It was faint, barely even a whisper, the last syllable practically mute, but my brain filled it in. My name? My back snapped straight.
“What did you say?”
I surged over her, my chair crashing to the floor behind me.
“Repeat what you said.”
She gave me nothing. Not even a twitch of her fingers as I squeezed the blood out of them.
“Wake up, damn you.” My hands pressed into the pillow on either side of her head and gave a bounce. Her upper body flopped with the jerk, her head slumping against my wrist. Again, I felt no revulsion, no disgust. “Fucking hell. This isn’t possible.”
She’d said my name. She knew me. How the fuck did she know who I was?
A knock resounded. I let out a strangled growl of frustration as I shoved myself upright. The guest bedroom door opened.
“What?”
The hired nurse peeked in, visibly trembling. “Sorry, sir, it’s…it’s just, I heard a noise. Does she need another round of sedation?”
I pried my chair off the floor. “I don’t care what you have to do. I want her awake and functional as soon as possible.”
Her eyes widened with alarm. “But the doctor said—”
“The doctor’s not paying you, I am. Where is Margaux?”
I stormed through the room, and the young woman flattened herself against the door panel to let me pass. Enough was enough. I needed to get to the bottom of whatever this woman knew and then finish it.
In the back of my mind, a question spun.What did it matter what a dead woman knew?
Chapter 6
Almost fourteen years ago
Mamminacaressedmyhandas I squeezed two of her fingers. I didn’t get it. Everybody was crying and sobbing. Even Mammina. Not big, fat crocodile tears, but enough to make me want to understand.
This wasn’t a sad movie. Babbo and she weren’t fighting. Renzo and I weren’t hurt. I looked around. No one else seemed to realize how weird this was.
The sky was gray and teary, nothing like back home, as we walked from the damp old church to the graveyard. I looked at each headstone, Mammina’s hand tightening around mine. My babbo always warned that we weren’t allowed to make crying scenes in public, no matter what. This graveyard was public. Why hadn’t he said anything to these people?
I wanted to skip from one headstone to the next to look at the different years and names written on each and maybe steal a flower or two from the pots, but Mammina had already hissedat me that that wasn’t done. I sighed, kicking at pebbles as we walked behind the eight men carrying a long box over their shoulders. We were all dressed in black.
I scratched at my collar while holding Gilly close and wondered if everyone’s clothes were just as itchy. At least I had Gilly to distract me. I dug my face into the stuffed animal’s fur, avoiding the scratchy areas with rhinestones, as I watched the people walking around us. I counted the crunch of gravel beneath our steps.
Seemed kind of silly to cry while walking. I wasn’t going to, same for my big brother, Renzo, who just looked bored, but almost everyone else was. Well, except for that boy just in front of me—maybe eleven or twelve years old—who kept staring up at that box as if the holders might drop it over his head before looking back down at the gravel and grass. Up, down, his eyes went, over and over.
Every once in a while, he looked over his shoulder, face scrunched up like a wrinkled shirt, jaw clenched like Babbo’s just before he was about to scream at me or Mammina.
A woman in an elegant silky dress—probably his mother since she looked the same age as my mammina—stood between him and an even older boy. Unlike him, the teenager—I’m guessing his brother since he was like an older twin—clung to their mother. I liked that he didn’t. Renzo always said the strong held themself up all on their lonesome.
I shook off Mammina’s hand and skipped right up beside the boy who was going to be my friend. I stared up at his face. Yep, I was right. No tears. His dark-blue eyes, like the night sky when the full moon was out, glared at me. His lip peeled back in a snarl. He looked like a cartoon villain about to reveal an evil plot. I couldn’t help but giggle.
“Get ’way from me,” he said.
“You talk funny.” His English was weird. None of his vowels stuck. Instead his words tugged them out real far. Mammina had said it was because we were in France, and all French people spoke like that in English.
He didn’t answer, just sped up his footsteps and kept his eyes forward. I skipped up ahead of him, turned around, and walked backward.
“I’m faster than you.”
