Chapter 87 Wrong Hall, Wrong Room
Matteo
She should’ve been back by now.
It wasn’t impatience. It was instinct.
Dinner plans had stalled into idle conversation—Rosco leaning against the wall, Alessio seated with his hands folded over his cane, the muted hospital TV droning on about weather I didn’t give a fuck about. Valentina had said she was just checking on the baby, then coming straight back.
That had been ten minutes ago.
I stood and stepped into the hall, scanning left, then right. Nurses passed. A doctor brushed by. No Valentina.
I pulled my phone out and called her.
No answer.
That sensation hit me then—the one I’d learned to respect long before it ever saved my life. Cold. Sharp. Wrong.
“Rosco,” I said without turning around. “Stay here.”
I opened the GPS tracker on my phone. Her dot blinked to life almost immediately.
Too close.
She was right here. Somewhere in this hallway.
I started walking, slow at first, eyes flicking to door numbers as the dot moved in sync with my steps. Room after room. I was practically on top of her signal now—and yet the hall was empty.
“That’s not possible,” I muttered.
Then I heard it.
A crash. Something slamming into drywall. A muffled thud. A sharp inhale that sounded too much like pain.
The sound came from the room beside me.
I didn’t knock.
I shoved the door open—
—and watched Luca backhand my wife across the face hard enough to send her sprawling to the floor.
Everything in me went red.
Valentina hit the tile and Luca followed her down, kneeling fast, already pulling a gun from his waistband.
“Didn’t I warn you once that I would kill you?” he snarled, pressing the barrel toward her. “I’m not giving you the chance to run your mouth this time—”
I crossed the room in three strides.
My boot connected with his wrist, sending the gun skittering across the floor. My knee came up next, cracking into his face with a wet crunch that told me his nose was broken.
He screamed.
I grabbed his throat and yanked him backward, my own gun already out, barrel pressed hard against the side of his skull.
“Didn’t I tell you,” I said calmly, deadly calm, “that if you laid another hand on my wife, I would kill you?”
He gagged, blood pouring down his lip, eyes wild as he clawed at my arm.
“What the fuck happened to you?” he sputtered. “You’re choosing family betrayal over some whore?”
I tightened my grip until his feet barely touched the ground.
“My wife was a virgin when we got married,” I said quietly, venom dripping into every word. “You’re the one who married a stripper who fucked her clients in the VIP room. If anyone here married a whore, it’s you.”
Behind me, Valentina sucked in a breath.
She was on her feet now. Shaking. One hand pressed to her cheek.
“Matteo,” she said, voice tight. “Don’t.”
I looked at her, stunned. “Are you fucking insane?”
“Don’t kill him here,” she said, forcing the words out. “We already have Grant breathing down our necks. Don’t give him a gift.”
The room was silent except for Luca’s wheezing.
I stared at her—really stared.
Even shaken. Even hurt. She was thinking. Calculating. Protecting not just herself, but everything we’d built.
The words slipped out before I could stop them.
“God,” I said softly, “I fucking love you.”
The second they left my mouth, reality hit.
Too late.
Her eyes widened—shock flashing across her face—but she didn’t say a word.
I turned back to Luca, my gun never wavering.
“Looks like you get to breathe a little longer, cousin,” I said coldly. “Shame your daughter’s going to grow up without you.”
Luca laughed through blood and spit.
“A daughter?” he scoffed. “I was supposed to have a son. I don’t give a shit about a daughter anyway.”
That was it.
Whatever mercy Valentina had just bought him? It evaporated.
I leaned down, pressing the gun harder against his head, my voice low enough that only he could hear it.
“You should’ve kept your hands to yourself,” I said. “Because now? You don’t get to die fast.”
I shoved him away and stepped back toward Valentina, my body automatically positioning itself between her and him.
Rosco burst in a second later, gun drawn.
One look at Luca’s broken face and the look in Valentina’s eyes and her black eye and split cheek, and his jaw tightened.
“Boss?” he asked.
I didn’t take my eyes off Luca.
“Get him out of here,” I said. “Quietly.”
He’d just signed his own death warrant.
Rosco stepped fully into the room, gun already holstered, eyes sweeping the damage like he was counting the sins.
“I’ll get him to the interrogation site,” he said flatly. “Secure and silent. We’ll wait for you there.”
“It’ll be a few minutes,” I replied, still watching Luca bleed on the floor. “I want a doctor to look at Valentina’s face. She needs an x-ray. If he fractured anything or she needs stitches…”
Rosco nodded once. “We’ll be waiting.”
He bent down, grabbed Luca by the collar, and began dragging him toward the door like a bag of garbage. Luca groaned but didn’t fight—too wrecked and bloodied to resist. He muttered something low under his breath.
Right as they reached the doorway, another voice cut through the tension.
“What the hell is going on in here?”
Alessio strode into the room, leaning on his cane but moving faster than he should’ve for a man his age. His sharp eyes darted around—first to Valentina’s swollen cheek, then to the bloodied man Rosco was hauling away.
His whole posture shifted.
“Someone better start talking,” he barked, voice edged with fury.
I straightened, eyes steady.
“I was looking for my wife,” I said coolly, “and I found Luca beating her.”
Alessio turned to Valentina instantly. “Princesa,” he said, his tone changing, gentling. “Are you alright? What happened?”
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, still rattled but standing strong.
“I thought I was walking into Arianna’s room,” she said. “I had the wrong number. I opened the door and… I saw him fucking a nurse bent over the bed.”
“You fucking snitch,” Luca growled.
Before the sentence even finished leaving his mouth, Rosco’s elbow slammed back into Luca’s face with a sickening crack.
“Oops,” Rosco muttered. “Slipped.”
Luca howled, blood pouring from his nose, again.
Alessio’s lips thinned. He turned back to me, fury simmering beneath the surface.
“And what do you plan to do with him?” he asked.
I didn’t blink. “Reminding him what real consequences feel like.”
He nodded once. “Do what you have to do.”
Then he turned to Valentina again, reaching to gently take her hand.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” he said. “But you handled it with strength. I’m proud of you, Princesa.”
Her eyes shimmered—not with tears, not quite—but something close to it. She squeezed his hand and murmured, “Thank you.”
I glanced at Rosco.
“Take him.”