Everyone turns to stare at Pietro.
"What?" The word escapes me before I can stop it.
Pietro's dark eyes meet mine.
"He was saying your name." Pietro's voice is flat. Matter-of-fact. "When Dante found him. Before he lost consciousness. He kept saying your name."
The room tilts sideways.
"I..." My throat closes around the words.
"Go." Vittoria's voice is surprisingly steady. She reaches over and squeezes my hand, her fingers cold but firm. "He needs to know you're here."
I look around the room at these people. This family of criminals and killers who somehow became the closest thing to safety I've ever known.
They're letting me go first.
Because he loves you, a voice whispers in my head. And they know it. Even if you've been too scared to admit it.
I stand on legs that feel like they belong to someone else.
Dr. leads me down a corridor.
Please be okay. Please be okay. Please?—
The doctor stops outside a door with a small window.
"Five minutes," he says quietly. "He's heavily sedated. He likely won't hear you, but..." He trails off, something almost human crossing his professional features. "Talk to him anyway."
I nod because I don't trust my voice.
The door opens.
And there he is.
Nico Sartori lies motionless in a hospital bed. Tubes snake from his arms. Machines beep a steady rhythm that sounds nothing like his heartbeat should. His face is pale, too pale, stripped of that dangerous intensity that usually makes my pulse race.
He looks breakable.
I move to the chair beside his bed without conscious thought. My hand finds his.
His fingers are cold.
"You absolute idiot," I whisper, and my voice cracks on the last word. "You don't get to die. You hear me? You don't get to?—"
The tears come then, hot and unstoppable, dripping onto our joined hands.
"I don't hate you." The confession tears out of me like it's been clawing to escape. "I was angry and scared and you made decisions that weren't yours to make, but I don't—I never?—"
I love you.
The words stick in my throat, too terrifying to release into a room where he might not wake up to hear them.
So I just hold his hand.
And I pray to a God I'm not sure I believe in that I get the chance to say them when he can actually hear.
I catch my reflection in the bathroom mirror and barely recognize the hollow-eyed woman staring back. My hair hangs in greasy tangles.
