“Go on in,” Angelo says. “We’ll be here.”
“You go first,” Nick agrees. “You both just went through some shit…again.”
“Okay,” I tell them, because I totally fucking agree that I should be the first to see Luca, but add, “Don’t run away, though, Nick, will you? If Luca wants to see you—”
“I’ll be here,” he promises. “Whatever he wants to say to me, I’ll hear it.”
Chapter Twenty
LUCA
I’m beginning to come around to Finch’s way of thinking: hospitals are to be avoided. Certainly the non-private wards, like this one I’ve been put into now. When Finch rakes the curtain across dramatically, like an actor making an entrance on stage, I almost smile—but after what Darla told me happened downstairs, there’s nothing funny about today at all.
I don’t care if the IFF comes for me. I’ll be delighted to send them all to hell. But if they’re coming for Finch—
“Well?” he demands. “What did the doctors say?”
“I pulled a few stitches, that’s all.”
“Bullshit.” He grabs my chart from the foot of the bed and reads it himself, frowning. I wonder how much of it makes any sense to him—but knowing Finch, he’s educated himself on the ins and outs of my injuries, treatment, and recovery prognosis.
“Baby bird,” I say softly, “come here.”
The one good thing about this room is that they’ve let me move the head of the bed higher, so I’m sitting up more. They’ve also dosed me with a lot of heavy painkillers that are taking the edge off without making me dopey.
So when I take Finch into my arms and hold him tight, it only hurts a lot, not completely.
“Not so tight,” he sniffs. “If you blow those fucking stitches again—”
“I won’t,” I tell him. “Now, tell me what the hell that was downstairs, you threatening to kill yourself?”
He gives a scornful huff. “I didn’t mean it. Who told you about that?Darla?God, what a rat.”
“You didn’tmeanit? You didn’t mean to be careless with your life?”
“I wasn’t being careless; I was playing the only card I had. And it worked.”
“Let me look at you.” He sits up and I search his face. “Okay,” I say at last. “I believe you. But I don’t want you ever,everto put your life on the line like that again. You hear me? That’s not how this works, this thing between you and me.”
He doesn’t give me any assurances, but it’s because he has other things on his mind. “We have to leave,” he says. Begs. “Please, Luca. We can go chill in Italy for a while, visit the Amalfi coast, I can show you around Florence and Milan, and we can get lost in Rome together—we can stay with Frank and Cee at Lake Como, and I can get to know my baby sister—” He breaks off, trembling, and I hug him again.
“We’ll talk about it later.” I might tolerate a different city, but I will certainly not leave the country. There’s no point arguing about it right now, though. “I’m in no state to travel internationally. And, technically, I’m under arrest. For the moment. But we do need to figure out a place to stay when I get discharged from here.”
Finch pulls back to look at me, and I can see he thinks he’s found a tiny advantage, that he is beginning to persuade me. I want him to have that win today. He deserves it.
“And I think it will have to be Boston,” I continue. “So can you do that for me? Talk to your sister. Ask her to prepare for us to stay there for a week or so?”
He nods thoughtfully. “But as soon as you’re better, and as soon as Carlo gets the charges dropped, we get out of the States.”
“We can talk about it,” I reiterate, and then change the subject. “Is Fontana here?”
“He is,” Finch says. Mischief lights up his eyes. “But you have another visitor, too. Someone who might need to leave in kind of a hurry, so you better see him before Nick.”
* * *
Angelo Messina is so bronzedand healthy-looking, his teeth just about glowing when he smiles, that I almost change my mind and decide to head west to the sunshine instead of east to Massachusetts. “Your time away has been productive,” I tell him after he has greeted me respectfully and kissed my hand, even without the Morelli ring on it. Angelo has been keeping an eye on the West Coast outfits for me, all while chasing down his own target—someone he insists can clear Baxter Flynn’s good name for the cop-killings in Central Park. “And you look as though you’ve enjoyed yourself.”
He grins without guardedness. “Can’t lie, Boss; I have.”
