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“The two in the parking structure…” He takes a deep, pained breath. “Tomas sent them. Not the Volkovs.”

The car goes quiet as we all process that. That confirmation changes everything. I picture the face of the snaky man I must have walked past at least twice since I arrived at Marco’s.

“Tomas Greco sent killers to a children’s hospital?”

Marco’s jaw tightens. “I was wondering how they knew I’d be there.”

I glance down at my hands. They’re perfectly steady, but my insides churn as I wonder if this roiling world I stumbled into will ever slow to a simmer.

Chapter 12

Marco

I’ve been shot twice before, and I have the scars as mementos.

A man could get lucky three times.

Lucia discussed my luck too. In the SUV, she articulated that the next shot would likely be fatal with the calm, clinical precision of a doctor presenting a case study. She sounded nothing like the woman who had grabbed a bleeding man’s face in the back of a moving vehicle and kissed him like she was confirming he was still alive.

Her gaze drifts to my mouth and then snaps back to the wound. I can tell that the kiss is circling her mind. I can’t stop thinking about it either. If the first kiss was just an impulsive mistake made from running emotions, she had enough time to calm down before the second one in the car.

That raises questions that I don’t know how to answer yet. All I can do for now is lie on the bed on her orders and try not to let the thoughts rattling in my head consume me.

Thankfully, the visitors I get keep my mind in check. Sophia and Izzy bring food and water for both the patient and the caretaker. Sophia enters carefully, her gait slowed by her bulging belly. One hand rests briefly at her side as she navigates the doorway, and she sets a plate of bread and a bowl of broth down on the nightstand.

Izzy only glances between me and Lucia, who’s stayed beside the bed through it all with her feet tucked under her. Matteo’s notebook lies open in her lap, and dark circles hang heavy beneath her eyes.

She says nothing, but the small smirk is enough to rattle me. Nico appears in the doorway and starts announcing updates in a quick and economical way. He clearly reads the room well enough to know to keep it short as he informs us that Tomas has gone quiet since the shooting, which means he’s either regrouping or waiting for news about his men’s failure. Nico’s people are watching for both.

I doze off and on from the painkillers that must have been slipped into my food or drink. Every time I come to, I find that Lucia hasn’t left. She’s beside the bed, and when I try to mumble that she should take a break, she responds with a raised eyebrow. That’s her stubborn side, the one who’s decided that she belongs and will deal with all other issues later.

Seeing her still waiting on me loosens a knot in my chest that I didn’t realize was there. She closes Matteo’s notebook and meets my gaze.

“I followed you yesterday because I couldn’t fully trust you.”

We’re finally addressing the elephant in the room. Both of us have avoided this topic since yesterday because it either seemed insignificant among other things happening, or we had company, but we’re finally alone, and I’m stable. Now’s as good a time as any.

She doesn’t offer an apology, just holds herself straight-backed in the chair, with her hands resting on her knees like she’s about to present a diagnosis she knows the patient won’t like.

“I’ve been wondering where you’ve been going all week, and then I found your schedule on the calendar. It’s the first day that I knew where you were headed. Did you leave it there intentionally? Did you want me to find out?”

I keep my eyes on her, trying to choose my next words carefully.

Of course I left it on the calendar deliberately. I’d wanted her to have an idea of where I was going—at least on the single day of the week my destination wasn’t Red Hook—because I could see the worry as each day passed.

I didn’t expect my hospital visit to land me in the hospital.

“What do you think?” I raise my brows.

“It doesn’t matter if you did. I’m not sorry for trailing you.” She pauses, her chin lifting. “And before you lecture me again about being reckless, remember that you had your guard up when the shot came because of my phone call. Without it, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

I’m happy to know she doesn’t blame herself for me getting shot, but her framing of the situation irks me.

“So it’s my fault?” I ask with a raised eyebrow.

She brushes her hair back with both hands. “You laid the crumbs, Marco. What did you expect would happen?”

“You could have asked me.” My fingers twist in the sheet as the frustration I’ve been holding back surfaces in my hands. “You didn’t have to stalk me.”