Chapter 65 THE SHOOTING
POV: Selena
Someone kept saying my name, but it took a moment before I realized they were talking to me.
“Mrs. De Luca. Selena. Look at me.”
I was sitting on a hard plastic chair in a hospital hallway, my hands wrapped around each other so tightly my fingers had gone numb. What I wanted right then was very simple. I wanted to see Adrian. I wanted to know, without guessing, without reading faces, without filling in blanks with fear, that he was alive and still himself.
The pressure came from everywhere. Sirens outside. Voices behind the doors. Cameras somewhere down the hall, waiting.
“I’m fine,” I said automatically, though no one had asked.
The nurse crouched in front of me, her voice steady. “You weren’t hit. We checked. But I need you to stay seated until the doctor clears you.”
“I need to see my husband,” I said.
The word husband felt strange in my mouth, like something borrowed from another life. Still, it mattered. It anchored me.
She nodded. “He’s being treated. The bullet grazed his shoulder. No major damage.”
Grazed. Treated. No major damage. Words that were supposed to calm me, but slid off instead.
Down the hall, a door opened. Marcus stepped out, his suit stained at the cuff, his face set in a way that told me he had already switched into problem solving mode.
“They’ve got the shooter,” he said quietly. “Alive.”
I stood before the nurse could stop me. “Who?”
“Known associate of Thornton,” Marcus replied. “Not subtle. Not clean. He wanted it loud.”
Of course he did.
They let me through after that. Maybe because stopping me would have taken more energy than anyone had left. Maybe because the look on my face made it clear I was not going to sit down again.
Adrian was propped up on a hospital bed, his jacket gone, a white bandage wrapped around his shoulder. He looked tired, pale under the harsh lights, but his eyes sharpened the second he saw me.
“There you are,” he said.
I crossed the room in three steps and reached for him, careful of the bandage but not of anything else. He pulled me in with his uninjured arm, pressing my head against his chest like he needed the contact as much as I did.
“You scared me,” I said into his shirt.
“I know,” he replied. “I’m sorry.”
I pulled back enough to look at him. “You took a bullet for me.”
He shook his head slightly. “I stepped where I needed to.”
“That’s not an answer.”
A corner of his mouth lifted. “It’s the truth.”
A doctor came in then, clearing his throat like he hated interrupting. “Mr. De Luca is very lucky. Another inch and we’d be having a different conversation.”
Adrian glanced at me. “See? Lucky.”
The doctor continued, “He’ll need rest. No travel. No stress.”
Adrian almost laughed at that.
After the doctor left, the room settled into a quieter tension. The kind that follows violence, when everyone is still counting how close it came.
“National news already picked it up,” Marcus said. “Attempted assassination. Courthouse steps. New bride. It’s everywhere.”
I exhaled slowly. “My mother?”
“She’s under guard,” Marcus said. “So is Jessica. So is Bella.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened. “He’s escalating.”
I nodded. I did not need that explained. Thornton did not lose quietly. He doubled down. He made examples.
“He wants you dead,” I said.
Adrian did not argue. “Yes.”
Silence stretched between us, heavy but honest.
The door opened again. This time, I recognized the face before the voice.
Agent Rodriguez stepped in, his badge visible, his expression serious in a way that told me this was no courtesy visit.
“Mr. and Mrs. De Luca,” he said.
The words still sounded unreal.
“We need to talk.”
Marcus straightened. “About the shooter?”
“About who ordered him,” Rodriguez replied.
My fingers tightened around Adrian’s hand.
“We have evidence tying the hit to Senator James Thornton,” Rodriguez continued. “Financial transfers. Communications. The shooter is cooperating.”
Adrian let out a slow breath. “You’re sure.”
“Yes,” Rodriguez said. “Enough to make an arrest. But we need testimony.”
“From me,” Adrian said.
“And from you,” Rodriguez added, looking at me. “Mrs. De Luca.”
The room seemed to narrow, not physically, but in possibility.
“What kind of testimony?” I asked.
“About the threats. The blackmail. The pressure campaign. And about your mother’s infiltration of his household,” Rodriguez said. “We can protect witnesses, but this will be public.”
Public. That word again.
Adrian shifted carefully on the bed. “You want us to go on record.”
“Yes.”
I looked at Adrian. He met my gaze without hesitation.
“This doesn’t end quietly,” he said. “You know that.”
I did.
“If we do this,” I said, “there’s no walking back into private life.”
Rodriguez nodded. “There rarely is.”
Adrian squeezed my hand. “I won’t make this decision for you.”
I studied his face. The exhaustion. The resolve. The quiet certainty that had carried him through everything his family had thrown at him.
I thought of my mother, lying in a hospital bed because she refused to let a powerful man destroy her child. Of Jessica, hiding for two years because telling the truth nearly got her killed. Of how silence had never protected anyone I loved.
“We’ll testify,” I said.
Rodriguez did not smile, but something in his posture eased. “We’ll take him into custody within the hour.”
After he left, the weight of what I had agreed to settled in fully.
“You don’t regret it,” Adrian said, not as a question.
“No,” I replied. “I’m tired of surviving quietly.”
He reached up, brushing his thumb along my wrist. “You’re remarkable.”
I shook my head. “I’m angry.”
“That too.”
A nurse came in to check his vitals. Another asked me questions I answered automatically. Somewhere down the hall, a television murmured with news coverage I refused to watch.
When things finally quieted again, Adrian leaned closer.
“He’s not done,” he said softly. “Even arrested, Thornton has people. He’ll try to bargain. To spin this.”
“Let him,” I said. “We’re still standing.”
His eyes searched mine. “You’re not scared?”
“I am,” I admitted. “But I married you knowing this wasn’t going to be easy.”
A faint smile crossed his face. “That makes two of us.”
Hours later, as night pressed against the windows, Agent Rodriguez returned.
“Thornton is in custody,” he said. “He’s denying everything, but that won’t hold.”
I closed my eyes briefly. Not in relief. In preparation.
“This goes to trial,” Rodriguez continued. “And when it does, it will be ugly.”
Adrian nodded. “We’ll be there.”
Rodriguez paused at the door. “You changed the calculus today. Both of you.”
After he left, I leaned my forehead against Adrian’s.
“We survived our wedding day,” I said quietly.
“Barely,” he replied.
I smiled despite everything. “What comes next?”
He kissed my temple. “Now we finish this.”
Outside, cameras still waited. Headlines were still forming. Somewhere in a holding cell, a man who believed himself untouchable was learning otherwise.
And for the first time since the bullet rang out, I understood something clearly.
This was no longer about fear.
It was about ending it.