I sit there in my over-lit apartment, surrounded by locked doors and drawn curtains, and finally understand what Matteo was trying to tell me.
I’m not safe. I’m never going to be safe.
Not unless someone makes Viktor stop.
7
MATTEO
The smell hits me first.
That sharp antiseptic burn that crawls up my nostrils and settles like acid in my chest. Hospitals. Christ, I hate these places.
My skin feels too tight as I walk beside my mother down the beige hallway. Every footstep echoes off sterile walls, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead like angry wasps. The sound drills into my skull, mixing with the low hum of machines keeping people alive.
Death, I understand. Violence, I control. But this slow-motion suffering? This helpless waiting for poison to cure poison? This shit makes my teeth ache.
Ma’s fingers brush my arm as we approach the oncology check-in desk.
“You okay, sweetheart?”
I nod, swallowing the metallic taste coating my tongue. Can’t let her see how much this is destroying me. She’s got enough to worry about.
A nurse appears beside us with a gentle smile. “We’re ready for you, Mrs. Rossi.”
I follow them into a room lined with cushioned chairs. A dozen on each side. Half of them occupied by people in various stages of dying.
My throat closes up.
Some of them look normal. Healthy, even. Like my mom, who was only diagnosed a week ago and still has color in her cheeks and strength in her step. But others are bald, hollow-eyed, skin stretched thin over bones that seem to be giving up.
In the corner, an old man sleeps curled in his chair, so frail a strong wind might finish what the cancer started. My stomach drops to my boots. That could be Ma in six months. A year.
I yank my eyes away before the image burns into my brain permanently.
My mother has always been the strongest person I know. She survived my father’s death when I was six. Survived marrying a monster when I was eleven. Survived five years of hell that left us both scarred in ways that don’t show on the surface.
She’s solid. Steady. Unbreakable.
Except now she’s not.
Now she’s sitting in a chair while a nurse slides a needle into her arm, and there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it.
I drop into the hard plastic seat beside her, my knees brushing the armrest of her chair. The nurse finishes setting up the IV, explains the timeline, mentions something about side effects.I hear maybe half of it. The rest gets lost somewhere in the buzzing of those fucking lights.
“How do you feel?” I ask when we’re finally alone.
“Could be better.” She smiles at me. That soft, warm smile that’s gotten me through more dark nights than I can count. “With all the blood draws lately and now this, I’m starting to feel like a pincushion.”
I grab the soft blanket from her bag, draping it over her lap. My hands are too big, too clumsy for gentle gestures, but she hums approval anyway.
“Thanks for being here,” she says, squeezing my fingers. “I know you’re busy.”
“I’ll be here for every appointment.”
“Matteo, you don’t have to?—”
“Lorenzo knows. Dario knows. Everyone knows.” I hold her gaze, making sure she understands. “Your chemo is every two weeks. I’ll be here. If something comes up and I can’t, someone else will sit with you. You’re not doing this alone.”
