Page 74 of Dark Mafia Heir

“Varya, I’m . . .” I lick my lips, trying to gather strength. “I’m fine. It’s nothing too serious. Which one of Antonio’s men is on watch today.”

Slipping in through the door, she edges closer into the room. “Luca. Lorenzo’s away with the boss. Himself, Giovanni, and Dario.”

Mild relief settles in my chest, and I ask again to make sure. “Luca’s here?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Great.” I summon strength and push myself to my feet. Eyeing her, I pad over to the closet. “I need to change first. Send a message across and tell him to wait for me downstairs.”

“Your fingernails might disappearbefore we get there.”

Turning to the side, I look over my shoulder at Luca, who’d been strangely quiet throughout the ride to the hospital. He has his eyes pinned on the road and his jaw set in a stubborn clamp. I can feel the tension radiating off him in waves.

Convincing him to take me without Antonio’s knowledge and permission had been a tedious drag. The man was as stubborn as a mule. Thank God, I managed to succeed after several attemptsat emotionally blackmailing him. I deserved an award for my efforts.

Sighing, I drop my fingers from my mouth and sink deeper into the car seat. The nerves wracking in my stomach and chest are threatening to kill me before I have the opportunity to carry out the test.

“You don’t understand.”

Luca gives me an unreadable side-eye before his jaw flexes, and he looks back at the road. “Maybe you should take a look in the mirror. You literally look like a ghost, Vivienne. I don’t need to understand; what I see is enough. That’s the reason I’m doing this.”

Antonio and his men are not exactly vocal about their emotions, but I can identify care and concern when I see one.

Before I can respond, the hospital comes into view.

Luca presses down on the gas, and my heart lurches as he swerves sharply into the lot, tires screeching louder on the pavement than they should in the quiet midday sun. When he cuts the engine, there’s an abrupt silence that follows. It’s deafening, and, at the same time, it makes everything louder—my heartbeat, my ragged breathing.

“You don’t. . .” I take a deep breath. “You don’t have to come in with me. I can do this on my own.”

“Sure, and have Nio slice my dick off when he hears I left his pretty wife without protection,” he says dryly.

His seatbelt whirs when he unbuckles it, and the car seat dips under his weight when he turns to face me. “Look,” his face is hard, unsmiling. “I’m going to tell you a short story. You can’t tell anyone I told you.”

“Um, okay.”

Luca telling me astorynow is the last thing I expect, but I welcome a diversion from the current situation glaring at me in the face.

“When I was a kid, maybe nine or ten, my father took my brothers and me on this family hike—said it’d be a bonding experience. It was supposed to be a simple trail, you know, easy enough for a kid like me. So we get about halfway up this trail, and it’s fine at first—trees everywhere, birds fucking singing, or whatever. But then we hit this ridge, and out of nowhere, the path just . . .disappears. Erosion or something. There’s this steep drop on one side and nothing but loose rocks on the other. My father urges me to move forward, but I’m fucking terrified, convinced that if I move an inch, I’m going to fall.”

Luca’s jaw moves a muscle, and he runs a hand over his hair.

“My father is like, ‘Luca, don’t look at the whole thing. Just look at your next step. That’s all you have to do.”

I hold my breath; his father’s talking to me.

“So I did. I focused on the one rock, then the next. One step, then another. Before I knew it, I was past the ridge, standing on solid ground. And when I turned back to look, it wasn’t as scary as I thought. I realized the hardest part wasn’t the trail—it was getting out of my own head.”

His eyes search mine before he opens his door. “You don’t have to figure it out all at once. Just take the next step. That’s all you need to do.”

The door closes behind him, and the knot loosens in my chest, just a little. Though strange and completely out of the blue, I appreciate Luca for sharing a bit of his past to encourage me.

I stare up through the windshield at the towering hospital. Its glass panels harshly glint under the sun, and my throat feels dry, my palms damp.

Swallowing, I whisper, “Next step,” and step out of the car and into the blinding afternoon.

Inside the hospital, the entire process goes by in a blur. Luca is at my side before I can even steady myself, taking charge. Iforce my legs to move as we follow a nurse, one shaky step at a time, to the room she leads us.

The seconds drag, feeling more and more like a stretch of eternity, and when the doctor finally exposes his white teeth in a smile, my throat tightens.

---