Chapter 7 - The Vulnerability of Kings
By the time I tied off the final knot and taped the sterile dressing over his ribs, Victor was drenched in cold sweat. His grip on my arms had loosened, but his fingers still rested lightly against my skin, his thumbs resting against the inside of my wrists where my pulse hammered frantic and exposed.
“You’re good with your hands,” he murmured, his voice thick and rough.
“I had a lot of practice growing up,” I said, carefully disposing of the bloody gauze and packing away the suture tools. “Three younger brothers in South Boston. Boys who think they’re invincible bleed a lot.”
“And where are they now?”
I froze, the cap of the antiseptic bottle hovering in my hand.
Victor was watching me closely. The cruel, cutting tone from the night before was completely gone, replaced by a dark, dangerous curiosity.
“They grew up,” I said quietly, turning my back to him to wash my hands in the sink. “They moved away. They have their own lives.”
“And you?” he asked. “Why didn't you move with them?”
I dried my hands on a towel, staring at my reflection in the mirror. I looked pale, shadows under my eyes, but there was a fierce resolve in my posture that hadn't been there a year ago.
“Because someone had to stay behind and bury my mother,” I answered evenly. “And by the time the debts were paid and the estate was settled, there wasn't much left of me to move anywhere. So I took a job where someone needed me.”
I turned around to face him.
Victor was sitting on the edge of the tub, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his bare, scarred chest rising and falling slowly. The vulnerability in his posture was jarring. This was the man who ruled half the city’s underground with an iron fist, sitting half-naked in a bathroom, listening to the tragic life story of his son’s nanny.
“I was out of line last night,” Victor said quietly.
The words hung in the warm, humid air between us like a confession.
I blinked, genuinely stunned. “Did Victor Rossi just apologize?”
A tiny, bitter smirk touched the corner of his lips, vanishing as quickly as it came. “Don't get used to it.”
“I wouldn't dream of it.”
He looked down at the floor, his broad shoulders curving inward. “When Finn screams like that… when he hides under that desk… it feels like a failure. Every siren reminds him of the night Elena died. And every time he looks at me, he sees the man who couldn't save her.”
My breath caught. It was the first time in fourteen months he had ever spoken his late wife’s name to me.
“Victor,” I said softly, taking a step closer, my hand hovering near his shoulder before I hesitated and let it drop. “He doesn't blame you. He’s five years old. He isn't judging you. He’s just terrified that the only person he has left is going to disappear.”
Victor slowly lifted his head. His eyes were wide, dark, and filled with an ancient, devastating grief.
“I am disappearing, Harper,” he whispered. “Every day I spend in this war, there’s less of me left to give him.”
“Then stop giving it to the war,” I said fiercely, closing the remaining distance between us until my knees brushed his. “Give it to him. Give it to this house.”
Victor reached out. His fingers, calloused and warm, rose and gently traced the line of my jawline, stopping just beneath my ear. The touch was so unexpected, so tender, that a shiver ran down my entire spine.
“And what about you?” he asked, his voice dropping into a dark, intimate cadence. “What do I give you?”
Before I could answer, a small creak broke the silence outside the door.
Victor’s hand dropped instantly, the tenderness vanishing, replaced in a split second by lethal awareness.
The door swung open an inch.
Finn stood there in his oversized thermal shirt, rubbing his eyes, his blue blanket trailing behind him.
May you like
“Dad?” he murmured sleepily. “Are you bleeding again?”
***