She coughs, potato spraying onto the floor.
“Jesus. Alessia, chew!”
She glares at me, pressing a fist to her mouth as she coughs up more tot.
“Are you okay, babe?” Beckett asks.
“She’s fine,” I say. “I don’t know if you want that mouth near you though. Might have to give her a few sticks of Big Red before you go back to bed.”
We’re still laughing when Alessia hits the floor.
Beckett screams as potato pours from my sister’s mouth. Only it’s not potato. It’s thick white foam. I vault the counter and start digging it out with my fingers, but it won’t stop coming. Alessia’s eyes roll back in her head and her whole body shakes.
“What’s wrong?” Beckett keeps saying. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”
I grab Alessia’s arms and hold her still. “I don’t fucking know! Call 911. Call a fucking ambulance!”
Chapter One
Adriano Rossi
“You stole January.”
I try to focus on Bobby’s face but my vision blurs to gold and glass.
“You stole January,” he says even louder. “Now she’s gone and her fucking Zia is dead because you brought her here.”
Here.I force my eyes to blink, to concentrate on my surroundings. I’m on a bed with crisp white sheets, still fully dressed. That means ‘here’ is still St. John’s Private Medical Center. Here is where Parker found us. Here is where I was shot; a bullet in the side, another grazing my skull. But it didn’t kill me. Nothing ever kills me.
“We’re… in the hospital,” I manage, though my tongue is thick as a steak in my mouth. “I’m in a hospital room.”
“Eh mannaggia,” says a low voice.
Eli. I turn, but I can’t see him.
“Parker,” he says in his accented voice. “You need to trace Parker.”
“For the hundredth fucking time, we are,” Bobby says.
“Is he taking her to the compound?”
“No, traffic cams showed his limo getting on the interstate and—”
“There’s no point talking to him, Basher. He’s fucking high.”
A new voice. Doc is at my shoulder, his butterfly knife turning in his hand.
“What’s up, Doc?” I ask.
He jabs the blade at me. “Stop smiling, you fucking clown. If you were anyone else, I’d gut you.”
“Okay,” I say and bite the inside of my cheeks. Then a thought comes to me. “Wait. Why are you all here? Why aren’t you going after…?”
I can’t say her name, but even after all the drugs the doctors have pumped into me, I can still see her clearly. Those round green eyes and pink mouth. Her dark hair rippling as she flashes me her ingenuous smile.
“Fucking hell,” Bobby says. “We are trying to find her.”
I blink. He’s sitting at a table in the corner of the room, his laptop in front of him. “So why are you still here?”
