meant to know if their patients’ medications have changed?

“What tests are they running?”

She hesitates. “I’d have to check—”

“Then check it,” I bark.

While she reads aloud from the tablet, I take notes on my phone.

“Was this the first seizure, or has there been activity they weren’t telling us about?”

Another hesitation. Longer this time. “I… don’t have access to that information, sir. You’d need to speak with Dr. Chen.”

“Is this neurology unit equipped for the level of care Paige actually needs?”

The question lands like a stone. The nurse’s face changes—something defensive flickering behind her eyes before she smooths it away.

“We have a fully accredited neurology department. We treat patients with conditions similar to Mrs. Adams’ every day.”

I look at her for a beat. Long enough that she shifts her weight.

“I’ll have Dr. Chen come speak with you,” she says. “If that’s alright with Mrs. DeLuca.”

Kira nods immediately. “Please. Yes.”

As soon as the nurse’s gone, I open my messages and text Gio.

Me

Get Dr. Ruth Morgan here. Tonight. No excuses and tell her I’ll triple her normal fee.