My God, I hate hospitals.
Luca’s hand is neither cold nor warm, but his skin feels dry, and his fingers always just lie there in mine. Before now he always held my hand tight, sometimestootight, but always secure, even when we were asleep.
I squeeze his fingers hard. “I’m here,” I rasp. It’s the same thing I’ve been telling him every hour. It’s the only thing I can say without choking on my own tears. I can’t go anywhere near what I really want to say to him. If I do, I’ll totally lose it.
So I sit and I hold his hand.
And I replay, over and over again, the events that brought us here. But none of those things that happened is a root cause for Luca’s lying here, bandaged, with tubes running into and out of him.
No.
The root cause for this isme.
* * *
Some hourshere in the hospital seem to drag. Some fly past. I only leave the room when I absolutely have to and I don’t know how long it’s been since the attack.
The nurses are letting me use the shower in Luca’s room, and after I napped in the chair in the corner more than once, I heard Aidan talking to someone about setting up a camp bed for me. It’s against policy for me to be staying here with Luca like I’m doing, but the camp bed appeared. Either the hospital staff knew better than to try to keep me out, or Aidan or Carlo Bianchi orsomeonehas laid it out for them, nice and simple.
And I know it must be Carlo keeping the cops off my ass, too. During Luca’s operation I gave a brief, uninformative statement to a woman who identified herself as Detective Gina Garcia, but since then, I haven’t had to face law enforcement.
Every day there are Morelli guards near the door. From what I’ve overheard, the Clemenza Family is making moves on Morelli territory. Meanwhile, the Feds want to close in on Luca and charge him with anything they think might stick. So I don’t even know what’s going to happen if Luca wakes up.
Whenhe wakes up.
I won’t let myself think anything else.
Chapter Two
FINCH
I’m woken from my doze next to Luca’s bed by the door opening. I’m already on edge, so every time someone comes into the room, I know it. My head jerks up, whipping around on my neck as I scope the room.
“Howie,” says a gentle voice. “I’m so sorry.” And then I’m enveloped in soft arms, a hug very unlike all the hard, squeezing hugs I’ve been getting from the Morellis, and my mouth is full of my sister’s long red hair. But I don’t care; I hug her right back and let her rub between my shoulder blades with a soothing, almost maternal rhythm.
“What are you doing here?” I sniffle when Tara lets me go, and I stretch up from the chair I’ve been hunched in, my back complaining.
“I’m your sister. Where else would I be?” She takes hold of my hand, looking down at Luca. Her other hand comes up to her throat, and she takes a shaky breath. “Oh, Howie,” she says at last. “I’m so sorry. Is it true that the attack came from the Irish Freedom Fighters?”
I nod, with nothing to add. The IFF, a terrorist group, has only recently taken exception to Luca and to me. But the Donovan Family has been dealing with them for a very long time.
Tara swallows. “Will Luca—I mean, what do the doctors say?”
“They say he’ll be okay. But when I look at him lying there, I don’t…I don’t know if Ibelievethem.” My voice breaks for a moment, and I tug my hand away from Tara’s, go over to pour out a glass of water from the side of the room, get myself the fuck together. “You want water?”
“No, thank you. I’m fine,” she says. She reaches out, her fingers hovering above Luca’s hand, then receding.
“You can touch him,” I offer over my shoulder. I’m so tired I have to concentrate on getting water from the jug into the paper cup. “God knows I do. I’ve been holding his hand so damn tight I think I cut off circulation.”
She sits in the uncomfortable chair I vacated and slides her fingers into his. “Hi, Luca,” she says to him. “I’m sorry to see you so…unwell.” There’s a pause before the last word, and it makes me give a cynical smile.
I’m sorry to see you so full of bullet holesjust doesn’t have the same ring to it.
I come back, chewing on the rim of the paper cup rather than drinking the water, and look down at my husband. “He’s a tough son of a bitch,” I say, echoing what I’ve heard more than one Morelli man say outside in the hallways. “He’ll pull through.”
“Of course he will,” Tara says, and gives me her lovely smile. “But Howie—what about you? How areyou? You had a terrible time of it yourself.”
We’re interrupted about twenty minutes later by a signal knock on the door, a specific pattern, and Tara looks over my shoulder with sharp eyes. “I’m sorry,” she says. “That’s Conor. I’ll just see what he wants.”
