“Call me if there’s any news.”
I promise him I will and end the call.The highway sounds a lot like the crashing of waves now.The Pacific Ocean waves.Maybe it means I’m close to going back there and putting everything right back home.And saving Goldie’s family in the process.Even though they did fuck all to help mine when we needed them.
But maybe it’s time I put all that behind me and start forgiving too.
Chapter41
GIANNA
I sleptclean through the night, didn’t wake up until dawn.But my heart started pounding, blood whooshing like the sea during some terrible winter storm in my ears as soon as I did.
What if Chiara had died during the night and I just slept right through it?
That was the only thought in my head and it’s taken half an hour of standing by the windows of her ICU room, looking at her pale, sleeping face to realize that hadn’t happened.That she’s still alive.
“What’s wrong?”Matteo asks as he appears beside me, his eyes barely open and his hair a mess even though he slept sitting up next to me.“Did something happen?”
I shake my head but then think better of it.
“Yes, something happened,” I say pointedly, glaring at him long enough for him to open his eyes fully and then focusing back on my sister.
He looks on through the window on the door too.If I’d been responsible for putting someone in a coma the way he was with my sister, I don’t think I’d be able to look at them so calmly.
“Her vitals seem to be getting better,” he says.“Maybe they’ll wake her up today so you can speak to her.”
I want to say something else biting to him, but the thought of my sister awake, and speaking makes me too happy.
“Your father is fine too,” he tells me.“He’s been negotiating with Angelo.”
I turn to him, not even trying to hide the excitement that must be all over my face.My sister awake, and my family fine?That’s all I’ve wanted for the past few days since this ordeal started.I didn’t even know the full scope of know how much I wanted that until this very moment.
“And then you’ll let us go to be with our family?”
The look in his eyes is partly pain but mostly denial.Burning hot too.Like the desert sun.How I basked in that look, how I enjoyed it.Now it just makes me mad.
“I’ll get us some coffee and breakfast,” he says and walks away without answering my question.Not that he needs to.I saw thenoplain in his eyes.That scorching bright sun in his eyes… it hides nothing.
I was going to let him walk away, because we don’t really have much to say to each other.He wants to hear I love him too, that I forgive him, and a part of my heart desperately wants to tell him that.But it’s a very small, nearly silent part.The rest knows he’s done me too many wrongs.
But then another thought exploded in my head, another question that I need an answer to.So I ran after him and caught him just as the elevator door was closing.
“What’s going to happen to my father?”I ask.“Will you kill him?”
A very sad couple are in the elevator, the man holding the woman who looks as frail as tiny bird in his arms.They both shake at my questions, and then big tears start rolling down the woman’s face.
Matteo wraps his arm around me and guides me back out of the elevator.Practically pushes me, more like.The sun in his eyes is even hotter than it was as he glares down at me.
“It’d be a lot better if you didn’t shout things like that for the whole hospital to hear,” he says menacingly.But he doesn’t scare me.
“I want an answer.”
“And I want you to stop treating me like the enemy,” he hisses.“I’m doing everything I can to keep you and your family alive.”
A part of me knows that’s true.An even louder part knows I’d probably not be alive anymore if he wasn’t always there to save me.But I loved him so much and he’s done so many terrible things to me.I can’t forgive.I won’t.
“Everything you can except let us go and live our lives in peace, you mean?”
He grabs my arm and pulls me back towards my sister’s ICU room.“It is what it is, Gianna.It’s high time you accepted that.Now go be with your sister and stop fighting me so hard.”
