It was around 8:00 pm when Ace came back to the hospital room. I had fallen asleep once he left earlier and it was the faint sound of his movements that woke me although he was trying his best to be quiet.
I opened up my eyes to see him setting up a little pillow and a light blanket on the chair in the corner of the room, his back facing me. He was wearing a plain, long-sleeved white shirt and plaid pajama pants. The sun had set about two hours ago and the room was dim, the only light coming from my bedside lamp which I assumed the kind nurse had turned on before she clocked out of her shift.
"I like your pajama pants," I said softly, followed by a yawn.
He turned his head to peek at me, his body still facing the chair as he tried making it as comfortable as possible by covering the wooden armrests with another blanket he pulled out of his duffel bag. He let out a small chuckle, "Did I wake you?"
"No," I lied, "I'm glad I woke up, though. I don't like sleeping that early."
He let out a low hum, acknowledging my words.
"How do you feel?" He said as he finally turned to face me while he took a seat on the chair. The chair looked much smaller now in comparison to his large frame and I immediately felt bad that he's been sleeping on that thing for almost two weeks.
"The meds are doing wonders, but I feel the pain when they're almost wearing off. How about you? I feel terrible that you've been sleeping on that."
He waved off my last comment, "Don't worry about me, and don't feel bad. I wouldn't be able to sleep back at the estate knowing you'd be here alone."
I let silence fall between us before thanking him.
"I'm scared to see the wound," I admitted quietly.
"Why? Does that kind of stuff freak you out?"
"Well, yeah. But I feel like it'll just make all of this more real than it is already. Can I ask you something?"
He nodded.
"Do you honestly not know why they're after me?"
He averted his eyes to the floor as he fiddled with his small, thin silver chain necklace that was hidden underneath his shirt. One that I've never noticed before. "I didn't before. I still don't exactly, but after everything happened, I started to piece together some things. There's still a lot of grey areas but...I have a theory."
"Are you willing to share that theory with me? You know, considering it's the potential reason why people I don't even know are after me?" I pushed.
He shook his head slightly, "Draga mea, I'm not holding back from telling you to keep you in the dark. If what I think isn't the real reason, I don't want you to overthink it. It's nothing you did, nobody's out to get you for personal revenge."
"Not personal revenge...but revenge to spite someone close to me? I don't understand."
"Let's just say you're a kind of leverage for I Dieci to get what they want."
Leverage? At the time in which I Dieci tried kidnapping me, I barely had any relationships with just about anybody at Agostini. There was no way I was that important to someone who may or may not have done something to piss off an entire other mafia for me to be used as a hostage.
He continued. "Perhaps it was an unfinished business deal with your father or a broken promise for some territories in New York."
"My father?" I asked incredulously. "Anthony Miller? There's no way, Ace. That man makes smiley faces out of blueberries on his pancakes. He wouldn't hurt a fly and I can't imagine anybody trying to hurt him."
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The Ace
العاطفية"Why do they call you The Ace?" I asked hesitantly. He looked up at me, his deep emerald eyes burning right through my skin. "Because I never miss a shot." When 24-year-old Alexandra Miller loses her miserable job at the bank she's worked for sinc...
