Chapter 7

In my third week at the sanatorium, I dreamed of the explosion.

Three years earlier, Luca had just taken over the Moretti family. Several of the uncles refused to accept him. In secret they moved a shipment of arms into the South Harbor warehouse, then sold the information to a rival family.

I had a performance that day. Ten minutes before I went on, I got a voice message from Luca. He said there was trouble at the warehouse, and told me to go straight home after the show.

Gunshots erupted in the background.

I didn't go on stage. I drove to South Harbor. The warehouse was engulfed in fire, and the bodyguards held me back, saying Luca was still inside.

I ran in through a side door and found him on the second floor. He had been shot in the leg, and a worker was pinned beside him. Together we dragged the worker to the top of the stairs, and then the ceiling began to come down.

Luca told me to go first.

I saw a steel beam falling and shoved him aside without thinking.

When I woke, I was in the hospital. Luca knelt at the bedside, both hands covered in my blood.

The doctor told me my lower spine was badly damaged, and no one knew how much would recover.

Luca wept on the spot. He buried his face in my palm and said he would rather have died in the warehouse.

For the first six months, he truly never left my side. He bathed me, changed my dressings, carried me to rehab. When people from the company brought documents to the hospital, he held meetings in the corridor.

The first time I tried to stand, I collapsed into his arms. He held me and said it didn't matter, we'd try again tomorrow.

But after failure upon failure, I started smashing things, refusing food, refusing to see my old colleagues.

Luca stayed patient. Until one day I heard him in the bathroom, crying with his voice held down.

That was when I knew I was wearing him down too.

After Victoria appeared, he finally had someone to talk to. She didn't need him to carry her, didn't wake in pain in the middle of the night, and didn't make him face a suffering patient every time he came home.

I envied her, and I understood why he needed her.

That was what made me despair most.

After the agreement was signed, Luca didn't appear for three days.

On the morning of the fourth day, I woke to a bouquet of white roses by the bed.

The nurse said he had come in the small hours. He sat for two hours, saw that I was still asleep, and didn't wake me.

After that, he stopped coming into the room.

But I saw him every day.

Sometimes his car was parked downstairs. Sometimes, on my way to an examination, I saw him standing at the end of the corridor. The moment I looked over, he turned and left.

He hadn't let me go. He had only finally stopped daring to come close.

A week later, I fainted in the rehab room.

When I woke, Luca was sitting by the bed. He held my hand, his face paler than mine.

"The doctor says you're anemic."

"Let go."

"What treatment are you actually getting? Why do you keep getting thinner?"

"None of your business."

He looked at the IV bag. It was an ordinary painkiller. The drug's name gave away nothing about the cancer.

"I'm bringing a neurologist from New York," he said. "He might be able to treat your legs."

"Don't bother."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't want to stand up anymore."

Luca plainly didn't believe it.

I had once done eight hours of rehab a day to stand again. Pulled muscles, knees rubbed raw, and I never stopped.

"Are you hiding something from me?" he asked.

I was about to speak when Victoria pushed the door open.

"Luca, the prosecutor is here." She looked at him first, then at me. "We have to get back to the company right now."

Luca didn't move.

Victoria set a document in front of him.

"The witness is only giving us an hour. Miss this, and you'll be formally indicted."

Luca gripped my hand.

"I'll come back later."

"Don't," I said.

He left anyway.

It was the reasonable choice. If he had stayed, hundreds of employees might lose their jobs, and he himself might go to prison.

But as I watched him walk away, it still hurt.

That night, Victoria came back alone.

"Did you see?" she said. "One word from me, and he follows."

"Then what are you here for?"

"To show you something."

She played a recording.

It was Luca's voice. "I can't keep living like this. Every day I go home not knowing whether she'll lose her temper again, or hurt herself. I'm so tired."

Victoria asked, "Do you want to leave her?"

The recording stopped there.

"And after that?"

"After that doesn't matter." She put the phone away. "What matters is that he has thought about leaving you."

I knew the recording might have been cut.

But the things Luca said were true.

I had no right to blame him. Over three years I had grown more and more sensitive, harder and harder to live with. I threw things when he came home late, refused the caregiver and let only him carry me, and called him again and again in the middle of important meetings.

I had bound him with my pain.

It was time to let go.