Four days after taking a job in a mob boss's mansion, an innocent kiss on his cheek made his hand slam into the wall beside my head.

"Luca!"

I dropped beside him, completely uncaring of the pooling blood and seawater soaking through my trousers. He lay flat on his back, his head tilted against the storage locker, his face drained of every drop of color. His skin was burning hot to the touch, yet violent tremors racked his powerful body. The fever had set in with terrifying speed.

"Luca, look at me," I commanded, tears blurring my vision as I cupped his stubbled cheek with both trembling hands. "Stay awake. Do you hear me? Don't you dare close your eyes!"

His heavy eyelids fluttered open, dark irises glazed with fever and blood loss. A faint, bitter smile touched the corner of his lips. "Always... so demanding for a maid..." he whispered, his voice barely audible over the hum of the dying engine.

"I'm not your maid anymore," I choked out, pressing a wadded fleece jacket against the wound near his shoulder blade with all my strength. He groaned, an agonizing sound dragged from deep within his chest, and his hand reached up, his fingers weakly clasping around my wrist. Even without his usual terrifying strength, his grip held an unspoken, desperate plea.

"Elena..." Leo called from the helm, his voice tight with rising panic. "We have a problem. The starboard intake is choked with rock dust. Engine temperature is redlining. We're losing oil pressure."

A thick plume of white steam was already hissing from the engine hatch, smelling foully of burnt synthetic oil and melting rubber. Ahead of us, beyond the sheltering mouth of the sea cavern, lay a crescent of black pebble beach nestled beneath the sheer shadow of a collapsed cliffside. Decades ago, it had been a tiny, forgotten hamlet of sponge divers, now abandoned to rot under the Mediterranean winds.

"Beach it there," I told Leo, wiping salt water and stinging tears from my eyes. "Take her right onto the shingle before the engines seize entirely."

"If we beach her, we can't get back out on the water," Leo warned.

"He won't survive another hour on this boat anyway!" I yelled back, the desperation raw and jagged in my voice. "Look at him, Leo! He's dying right in front of us!"

Leo looked back over his shoulder, his eyes wide as he took in the dark puddle spreading beneath Luca’s body. Without another word, he gritted his teeth, straightened the wheel, and drove the dying vessel straight toward the dark shore.

The bottom of the hull struck the pebbled bank with a grinding shudder, sliding ten yards up into the gravel and coming to a dead stop at an awkward tilt. The engines gave one last metallic sputter and died, leaving only the sound of rain drumming against the canvas top and the mournful cry of distant gulls.

"Come on," Leo said, jumping over the side into knee-deep surf and wading around to the stern. "Let's get him off before Matteo’s scout drones find the smoke."

Together, Leo and I hauled Luca upright. He tried to support his own weight, cursing under his breath in vicious Italian dialects, but his legs folded beneath him like paper. Leo hooked his arm under Luca's uninjured side while I braced him from the left, dragging him through the icy surf toward the desolate line of salt-crusted stones.

Above us, clinging to the mist-shrouded ridge like a brooding gargoyle, stood the skeletal ruins of an ancient Benedictine monastery. Its collapsed bell tower pointed toward the stormy heavens like a broken finger.

"There," Luca rasped, his chin resting heavily against my temple, his hot, shallow breath brushing my skin. "The crypt... beneath the chapel. Matteo's men... won't check the ruins until daybreak."

"Don't talk," I told him, our boots crunching against the wet shingle as we hauled him up the steep, winding goat path toward the forgotten sanctuary. "Save your strength. You're going to live, Luca. You hear me? You survived your house, you survived the bunker. You don't get to die on me now."