Adriana's POV
"Ma'am? We need to ask some questions."
The cop was young. Too young for the blood on my mouth and the bodies I'd left behind in that alley. His hand hovered over his gun, but his eyes kept dropping back to my lips. To Alessio's blood.
I didn't wipe it off.
"My husband," I said. My voice came out raw, entirely spent. "He's been shot three times. He needs a doctor."
"Name?" The cop pulled out a notepad. His partner was already on the radio, calling it in. "Your name and his name."
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
Because I didn't know.
Not his middle name. Not his birthday. Not his mother's maiden name. I knew how his heart felt under my pain. I knew how his blood tasted. I knew he'd counted five bodies and still called me his.
But I didn't know his name.
"Alessio," I said finally. "Alessio De Luca."
The cop's pen stopped instantly. "De Luca? Like the—"
"Like the dead ones," I snapped. "Can I see him? Please."
They let me through. Maybe it was the blood. Maybe it was the way I said please like it was a threat. Maybe it was the way my hands weren't shaking anymore.
The ER smelled like bleach and fear. I pushed past the desk and found him behind a privacy curtain. Three doctors. Two nurses. Medical machines were beeping too fast. Too desperate.
"John Smith," I told the nurse at the desk. "No ID. Cash. No cops."
She looked at me. At my mouth. At my hands, which were still deeply stained with him.
"Mrs. Smith," she said slowly. "Your husband lost a lot of blood. We are taking him into surgery now. You can't—"
I pushed right past her, reaching out and ripping the curtain back.
Alessio was awake. Barely. His chest was cut open and a tube was down his throat, but his eyes still tracked across the room and found me. Black. Aware. A king even on a gurney. Even bleeding out.
One of the doctors blocked me. "Ma'am, you can't be in here. Infection risk. If he—"
Alessio lifted his hand—the one he'd cut open for me. Still bleeding. Still marking. He pointed right at me. Then at himself. Then at the door.
Get her out.
The doctor turned back to the bed. "Sir, you need to calm down. You will tear—"
"Touch her," Alessio rasped around the tube, "and you die."
Alessio's hand dropped heavily. His eyes stayed fixed on me, ordering me without words: Go. Wait. Stay mine.
A nurse pulled me out, and the curtain closed. The machines kept beeping. Then, a single, long, ugly flatline sound echoed out.
It meant he was slipping.
I sat in a plastic chair outside for an hour. Two. The cops came and went. I told them "John Smith." I told them "mugging." I told them nothing that mattered.
My shirt was stiff with his dried blood. My mouth tasted like copper. Every time a nurse walked by, she stared at it. At the mark I wouldn't wipe off. At the brand I'd chosen.
Two cops tried to physically move me. I told them I'd scream and rip my own stitches open if they touched me. They believed me. They left.
Finally, a doctor came out looking entirely tired, blood smearing his scrubs. Alessio's blood.
"Mrs. Smith?" he said. "He's stable. Barely. We got the bullets out. All three. He lost half his blood volume. He should be dead."
"He's not," I said."No." The doctor studied me. "He's asking for you. He keeps pulling his IV lines out when we say no. You want to try and calm him down?"
I stood up immediately, my legs feeling numb. "Where?"
"Recovery room. Private. Cash bought that much."
He was awake when I walked in. He looked as pale as the sheets, with medical tubes running everywhere. But he was alive.
His eyes dragged over me, taking me in from the blood on my shirt to the blood on my mouth, tracking the fact that I still hadn't wiped it off.
"Good girl," he whispered. No tube now—just his voice, completely shredded. "You kept it."
I crossed the room to him, my knees hitting the edge of the bed. "You told me to wipe it off."
"I lie." His hand came up, slow and shaking. He touched my cheek with the back of his knuckles. No blood this time—just pure heat. "I wanted to see if you'd obey me. You didn't."
"You almost died."
"I didn't." His thumb brushed my bottom lip, dragging right over the dried blood. Possessive. Reverent. "Because you chose me. In the alley. You shot him. Not me."
"You should have let me."
"I would have bled out smiling." His eyes closed for a brief second, and I thought he was gone. Then they snapped open. "Say my name."
"Alessio."
"My whole name."I froze. "I—"
"You don't know it." He laughed, a soundless breath. "Just breathe. You killed for me. You lied for me. You are wearing my blood. And you don't even know my name."
Shame hit me, hot and ugly. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be." His eyes opened, black and sharp even now. "Alessio Kade De Luca. Kade was my mother's name. She died when I was six. My father—" He stopped, swallowing hard. "He stopped. Swallowed. My father's still out there. Because of you."
Kade. I rolled it around in my mouth. Alessio Kade De Luca. Mine now.
The door opened, and a cop stepped in—the young one. He saw Alessio awake, saw my hand resting on the bed, and saw the blood still on my mouth.
"Mrs. De Luca," the cop said, testing the title out loud. "We need your statement. Officially."
Alessio's hand caught mine, threading our fingers together. His palm was heavily bandaged where he'd cut it for me. A blood debt.
"Tell him," Alessio said, his voice loud enough for the cop to hear clearly. "Tell him who you are to me."
I looked at the cop, then back at Alessio. At the tubes. At the blood. At the name he had just handed me like a dangerous weapon.
"I'm his wife," I said, my voice clear, cold, and final. "And if you try to separate us, he'll bleed out. And I'll let him. Because he's mine. Law or no law."
The cop took a step back.
Alessio smiled. A real, bloody, ruined smile.
"That's my girl," he whispered. "Now kiss me, principessa. Let him see what happens to men who question what's mine."
I leaned down and pressed my mouth to his. Blood to blood.