Betrothed To The Mafia Lord novel Chapter 52

Luca’s POV

A part of me wanted to ignore the call because I was honestly in such a shitty mood and felt too tired to even try to hold a steady conversation with someone at this very moment, but James had been trying to reach me since morning and I hadn’t replied to any of his texts.

I was a hundred percent sure he was already starting to get worried at this point and would most definitely end up coming here tonight if he still won’t be able to speak with me or hear anything from me tonight.

With that, I blindly clicked on the accept button and placed the phone against my ear.

“Hey, fucker.” I croaked into the phone and heard James cursing loudly in the background before starting to reply.

“The fuck man?” He said into the phone, his familiar voice echoing loudly out from the phone, directly into my ear which still had the phone pressed against it.

“What’s happening? Why are you suddenly ignoring me?” He continued before I could even bother starting to think of an answer and I breathed out a small sigh which sounded really tired to my own ears.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” James finally asked after a few minutes of silence floating between us, a lot slower and calmer this time. I could just imagine him asking me this question in person with worry dripping off his voice— with his face in an almost blank expression, a couple of thin lines appearing at the top of his face.

“Everything is just so fucked up, bro.” I said quietly into the phone before squeezing my eyes tightly shut and moaning quietly when my head started pounding hard once again before the intense pain started to slowly ebb away.

“Why? What happened to you?” James pressed on, panic tingling the edge of his question this time.

“I can’t stay on the phone for too long right now.” I informed him, feeling my eyes slide close and a small gush of air blowing around me which made me shiver slightly while sweat still dripped off my face and chest, into the bedsheets I was currently lying on.

“Why?” James demanded almost immediately, his voice sounding perplexed like. “Did you get shot? You sound really weak.” He continued a second later, worry, concern and curiosity very obvious in his voice now.

“I didn’t get shot.” I started to say, speaking really slowly because it was getting really strenuous to speak, the whole weakness I was feeling was starting to get into my voice as well.

“Then what’s the matter? Why do you sound like this??” He demanded again in a panicked tone, his calm voice shifting higher a little bit.

“I think I am coming down with something really bad, like a flu or something.” I replied after about a minute before the sound of James’ relieved sigh drifted into my ear almost immediately.

“Ohhh.” James finally started to say again, relief dripping off his voice and I nodded my head along with him— even though I was fully aware that he wouldn’t be able to see me visually at the moment since we were obviously not facetiming— because I felt too tired to try speaking again.

“You know, I told you something like this weeks ago when you told me you were always having a lot of body pains. I knew it was unusual because it was unlike you, and it wasn’t like you’ve obviously started doing something different that you don’t obviously do.” James continued and I sighed out slowly, vividly remembering the particular conversation which James was referring to.

We had both finished working out in the gym located in a room in james’ house. I had complained about always waking up with body pains to him and about how spending a few hours at the gym a day helps with the pain a little before it starts to throb again. James had said something about me about catching the flu but I had ignored him and continued punching the punching bag I was at that moment having a huge grudge against, dismissing his words about being about to catch the flu in the very next second.

“So you’ve been to the hospital to get yourself treated today, right?” James started to say once again, disrupting my train of thoughts pulling me out of my head with his question.

“No, I haven’t.” I supplied an answer about a minute later, not bothering to point out the fact that I had been to the hospital today, but for a different reason entirely — because I was really feeling too weak to start explaining all that had gone down today, all because of Aria.

“Why man? So you were in bed throughout the whole of today?” He demanded in a tone that sounded almost outraged.

“I went to take care of some things and just got back home some time ago.” I replied to him before continuing a few seconds later, “I really can’t stay on the phone for long.”

“Where did you go to take care of today that made you ignore your own health problems?” He started to say again, in an accusing tone this time, completely ignoring the part where I said something about me being unable to stay on the phone for long.

“Stop questioning me.” I said to him in a flat voice, my mood turning into a spinning ‘zero’ once again.

“Great. I can just come over then. I’ll be there in about thirty minutes time.” James informed me, totally unfazed by the flat voice I had used in replying to his question, a moment ago.

“Don’t you dare come over tonight, there’s no need for you to come, James.” I started to say to him but he only snorted into the phone before replying to me.

“You’re hiding something from me, Luca.” He said in a blank voice and I rolled my eyes behind my lowered eyelids, James can be so dramatic sometimes.

“I will tell you about it tomorrow, I am just too weak to bother trying to explain anything to you right now.” I said to him and heard him mutter a quiet ‘oh’.

“Is it that bad?” He finally asked in a low voice and I croaked out a small laugh that sounded scratchy to my own ears.