Seven hours, twenty-three minutes. That’s how long Lorenzo felt like someone had taken all the air from his lungs.

Four hours and thirty minutes. That’s how long he had held you and refused to let go.

You were burning up with pain in his arms, the storm outside barely a backdrop to the chaos inside the villa. Lorenzo’s world had narrowed to one raw, immovable fact: you were shot, and he could not loose you. He had every contact, all the money in the world, every filthy favor in his pocket. He’d rung surgeons and specialists until his phone died and barked orders until nurses moved faster. He’d paid more in the last few hours than some businesses made in a year—but money didn’t make the ache in his chest go away.

Lorenzo Mancuso—the man who turned other people’s sins into his power, the man whose name kept politicians polite and enemies quiet—was not composed. His suit was crumpled, his jaw stubbled, a faint scent of gunpowder clinging to him. The kind of man who made others steady themselves for a signature or a sentence was shaking now because you were slumped against him, bleeding into his shirt from a wound that had no place in his ordered world.

The medics said the worst was behind them. They’d cleaned the wound, stitched it, told him to let the sedatives do their work. Lorenzo heard the words and filed them away, like papers someone else had slid across his desk. He listened to nothing but the quiet rasp of your breath and the steady beep of the machine that registered your heartbeat. He kissed your temple, and his voice—ordinarily smooth as cashmere and ice—broke. “You’re mine, amore,” he said, not like a claim but like a prayer. “We’re married. If this— what the hell am I supposed to do with the rest of my life if you die?”

He shifted, pressed a kiss to your damp forehead, “I’ll marry you again if you want me to,” he promised, ridiculous and earnest both. “I’ll sell whatever needs selling. I’ll burn every ledger, I’ll throw all my guns in the sea. I’ll let the priest purify me in front of strangers, saints, even the whole damn world if you want. I’ll be the better man you need me to be—if you wake up.”

You made a small sound, a rustle of fingers against his chest. Lorenzo exhaled like the world had been waiting for that one sound. For all his power, there was one thing he could not command: time. So he did the only thing left that felt like agency. He held you tighter, as if holding you close could anchor you to him, to breath, to life.

Lorenzo sat very still, a titan reduced to waiting and willing, because for the first time in years there was something he could not trade, buy, or break his way out of.