Page 47

“I know. Still, you have to agree that a mafia enforcer visiting a children’s hospital is bound to strike a doctor’s nerve.”

She’s right about that. I know her enough to be certain she wouldn’t be satisfied with just knowing my location, especially with children involved. The fact that she probably worried about the safety of the little ones niggles my insides. I haven’t earned her trust yet, and that, for some reason, almost feels as painful as my wound.

I shift against the pillow, wincing at the pull in my shoulder. “The kids are fine, by the way.”

She blinks once. “I know. I called the ward nurse this morning.”

I hold her gaze for a long second before I nod. “Of course you did.”

She leans forward in the chair. “Can you tell me about them? Why are you volunteering there?”

I regret adjusting my shoulder against the pillow when pain lances through the joint like a hot-wire. Lucia notices and shoots up to assist, but I raise my hand to stop her, and she eases back into her seat.

“The program started six months ago, after Enzo took power.” I keep my eyes on the wall. “It was one of Sophia’s initiatives. When they went looking for someone to handle it, I volunteered. I needed another task for my hands that⁠—”

She finishes for me. “Didn’t involve hurting anyone?”

I blink. Those aren’t exactly the words I would have used, but they feel right.

“The kids have lost hope, and they needed someone by their side. The feisty one throwing punches is Leo. He’s been in treatment for sixteen months, and he still hasn’t lost his mischievous streak.” I smile. “The boy’s tough.”

Lucia nods and tilts even closer.

“After the third month, his father stopped visiting. Leo told me once that, if he got strong enough, maybe his dad would come back.”

I let out a heavy breath, reliving that awful memory.

“Some of the kids have families who show up every day, sit with them, and bring them things. Others have parents who can’t handle watching their child fight a disease they can’t fix, so they just stop coming.”

After a pause, I admit, “Those situations break my heart the most because the kids blame themselves. They believe that if they can just get strong enough, their people will come back. So I teach them to fight. Fighting is what I know, and the only way I can convince the kids that they’re gaining strength.”

Lucia watches me, her eyes giving none of her thoughts away.

“How did your father die?”

The abrupt subject shift slams straight into my chest. It crosses my mind that, in talking about the kids, I described myself when I lost my parents and then my career. The realization tightens my jaw, and my attention drops to the sheet between us.

Lucia waits for me to continue.

I shouldn’t tell her anything more, but my lips open of their own accord.

“I was a kid.” My voice catches on the number, dragging against a wound much older than the one in my shoulder. “My mother was never in the picture, and my father ran a boxing club which I later found out was a front to recruit foot soldiers for the Benedetti family. My father died during an attack on the estate…caught up in the cross fire…and the police called it a tragic accident.”

I shift my good arm against the sheet.

“But it…wasn’t an accident?” Her gaze stays on me.

“My father saw betrayal in the Benedetti leadership that he was not supposed to see. They made sure he couldn’t warn the padrino. I found out ten years later when a man tracked me down in a bar in Palermo, proved he used to work with my father, and said he had to find me because he thought I deserved the truth.”

Lucia’s head tilts. “Did you find the people responsible?”

I huff. “By the time I learned what happened, they were all already dead. I was twenty-six, still at the peak of my career, and Bruno told me not to worry about it. He said pain belongs in the ring, that I could pour it into every punch, and I did until he betrayed me and set me up for a doping scandal. I was devastated and couldn’t understand how the only other man I saw as a father could do that to me. I don’t know what would have happened if Enzo hadn’t saved me and brought me to work with him here.”

Lucia’s hand slides over the bed and finds mine so naturally, like she’s been doing it all day. I fold my hand into hers, welcoming her warmth against my palm.

We stay this way until I hear a knock at the door.

Nico appears, tablet in hand, his expression killing Lucia’s protest about rest before she can even finish it.