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317


With guards posted at the door, Luca walked into a conference room in the hospital. The room was spare and cold, its walls white, the fluorescent lights lending sharp shadows. Everything shone and sparkled with that scrubbed-to-a-shine sterility for which hospitals were famous. Bianca was already there, perched on the bench at the long table with her hands laid together before her as if she was awaiting judgment day.

Her fair hair hung drably and lankly round her face. Dark circles shrouded her blue eyes, and she appeared as though she hadn’t slept in weeks. She appeared older than her twenty eight years, aged by remorse and confinement and the consequences of her actions. But those eyes were watchful as she looked at Luca. They were lucid and direct and desperate.

"You broke out of jail," Luca said, his tone becoming one of hardness. He stayed to loom over her, every bit of a mafia lord that he was. "Are you completely insane? You know what they'll do to you when they get their hands on you? What were you thinking?"

Bianca was talking quickly, her explanations one upon the other as she raced to tell me everything. "I had to come here. There is a hit out on Valentina and the babies. Somebody in the organization put that out before they went down. Until they were arrested and locked up for life. The contract you signed with us, it's still in effect, Luca. Someone coming for your family.”

His fists were balled at his sides, and Lucas tensed. All was cold within him from fright and fury. His protective instincts flared immediately. "Who specifically?" he muttered, his voice lowering to a snarl. "Give me a name right now."

Bianca shook her head quickly. "I don't have firm confirmation as to who ordered it. But I have a source who does. A person who had worked closely with the council. I have come, because I owe this to Isabella. I will not allow her granddaughters to be harmed for the sins of our family. I can’t let this happen after all of that.”

Luca was dubious, but he listened closely as Bianca shared information that only an insider could have had access to. She listed certain individuals who remained at large, certain encounters that had occurred out of the spotlight, specific dates on which schemes had been laid. She provided him with verifiable and actionable intelligence. She offered him everything she knew that would enable him to protect his wife and two daughters from the danger coming for them.

“Immediately after this, you will turn yourself in,” Luca said. It was not a question. It was a statement of fact. "You'll be fully complying with the authorities.”

"Yes," Bianca agreed without hesitation. Her voice was steady now. "I know what I have done. I know what I deserve. I know what I am willing to pay for breaking free. But first, allow me to help save them. Let me do this one beautiful thing.”

Luca and his men found the threat in the small hours with Bianca's support and intelligence. It was a lawyer with long experience of working for the council, Antonio Greco. He was taking revenge for the total collapse of the organisation and his loss or power and money. They found him at a hotel by the airport, apparently ready to leave the country with false papers and thousands of dollars in cash stuffed inside a leather bag.

Luca’s guys picked him up without any trouble in the hotel parking lot. Before he could even fire up his car, they hopped on it. They discovered hard proof of the contract in his hotel room after thoroughly searching it. Copious plans were spread all over the table. Hospital plans ruled in red. Schedules of Valentina's most vulnerable times as she healed. Names of individuals he had recruited to shoot him. Every detail was recorded with care.

The lawyer admitted in the presssurethat he saw, no escape. He sought to obliterate Luca’s happy ending as punishment for everything that had befallen everyone he worked with. He wanted a taste of its suffering when it collapsed, Luca. He’d take from the man who had fucked them all up everything that mattered. He spoke, his face deformed by a hatred.

But he had not succeeded. He would never succeed now.

He was detained and turned over to federal authorities. The agreement was cancelled and abrogated. The danger was in the past. Lucas saw to that personally.

Bianca was as good as her word. Without resisting or arguing, she walked into the hands of authorities. She went directly to the police station, declared who she was. Led away in handcuffs and the cold metal biting into her wrists, she asked to say goodbye one last time to Valentina. The order was granted, under a heavy detail of police officers.

Valentina felt too feeble-bodied to do it, but determined when she learned of the request. Of course she would visit Bianca in her hospital room, Lucas there as bodyguard. She would not do this alone. Guards stood outside the door. Security cameras captured everything.

Bianca came in even more slowly, her feet jingling as their chains zinked softly on the floor. Her eyes found Valentina immediately. She paused at the foot of the hospital bed, too afraid to get any closer without an invitation.

"I … am very, sorry." Bianca’s voice had the thinness of despair. "For absolutely everything. Every terrible thing I did. Every person I hurt. Every choice I made. I’m sorry to say I know that’s not enough, but that is very much the start of the conversation.”

Valentina gazed upon her there, really gazed into the eyes of this woman who had brought so much horror and misery. "You're rounding that," Valentina added softly but with a panzer gunner's steadiness. "It is not enough. It will never be enough. You shattered lives — including your own. You decided bitterness and vengeance were worth more than anything good.”
Tears ran down Bianca’s face in a steady stream, and she bobbed her head. "I know. I know all of that. But I saved them this time. I warned you. I helped stop the threat. Maybe that is something small. Maybe that counts for something. Maybe that’s a form of salvation.”

Valentina asked cautiously, framing her question with precision. “Risk everything? You could have stayed hidden. You could have run. Why warn us?"

Bianca replied, her tone barely audible with honesty. "Because when I go to bed at night and I close my eyes, I see Isabella. Your mother. And she is disappointed with me. She’s looking at me with so much hurt. I could not disappoint her once more. I could not do her wrong anymore, not this time! Not where her granddaughters were concerned.”

Valentina took a long pause to think about it all and then spoke with great care. “Either way, when the girls are older, if they want to know about you, I’ll tell them that you tried to make it right at the end. That you went all in to shield them when need be. That's all! I can give you, Bianca."

Bianca's voice broke completely. Fresh tears fell. "That is more than I deserve. So much more. Thank you. Thank you for even that small mercy.”

She departed without a word, ushered out by guards. The door clicked and shut behind her. It was the last time she saw Valentina. The final instance of their lives crossing. That chapter was closed for good with the slamming that door.

On a day two he discovered, as Valentina prepared to bring the twins home from the hospital, that a nurse had delivered a small package into her room. It was labeled carefully in neat writing, “For Isabella and Aurora.” Valentina cracked it open, her fingers slightly shaky with fatigue and interest.

In the box were two thin silver bracelets inscribed with “Protected by Love” in fine script. The engraving was beautiful and very precise. The bracelets were obviously expensive and had been carefully selected. They were beautiful and precious. No note accompanied them. No name was signed. Valentina knew, without having to ask, who had sent them. She knew without any doubt.

She gently fitted the bracelets over her daughters’ tiny wrists, ensuring that they were snug but not too tight. She spoke to them in soft terms, the words for their ears alone and for G-d above, listening to her prayer.

“Every story has some darkness in it somewhere,” she said to them, watching their sleeping faces. "Ours started there. In blood and betrayal, in pain and fear. But it ends in light. It ends with love and safety and hope. And that is where the only ending lies.”