Chapter 4

The aircraft door sealed as the message ended.

Roman called seventeen more times. On the last one, a flight attendant stopped beside my seat and politely reminded me to turn off my phone.

I powered it down.

[If he canceled because I’m sick, leaving is still the right thing.] Guilt wasn’t love, and gratitude wasn’t supposed to become a life sentence.

Ten hours later, the plane landed in Zurich. A medical coordinator sent by Dr. Weiss met me outside customs. I had barely settled into the car when the basic phone rang.

Unknown number. New York area code.

I let it ring.

As the car entered the hospital’s underground drive, the phantom smell of burning wood filled my nose. The driver’s voice stretched and warped. I tried to tell him the medication was in my bag, but I couldn’t put the words in order.

Before darkness swallowed me, I saw a man in a black coat charging through the automatic doors.

Roman caught me before I hit the pavement.

When I woke, electrodes covered my head and monitors crowded the bed. Roman sat by the window. His tuxedo jacket was gone, his white shirt looked as though he had slept in it, and dried blood marked one cuff.

He stood the instant my eyes opened but didn’t come closer. “Dr. Weiss says you had a generalized seizure. They’ve moved the surgery to tomorrow morning.”

“How did you find me?”

“The hospital couldn’t reach you. They called the backup contact on your authorization.”

“That was Elias.”

“He handed me the phone.”

I closed my eyes. Elias and I were going to have a long conversation if I survived.

Roman placed a document on the blanket at my feet. The Pier Seven deeds were exactly as I had left them. “I don’t want them.”

“They should have belonged to the DeLuca family all along.”

“They belong to you. Your parents didn’t die saving me so you could hand their life’s work back to the world that killed them.”

“You didn’t kill them.”

“I’m the reason they went to that pier.”

For the first time in seven years, he admitted that the ambush had trapped him too.

Roman gripped the rail at the foot of the bed until his knuckles went white. “When you sent me that I love you text, I typed all night. I wanted to say it back. Every time I tried, I saw your father putting your hand in mine. I saw the word guardian on the court order. I was terrified I had taken your need to feel safe and used it. I thought one day you’d wake up and realize I had turned protection into possession.”

“So you decided to make me think I disgusted you.”

The color drained from his face. “I thought if I was cruel enough, you’d choose someone safer.”

“Congratulations. I don’t believe a word you say anymore.”

Only the monitor answered for several seconds. Roman nodded slowly, as if accepting a sentence. “I know. I’m not asking you to forgive me.”

He took a signed declaration from his inside pocket. It stated that Mara Bennett was an adult and that neither Roman DeLuca nor anyone in his family possessed guardianship, financial, medical, or personal authority over her. Every decision about my treatment belonged to me alone.

“I didn’t come here as your guardian,” he said. “That legal relationship ended six years ago. I’m the one who kept hiding behind the word.”

For once, there was no command in his eyes and no Don’s mask. There was only a man who had run out of places to hide his fear.

“I’m asking as an adult who loves you. Let me wait in the hallway until the surgery is over. That’s all.”

“What happened at the church?”

After a pause, he handed me his phone.

The video was frozen during the final minute before the live broadcast cut out. Sienna stood at the end of the aisle, and the priest was motioning Roman forward. Instead, Roman removed the DeLuca crest from his lapel and placed it in Luca’s hand in front of two hundred guests.

On the screen, he said, “The alliance stands. The wedding doesn’t. The Carusos need DeLuca’s word, not a husband in love with another woman.”

The room erupted. Elders shouted, reporters rushed the doors, and Sienna calmly passed her bouquet to a bridesmaid as if she had been waiting for that exact sentence.

Then Elias appeared on the feed, pushed through security, and put the green folder in Roman’s hands.

Roman took back his phone before I could watch more. His voice scraped on the next words. “I saw the deeds and thought you were only leaving. Then the surgical consent form fell out. It said you might never breathe on your own again. Elias told me you were putting your affairs in order.”

Roman had called for his plane, but a storm grounded every private flight. He sent Luca through the manifests of every commercial plane bound for Europe and contacted every Swiss neuro-oncology center that accepted international patients. For six months, he had forbidden his people from saying my name. That morning, he had nearly put a gun to every man who answered, We can’t find her.

“I thought I could control what I felt and preserve the line between us.” Roman held my gaze. “Then I realized there might be nothing on the other side of that line but your headstone.”

My chest ached, but a late confession didn’t erase six months of damage. “Coming here doesn’t make any of that disappear.”

“I know. You don’t owe me a reward for showing up. Let me live with what I did.”

I didn’t answer.

When the nurse came to prepare me for surgery, Roman stepped outside and stayed there. He didn’t cross the threshold again.