"The damage was done the moment our eyes collided."
~Xavier De Luca
***
One life-altering night ignites a soul-scorching passion between a gangster and a good girl...One that could burn everyone they know and love to ashes.
Loyalties and legacies...
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All I remember was falling.
Falling like the dead body still holding me until a powerful hand grabbed my flailing arm. I must have passed out from blood loss and trauma at that point because everything else is a blank.
I woke to an unfamiliar room surrounded by tubes and wires. I was on another mattress, but this one smelled clean and my limbs weren't bound, which felt like a step in the right direction.
Blinking to clear the sleep from my eyelids, I found Xavier's devastating beauty inches from my face.
"Grace? I mean, shit, Gianna? Can you hear me?" He asked, lifting my hands to kiss my bruised knuckles.
He stopped when he noticed me wince at his sweet gesture. Terrible memories swamped me, and I turned to search our surroundings with aching eyes.
I was in a hospital, but where and for how long, weren't exactly obvious.
Every surface in the room was covered in vases bursting with blooms and cards and dangling balloons, which made it feel less scary than the last place I remembered.
"Gianna?" Xavier's voice trembled.
"Please don't call me that," I coughed through my dry mouth. "It doesn't feel like my name."
"Thank God," Xavier cradled my head to his chest and kissed my hair over and over. It hurt to be jostled and I felt it tug on something that set off a very annoying alarm in the background, but none of that mattered. "Thank God, Grace."
"Not today," I muttered into his shoulder, inhaling his familiar spice and forgetting for a sweet moment that I was supposed to be mad at him. "No, today, I thank you."
My mind flashed back to those awful seconds in that diabolic doorway with Luigi. Xavier had chased him down, risking his life and his family to try and save me.
"Well, I couldn't have done shit without your uncle," Xavier pulled back to let my vision adjust as more bodies filled the room.
He pushed a plastic cup with a straw at me, which I took a sip of and then promptly spat out.
"Cillian! Laoise! Mamo! Uncle Rob!" I exclaimed, looking over the faces of my loved ones that I was convinced I'd never see again.
Tears engulfed my vision as a nurse in cheery green scrubs bustled into the room.
"Let's keep these monitors plugged in, alright dearie?" She leaned over my bed to fix my tubing and wires before straightening up to look at all of us. "Woah! Only two visitors at a time. We don't want to overwhelm our patient, now, don't we?"
"I pray, singnora, that, you will make an exception for me," a heavily accented voice flowed over the chatter in the room to steal our attention. "I will not impose on your hospitality, long."
