LA CAMORRA / MAFIA ROMANCE

CHAPTER FOUR

Maria Delvina
Manila, Italy

I hesitated at the doorway, nurses leaving at my presence, just as my fingers brush down the cold brass handle. The house was eerily quiet, too quiet. I could still hear the faint beeping of the machines keeping my father tethered to this world, the sterile scent of antiseptic hanging in the air like a weight.

For weeks, I had walked into his room, wondering if he would wake up. Half of me had dreaded it—the other half... Well, maybe I wasn't ready for his voice to pierce through to fog I had been lost in. The voice I had always sought when I didn't know what the hell to do.

And I didn't know what the hell to do.

I finally pushed the door open. There he was. The great Alessandro Delvina, mafia kingpin and my father, reduced to a ghost of the man he once was. His face was gaunt, his body barely making a dent in the bed, his eyes closed, as if waking up had drained him from what little strength he had left.

But he was awake. Alive. And I needed answers.

"Maria," he rasped, his voice dragging against the quiet like sandpaper. That sound—his voice, however weak—was enough to steady me. He might have looked frail, but there was something solid in the way he said my name.

"You look like death warmed over," I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm, as I stepped inside.

His lips curved up at the corners, the hint of a smile playing on his mouth. "Funny, I could say the same about you."

I gave him a crooked grin, pulling a chair closer to his beside before sitting down. "I've been better."

He raised his brow, his sharp eyes narrowing slightly as if trying to size me up. "That bad, huh?"

Understatement of the year. "Yeah, that bad."

He didn't push further, though I could see behind his eyes the questions swimming. My father wasn't the type to waste words, but I knew him well enough to know that every silence from him was just as loud as any statement. And that silence? It was deafening.

"How are you feeling?" I asked, because I need to stall. I needed more time to figure out how I was going to say this. What I was going to ask.

He exhaled, a sound that could have been a laugh, but barely passed as one. "I feel like I've been shot," he deadpanned.

I gave him a half-smile, thought the weight of the situation pressed harder on my chest. "Well, you have."

The room fell into an uneasy quiet again. I could sense his impatience, the frustration in his body language as his hands twitched slightly. He hated being bedridden like this. My father, a man who could command an entire room with a single glance, now confined to a bed, forced to rely on others.

"What's going on, Maria?" His voice cut through my thoughts. He wasn't one for small talk. He wanted the truth. Now.

I took a breath. "Things...changed while you were out."

His eyebrows blew together in confusion, but there was something else too. Fear? Guilt? Whatever it was, it flickered briefly before he masked it with that steely expression he always wore when he was in business mode.