At that, I push past everyone to go back into Luca’s room. I hate being away from him for too long and I have limited interest in Frank peacocking to the Donovans.
Inside, Tara and Aidan are talking in hushed voices, and Tara turns to give me a sad smile when I enter. She comes over to put her arms around me gently, just like she’s been doing since she first arrived in New York. It’s like she thinks I’ll break if she hugs any harder.
I don’t know. Maybe I will.
“How are you today, Howie? Aidan says they brought in a better mattress for the camp bed, to help you sleep.”
“I’m fine,” I say into her hair, breathing her in. It’s been a weird relief to have Tara here. I grew up so estranged from my family after Mom’s death that I never knew what I was missing. Even after we reconnected, things have been awkward sometimes. We’ve had more than one disagreement, even about the workings of the charity we’ve set up together. But Luca’s situation has swept away any tension between us, and I’m as grateful for her as I am for Aidan, and now Frank.
“Brother Frank!” she says over my shoulder as I hear the door open again, and I wonder how Frank will take seeing Tara again, after everything that went down last time he was mixed up with the Donovans. I should have known, though—Tara, like our mother, can charm anyone when she puts her mind to it. And in this case, she is determined. Within thirty seconds, Frank is grinning and chatting away with her like old friends.
Aidan comes up to me while they talk. “The doctor came in while you were out,” he says. “She’ll come back later to fill you in, but she did say that Luca was doing better. His pupils are responsive, and he’s still reacting to the needle.”
Every so often they stick a needle into Luca just to see if he flinches. This place is like a torture chamber. And when I look at Luca lying there, I see no difference. He still has a pallor to his face, his lips colorless. His black eyebrows and those long, thick lashes are like ink stains on paper. I really hope this doctor isn’t just blowing smoke up my ass to keep the cash coming in.
It’s not unlikely; in memory of Connie Taylor, we donated enough money to this long-term care ward that they renamed it after her. It’s come in useful now, being so generous, and I bet Luca thought about that at the time, too.
It’s the kind of thing he would have seen coming, would have prepared for in advance.
“Okay,” I say, without really knowing what I mean, because Aidan seems to expect a reply. He puts an arm around my shoulders.
“Do you want to come pray again?”
In the corner, the darkest corner of the room, beyond Luca’s bed, I can almost—if I stare hard enough, make my eyes blur just a little—I canalmostmake out a shadow.
A hungry shadow with a patient smile.
“You go,” I tell Aidan. “I don’t want to miss the doctor again.”
“We should let you get some sleep, anyway,” Aidan says, indicating the camp bed on the other side of Luca’s bed. I like that they’ve moved it there. It means I can guard him from that shadow in the corner, like a guard dog lying across a doorway.
I’ll be damned if I let Death have its way here today.
Aidan, Tara and Frank leave me there after more hugs, and I can hear Frank asking Tara to fill him in on everything that happened in Boston, so he “can find where Vitali failed,” and his doggedness to find someone to blame is soexhaustingright now that I actually fall face-first onto the camp bed as soon as the door closes behind them.
I wave a warning hand at the corner. “You stay right fucking there,” I mumble into the pillow, and then I pass out.
* * *
I wake who knows when,but the noise that wakes me is weirdly familiar: loud argumentative voices in the hallway just outside. One, I recognize, is Frank’s. I roll my ass off the bed, glance at Luca to reassure myself that there’s no change—there’s not—and then I grouchily stomp over to the door and tug it open.
“—this motherfucker ain’t getting anywherenearmy brother!” Frank is shouting from the waiting room down the hall. Luca’s two guards are holding him back with difficulty.
“You tell ’im, Frankie.” That, I think, is Al Vollero. Not myfavoriteMorelli Capo. I come out a few steps and look down the hall to see who Frank so strenuously objects to—
Shit.
“We’ll come back later,” Nick Fontana says to me, his hands up as if in surrender, and Carlo Bianchi is standing behind him, nervous but resolute.
“We need to get this done,” Carlo insists.
“Neitherof you motherfuckers is getting in here,” Frank spits.
“The Boss don’t need no slimy ambulance chasers, Bianchi,” Vollero adds, like he’s Frank’s fucking backup singer.
Frank doesn’t even glance his way, though. He’s too busy screaming at Nick. “You think just ’cause I’m out of the country, I don’t know what’s been going on back here? Vollero told meeverything. He kept me in the loop, Fontana, and that loop’s going round your neck when I get my hands on you!”
It’s an impressively muddled metaphor, and Nick looks weary of the whole exchange. He addresses me rather than Frank, calling down the hallway: “Carlo needs you to sign some papers, but it can wait.”
