Luca POV
The door shut behind her, and the office went quiet enough that I could hear the candle burning down on the corner of my desk.
I still had her in my head.
The way she’d stood here ten minutes ago, close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off her.
When her mouth brushed my ear I’d very nearly lost control of my hands.
They’d already started to lift.
Another second and I would have caught her waist and pulled her back against me.
Theo was still standing by the door.
He cleared his throat before he spoke.
“The Morettis want a meeting at three this afternoon about the ports. Adrian’s coming himself.”
”No.”
”He went through Marcus to ask.
He’s keeping his posture low.”
Adrian was Marcus’s stepson.
He’d been running the biggest ports in New York for ten years — the smuggling routes, the dockworkers, the men planted inside customs, all of it his.
When I came back from overseas five years ago it took me a year and a half to claw back half of the Hawthorne share on that shipping lane.
He was coming to talk now because he’d seen that the engagement to Evelyn was about to land, and he wanted to use the marriage as leverage and force me to give ground on the ports.
“Let him sweat.” I tossed my pen back into the cup.
Theo wrote it down, asked nothing else, and turned on his heel.
I went back to my files.
Halfway through one ledger my eye caught the coffee cup sitting on the corner of the desk.
She’d brought it in that morning.
The candle beside it still hadn’t burned down, and the scent of it had filled the whole office.
By the time the last overseas video call ended I was leaning back in my chair, pressing thumb and forefinger into the bridge of my nose.
Theo came in with a small stack of documents for signature.
I took my pen, turned two pages, and asked without looking up, “Where’s Sienna?”
”She put in for leave after lunch.
Said she caught a chill last night and had a fever, that she needed to go to the hospital.
You were in a meeting, so she reported it to me through the proper channel.
I approved it.”
I made a sound in my throat and kept signing.
At the door Theo put his hand on the handle and stopped.
“Want me to send someone to check on her? Or have something sent over?”
I looked up and glanced at the window.
It was fully dark now; the streetlights below were on, throwing their light over the traffic moving up and down the avenue.
“No,” I said.
“Handle it through company procedure.”
Theo left.
I stared at the page in front of me for a long time and didn’t sign a single line.
Then I pulled the whole sheet out, crushed it into a ball, and threw it into the trash.
Sienna POV
Sienna woke up hurting. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
The needle in the back of her hand had slipped, and blood had drawn back into the IV line.
She rang the bell.
A nurse came and reinserted it, then asked whether there was any family who could come in.
There wasn’t.
Thirty-nine point eight.
The ER doctor told her her inflammatory markers were absurdly high, and asked how she had managed to wait this long to come in.
Her phone rang.
She fished it out, and the screen said Grandma.
It had been a long time since she’d been in touch with her grandmother.
Sienna cleared her throat and answered.
“Grandma.”
”Sienna?
Sweetheart, what time is it over there?
Have you eaten dinner?”
”Yes.” She kept her voice light; her mouth even curved a little.
“Just out of a meeting. The boss treated us. And you?”
”Eaten.
Today’s soup was good.
Is it cold where you are?”
”Not cold.” She gripped the edge of the blanket tighter.
The ward’s air conditioning was set low, and her arms were covered in gooseflesh.
“Grandma, are you taking your medicine on schedule?”
”Of course.
The nurse comes every day.
Don’t just bury yourself in work and wear yourself out.”
”I’m fine.
I transferred your living expenses.
Did it come through?”
”It came.
Sienna, how’s the new job?
Is your boss good to you?”
”Very good.
He thinks highly of me.” She opened her eyes and fixed them on the bleak white light panel in the ceiling.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m doing really well.”
”Good.
Grandma always knew you could do it.”
Something caught in her throat.
“Mm. I’ll come home and see you in a couple of days.”
”All right, all right.
You’re busy.”
She was afraid that if she said one more word she would start to cry.
She hung up, set the phone down beside her pillow, and stared at the ceiling.
The fluorescent light was painfully white.
She was always like this in front of her grandmother.
When she was small, her grandmother had picked through garbage to keep her fed.
People had laughed at her grandmother for being a fool — she couldn’t feed herself, and now she’d picked up another mouth to feed on top of it.
Sienna had sworn to herself then that one day she would give her grandmother a better life than anyone.
What she was doing now was taking her closer to that goal and further away from her grandmother at the same time.
The curtains between the beds were all drawn, but they blocked nothing in the way of sound.
Sienna curled up on the narrow bed in the middle, under a blanket so thin the air came straight through it, cold in waves.
Two rows of beds over, a man had been standing for a long time.
Adrian Moretti had only come to drop Evelyn off.
His stepsister had twisted her ankle and had made enough of a scene that he’d agreed to come with her.
He’d come.
He’d walked her into the ward.
While he waited he heard a voice coming from behind one of the nearby curtains.
A draft lifted the curtain between them.
Past two rows of beds, he saw that face.
He stopped.
The woman lay on her side on the narrow bed, half her face buried in the pillow, showing one clean line of profile.
Her lashes were long; with her eyes closed they cast a small shadow beneath them.
There was no color in her lips, but the dry, cracked lines couldn’t hide what they really looked like beneath.
That face, in an emergency room reeking of disinfectant under white tubes, was jarring.
Evelyn beside him was still complaining about her shoes.
He answered without attention.
Evelyn followed his line of sight and saw only row after row of curtains.
“What are you looking at?” she asked.
He pulled open the door of the ward and let her go out first.
“Nothing.”