The call Luc had put out had been answered and the men I worked alongside arrived in trickles to see the burning wreck without knowing their boss was under it. There were people coming towards me from every direction. Without Luc in sight, men waited for my order. When Dom came into my line of vision, I thrust Mia towards him. “Hospital,” I told him sharply over Mia screaming at me. “Do not let her out of your sight.” I didn’t bother to wait for a response before I barked orders at the rest of them, moving towards the debris of the barn to look for my brother.
“Dante!” Tori screamed but I didn’t stop. Nothing would stop me again.
∞∞∞
By the time we reached the hospital, my ears were ringing with the sounds of screaming, sirens and medical jargon. Firefighters, cops, paramedics — we’d seen every member of the emergency services tonight.
We’d found Luc, burnt and bruised and unconscious. Broken. I’d never dreamed of losing the only family I had. Older than me by a few months, Luc was my big brother in every sense of the word. He’d taught me so much as we grew up and I believed that nothing and no one could take him down. I was wrong.
Both Mia and Luc had been carted into surgery, and I was left to answer question after question that the cops had before they finally left with the promise of returning when Mia and Luc were awake. Their need to understand what happened resulted in a sick optimism that many of us hadn’t quite reached.
The moment they left, I sat in the waiting room alone and glad for the silence. I dropped my head into my hands and for the first time in my life, I questioned if we’d been too ambitious. If we’d bitten off more than we could chew. If I’d been wrong to back Luc and feed his ego when he had what most normal people would have given anything for. He had a woman he loved and started a family, but it wasn’t enough. We weren’t wired to be content with average and mediocre. We wanted extraordinary and we were willing to get it at any cost.
Almost any cost.
What the fuck had we done?
I rattled through so many names in my head, but my thoughts kept circling back to Link. Link, who couldn’t even call my friends Mom and Dad yet. Link, who would have barely any recollection of his father if anything happened to him. At least Luc had years with Charlie before he was taken from us. I might have been our cub’s godfather, but I wasn’t ready to tell him memories of Luc when he should’ve been making them with his father.
“Dante?” A pair of muddy heels appeared in front of me. Lifting my head out of my hands, I was greeted with the sight of Vittoria, pale, and eyes filled with concern. “Oh, D.” She squatted down between my legs and brought her hands up to my face, wiping away my tears. I hadn’t realised that I was crying. “It’ll be okay,” she told me with a gentleness I’d rarely seen. The last time she’d been so soft had been at Isa’s funeral and I felt a fresh wave of tears hit me.
My response was automatic as I held her wrists. “You don’t know that.”
If I lost Luc... I didn’t believe in my own blood. I cared little about what science deemed as my family.Thiswas my blood. They were the people I would die for if it came down to the wire and I was faced with the genuine possibility that I would no longer have my brother in this life. I wasn’t prepared to face this world alone.
Tori stood up, hands slipping into mine and she tugged, getting me up to my feet. “We will get through this,” she said. I opened my mouth prepared to argue with her. “All of us,” she emphasised, cutting me off before I could get the words out. “Luc doesn’t quit. You know that.”
“And Mia?”
Mia, who was pocket-sized and had taken on Franco and Xavier. She hadn’t come away from it unscathed, and I didn’t know the full extent of the damage. We should have sent her down to Carmen and kept her in the clear while we sorted out business.
“You really think she’s going to leave Link to be raised by you?” Tori tried to tease but she choked on the words. Clearing her throat, she started again, “She’s stronger than what any of us give her credit for.”
They’d both been through a lot, but this felt different. This felt like it had cut too close to the bone and maybe luck or God or karma wasn’t on our side. We were living on borrowed time and death had finally come to collect.
Tori’s grip on my hands tightened, and I realised I was shaking. “Dante,” she said. “The doctors will do the best they can. We need to just stay calm. Once they’re out of surgery we’ll know more.” Her earlier wobble had been replaced by the confident woman who believed that anything she said was truth. An attitude that had served her well in life and now she tried to impart it on me to help me through this catastrophe. “You need to get yourself checked out properly. You have a lot of people relying on you right now.”
There was a list of things that required attention and it would be my job to take the reins and delegate. Questions that needed to be answered, checks that needed to be signed to ensure silence and kept the family as far away from the courtrooms as possible. Tori was right. I needed to pull myself together and keep going. There wasn’t time to fall apart because if I did, everything would descend into chaos and what was needed was a sense of calm. We needed order most when things had spiralled. Damage control because the immediate fallout could take us all down.
I couldn’t help but look to Tori. Tori, who was my polar opposite and balanced me. She had always known how to handle situations that I couldn’t. In the rubble of the wreckage, in all this debris concerning her father, Tori hadn’t left. She turned up to the hospital. She found me. She made sure that I kept my priorities straight. She’d done everything in her power to help me. I wanted to give her something in return. I’d always maintain that she didn’t need protection but if we evaded the authorities from this, then there would be serious questions asked of the Morettis. I wanted to protect her from that.
The words ran from my mouth as she led me down the hallways of the hospital. “Marry me.”
Tori stopped abruptly and turned slowly to look at me. “I’m sorry. What?”
“Marry me, Vittoria,” I repeated the words. It spilled from me without a thought but now it took root in my brain and in my heart, I knew that I would never love anyone the way I loved Tori and our current predicament was a stark reminder of how we often took life for granted. I’d spent so long with things being out of my control that I needed to step up and take what I wanted. “Marry me,” I told her. “I don’t have a ring.”
“You are kidding me, right?”
I dropped down to one knee in the middle of the hallway and she glanced around but there was no one in sight.
“I’m serious, Vittoria. I want you to marry me.”
“I...”
“Think on it.” Maybe I’d lost my damn mind, but I felt the need to hold everything dear to me closer than I ever had before. I picked myself up from the floor, Tori’s eyes following me on the way up.
It took a moment before she nodded. “I’ll think about it.”
