I knew something was going to happen tonight. But I kept it to myself after she told me never to lie to her.
She wants honesty. I owe her that much.
Too bad honesty is the one thing that’ll destroy us both.
CHAPTER 3
ADRIANA
I don’t sleep.
For the next couple of hours, I just sit on the stiff couch in the ICU waiting room and watch the sun peek above the horizon outside. I can’t relax at all, the uncertainty about my family and our future looming like a toxic cloud I’m afraid to inhale.
Luna is curled up next to me, her head in my lap, her breathing slow and shallow. She came back from the chapel, eyes red-rimmed but fierce. She’s angry, just like me. Angry that our lives have been thrown into upheaval, angry that our father made himself vulnerable to enemies who could have killed him tonight, angry that our livelihoods are now hanging by a thread that Eamon Molloy promised would be cut if I refuse to marry his son.
She wanted to vent, to scream and cry about how none of this is fair. But I didn’t let onto my disgust at the situation. And it frustrated the hell out of her until she finally dozed off and left me alone with my frenzied thoughts.
Because while I’ve been the picture of calm since the Molloys left, beneath it, I am anything but.
My mother is still in the chapel with Vincenzo, which suitsme just fine because I don’t want to hear any more about the reality that was just sprung on me a couple of hours ago.
Eamon and Ronan left right after the cafeteria meeting where my future was carved up like a damn Thanksgiving turkey. Vincenzo took my mother and Luna to the chapel. And I walked away from Lochlan Molloy after telling him not to lie to me, because it was either that or scream until my vocal cords snapped.
He’s gone now. I don’t know when he left. At some point I looked toward the emergency room exit and the spot where he’d been standing with his hands in his pockets and his eyes fixed on me.
I let out a breath when I didn’t see him staring back.
I don’t need him watching me fall apart. Not that I’m falling apart. I don’t do that.
The scent of industrial cleaner stings my nostrils. Somewhere down the corridor, machines beep, the rhythms holding steady. Goosebumps pop up along my bare arms and a shiver slithers down my spine.
My father’s heartbeat, proof that he’s still here.
For now.
I look down at my grandmother’s ring, the violet-colored tanzanite gem glittering in the overhead light. Absently, my fingers twist it left and right, something I do when I need to feel her presence. She’s always with me when I need strength, the angel on my shoulder, guiding me, comforting me, empowering me.
Nonna gave me the ring when I was eighteen, the night before I left for college. She pressed it into my palm and said, “You were always the brave one, Adriana. Don’t let them clip your wings.”
She meant my father. His world. The invisible chains that come with being a DiMicheli.
I kept that promise for twenty-two years. Built a life. Built acompany. Became someone who had nothing to do with blood money and turf wars and menacing men with guns.
And now I’m sitting in a hospital waiting room at six in the morning, forced to marry a stranger because my father signed a piece of paper I never knew about with a man who terrifies me more than the people who shot my dad.
Nonna would be pissed.
I would be too, if I had the energy. Right now, all I feel is hollow and numb.
A nurse in blue scrubs approaches with a clipboard. “Ms. DiMicheli? Your father’s vitals have stabilized overnight. You can see him for a few minutes, if you’d like.”
If I’d like.
As if there’s a version of this where I say no. To any of it.
I ease Luna’s head off my lap, careful not to jostle her. She murmurs something but doesn’t open her eyes.
I follow the nurse through the double doors and she stops outside a set of glass doors. She nods toward the bed.
