Page 41 of Enzo (Legacy of Heathens #3)

PENELOPE

I t had been three weeks since I snuck out of Enzo’s house, and somewhere along the way, I realized that Sicily was no longer my home. Enzo was.

No idea how or when it happened, but it was a fact I knew with certainty.

The frustrating part was that just as my love life bloomed, another part of my life started to fall apart: Amara’s illness.

“Want to play a round of cards?” Enzo offered, keeping his voice soft. We’d been here for hours and he’d attempted to engage Amara multiple times. “If you win, you get to captain The Cello .”

The Cello was the name of Enzo’s superyacht, and Amara had been begging him to let her behind the wheel.

I held my breath, hoping to glimpse that familiar spark in her eyes, but it never came. She just shook her head, not even sparing him a glance.

I watched her, a thin tube inserted into her vein while a bag of medicine dripped poison into her, fighting the cancer. The sight broke my heart.

I wore a brave face just like everyone else, but I could feel it waning.

A smile was frozen on Mama’s face, but her eyes were wide with terror.

And Papà… he wasn’t faring any better. At the present moment, he had the doctor cornered by the entrance to her room, and I could hear him threatening him.

I assumed he was demanding an update on the donor list, probably even insisting the doc take his liver so Amara could get better.

The doctor refused.

Rhnull was the world’s rarest blood type. It meant that she lacked any Rh protein antigens on her red blood cells, which made her cancer all the more treacherous.

We shared the same blood type in a ten-thousand-mile radius, but it was for naught, because Dr. Gvozden claimed my organs weren’t a match.

My hands were tied. I wanted to visit another doctor for myself—surely one would agree it was worth a shot, even if she ended up rejecting it. But Papà had prohibited it.

I’m not losing two daughters , he’d said, ensuring the directive had reached every doctor in Italy. I was off-limits.

It left us all feeling helpless.

“We can go back on Enzo’s yacht after your treatment,” Damiano said, trying to make our sister smile.

We’d spent two days sailing around the island with my sister and brothers, and even our parents had joined, once tensions had simmered following Enzo’s return.

Things had been going so well, we should’ve predicted it would all come crashing down.

Amara’s blood results weren’t improving and they’d found clots, which was the reason we’d cut our sailing short and were back at the hospital today.

She hadn’t uttered a single word the whole ride here. She stared ahead, her eyes muted with pain. Every so often, she’d slowly raise her free hand, her fingers brushing against the hat on her head.

There wasn’t a single strand left, and the hair loss made her self-conscious. She even slept with that hat on. It made me want to cry.

I took her fingers between mine and squeezed them gently.

“I won’t let it fall,” I rasped around the lump in my throat.

“Thanks,” she said flatly.

It was her first word spoken in hours, and somehow it terrified me even more than her silence.

Enzo stood up abruptly, adjusted his cufflinks, his crisp three-piece suit out of place in the white room, then left without a word.

“Where’s he going?” Armani whispered.

“Don’t know,” I croaked, fighting the urge to go after him, but I didn’t want to leave my sister.

My brothers must’ve read the struggle in my eyes, because they jumped to their feet.

“We’ll check it out.”

I nodded gratefully, and once they disappeared, I turned toward my sister. She still stared ahead, unwilling to look at me. I shot my mama, who held Amara’s hand from where she was seated on her other side, a desperate look.

Her red-rimmed eyes welled with tears, but she kept a smile firmly on her lips. She was scared to death of losing her, just like the rest of us.

“It’s going to be okay,” I rasped. I squeezed her tiny hand. “Our girl is strong. And when she’s tired, we’ll be strong for her.”

She brushed a finger against Amara’s cheek, then said, “She’s the strongest girl I’ve ever known.”

“I don’t have any left.” Amara’s voice was weak, barely above a whisper.

“Any what?” Mama asked, fear and terror lacing her voice. It matched the look in her eyes.

“Strength.”

Mama’s hopeless expression met mine, slicing through me like a sharp blade.

“I just don’t want to hurt anymore.” Amara lowered her head, hearing Mama’s wounded sound. “And I want my hair back.”

It was the first time hearing Amara utter such words, and I gave her a pleading look.

Unable to hold them back, tears flooded my eyes and spilled down my face while my fingers trembled, gripping her hand like she was my anchor when I was supposed to be hers.

Silence built as death danced around us, ready to collect, when the door to the hospital room opened.

I glanced up, then looked away, not recognizing any of the three bald men. Every once in a while, people would get the room wrong, drowning in their own grief. They’d realize it wasn’t their family here and leave.

They didn’t. Instead, I heard a familiar voice.

“Sorry I left so abruptly.”

My head whipped around and I gaped. Enzo’s hair was gone. On either side of him stood my brothers, both bald, too.

“Your… hair,” Amara whispered.

Enzo’s hand rubbed at his bare scalp, smiling softly but so damn devilishly. “Yeah, not sure where it went. Huh, oh well. I hope my wife doesn’t mind.”

I swallowed, slowly rose to my feet, then walked over to him. My brothers rejoined our sister so she could touch their heads, but I couldn’t look away from my husband.

My white Chucks pressed against his black loafers, my sweater brushing against the material of his expensive suit. We were so different, yet he was the missing piece to my puzzle. This man, the result of an arranged marriage, was my other half, and nobody could ever replace him.

“Your wife still likes you,” I breathed, while the words I love you, I love you played on repeat in my mind.

I lifted on my tiptoes so I could reach the top of his head and gently scraped my nails against his scalp.

“It’ll grow back,” he repeated my earlier words.

“I don’t even care,” I murmured, brushing my lips against his. “It’s you I love, not your hair.”