Forcing myself out of the bed, ignoring the giddiness in my head, I reached the wheelchair left outside of the room and helped myself to it.
It had to be the fucking medicine. My muscles felt like they were fighting quicksand, but my head felt as light as a feather.
Only having one arm to use, being careful of the slice on my chest, I only bumped into one wall.
“Signor Fausti!”
Attempting to outrun the eager nurse, I tried to go faster, but no luck. She caught up to me, speaking rapid Italian, pulling the handles on the wheelchair.
I felt like Rocky, escaping my room to talk to Apollo after the fight. Instead, I was after my wife, but something else too.
“I am going to see my brother,” I said in Italian.
She pinched her lips. “Which one?”
“Rocco.”
The grace of God had saved his life. Tito’s hands and expertise seemed to come straight from above. Though I sometimes wondered where Rocco’s mind was.
It wasn’t close. He was having a hard time.
For some, near-death experiences caused an appreciation of life. Others seemed to find anger and resentment in it. Was it from having to return? Or that it happened in the first place?
“I will take you to him,” a voice from the shadows said. “Scarlett is keeping him company.” Rosaria lifted her cup. “I needed a break.”
The nurse hesitated, but at the severe look Rosaria sent her, she released the handles and disappeared.
Rosaria set the cup of tea next to me, wedging it so it wouldn’t fall, and pushed me down the hall to where Rocco’s room was.
We were essentially quarantined. Luca demanded that we be in our own space, due to security risks. The hospital crawled with men. No one was getting in.
Even the palazzo had extra men to guard it. It was a floating fortress, and the enemy would have to fall from the sky to take us at a disadvantage.
Unlike Zermatt, if men were to start falling from the sky in Venice, it would attract notice. Or if the wind was wrong, they’d go straight into the water.
Rosaria pushed me slow, the smell of antiseptic almost cool in the air, clinging. It reminded me of where I was and how desperately I wanted out. If it wasn’t for Scarlett refusing to allow me to leave, all my healing would have been done in the comfort of my own home.
The hall was so quiet that the wheels squeaked against the floor, loud in the silence. After being around boisterous adults and even more boisterous children, the lack of life made a surge of something strong sweep into my heart—something lonely and full of cold.
“What is it about her that draws him, do you think?” Rosaria asked, her tone conversational, but something deep below almost cowered with hurt.
“It’s not my wife,” I said, feeling like an invalid. “It’s what we have. He confuses the two.”
“Did she tell you this?”
This time her tone burned, and it made me pause.
“At first,” I said. “She feels it, but I’ve seen the truth for myself.”
“I do not agree. A woman knows her husband—or the man she lives with. My husband loves her. He compares all others to her. If he were to kiss her, there could be no other for him.”
Including me, she didn’t say, but she didn’t have to.
A burn flashed through my veins before I was able to tame it down. “I’d refuse to live a life with a woman who loved another man.” I shrugged. “Just my own standards.”
She almost laughed. “Unless it was her, no? You would kill her lover to spite her, to hurt her as she hurt you, but you would still want her. Even after you might kill her for betraying you in such a way.” She sighed, almost sadly. “Besides, what does love have to do with it? I did not marry for love. Neither did he.”
This sort of conversation wasn’t my thing.
