“Messina’s dead,” I remind my brother.But he gives a tight shake of his head.
“Not Marco.Marco’s son, Alessandro.I saw him with my own two fucking eyes.”He shakes his head again.“I don’t think you’re the only one who wants to marry Aurora Bianchi.”
Alessandro Messina?My mind lurches drunkenly as I try to make sense of what he’s saying.I knew somebody from New York might try to come for her.
I didn’t think it would be her fucking stepson.Even the thought that he’s out there somewhere in this city makes my knuckles ache with tension, a hot, dark, hostile rage building inside me that I know won’t ebb until I’ve drained all the blood out of his fucking body.
“Did he touch her?”I growl.
She doesn’t fucking like when men touch her.
“He threw her in a cab,” Elio says.“Robbie and the others rammed it.That’s when we lost them.”Ahead, I can see the results of the crash, a black SUV’s front end smashed into the side of the teal-and-orange Toronto taxi it’s T-boned in the middle of the intersection.Two police cars are parked at the scene, red and blue lights flashing while small crowds gather on the sidewalk to gawk.
“Ignore the cops.I’ve already talked to our people on the force,” Elio says.“And I’ll write the cabbie a big fat cheque for his trouble tonight.”He leads us away from the crash to another black vehicle.He and Morelli chuck the bags into the trunk.Elio slides into the driver’s seat, Morelli getting into the back.I fall heavily into the front passenger seat, sweating despite the cold air.Elio eyes me from the side, then, as he pulls swiftly away from the curb, says, “We’ll go home first.Get another naloxone kit.”
“No,” I grunt.No fucking way.We’re not driving that far out of our way just for that.
“You could overdose again at any moment,” Morelli warns.
“We go straight to her,” I say.Morelli swears under his breath, saying something about how he doesn’t know which Titone brother is more stubborn.Elio sighs between clenched teeth, then cranks the wheel, spinning us in a tight U-turn that nearly takes out a sedan in the other lane.Among the blaring anthem of angry car horns, Elio drives directly towards the crash at the intersection.When we get close, he stops the vehicle in live traffic, leaving the car running and the driver’s side door wide open as he stalks into the intersection.He doesn’t stop until he’s standing in front of one of the police officers there.I don’t know what he says, but the officer hurries over to his own parked vehicle, bends to retrieve something from inside, then hands it to Elio.When my brother returns to the car, after throwing himself into the driver’s seat and slamming the door, he tosses something into my lap then speeds away.I focus my flickering eyes on another case, just like the one Morelli showed me on the train.
“Cops have always got ’em these days,” Elio says as he drives.“You got any clue how you were drugged in the first place?Can’t imagine Messina could have gotten close enough to you to get any powder on you or stab you with a needle.”
I have no memory of Messina being on the train at all.I didn’t even fucking know he was here until Elio just told me.The only people I saw on the train were Aurora, and…
“The porter,” I say after a pounding moment of hesitation.“A new one came at the end…Gave me water from a cup.”
It’s only as I say the words that I remember that sudden feeling of slippage on the train.The sensation that time was slowing all around me.Then a bleary realization, and the resulting panic when I saw Aurora’s cup.Panic that I couldn’t move the way I wanted.Panic that all I could do was reach for it, reach for it, and…
And there’s nothing else.The scene gives way to liquid black.
Fuck.I don’t even know if Aurora had a sip or not.It’s taking too fucking long to figure shit out.I want to yank my brain from my skull, squeeze it like a sponge, let the memories spill into my own lap so I can try to make some kind of sense of them.Unfortunately, that would leave me deader than fucking dead.And I need to be alive to get to her.
“We’ll find him,” Elio says.But I’ve already moved on from thoughts of the porter.
“Aurora was conscious when you saw her?”I demand.“Walking?”
“Running,” Elio corrects me.“If any of the drugs were meant for her, I don’t think they got into her system.”
I won’t – can’t – feel relief at that until I see her for myself.
“And even if she was exposed,” Elio continues, “Sev’s got the resources to handle it.He isn’t about to let her die now.Not when he’s promised us her safekeeping.”
I try to hold that slippery thought at the forefront of my rattled mind, but it’s hard.The effort drains me, like there’s some unseen hole in me somewhere, and everything is seeping out, slowly, but so damn surely.
I’m so fucking empty without her.
Elio drives like a bat out of hell, but even so it’s an agonizing eternity to get to Sev’s big stone house in Rosedale.Two men stand in the driveway to meet us.I know one of them is Luca Serpico, Severu’s nephew.I don’t recognize the other man, some nameless Camorra soldier.
“Stay here, Morelli.We might need you on our way out,” Elio says.He takes the naloxone kit from my lap and tosses it into the backseat.Morelli catches it out of the air and nods.Then, Elio is turning to me, asking me something like “You good?”But I don’t quite catch it.I’m already shoving open the door, climbing shakily out of the vehicle.
“Where is she?”My voice sounds all fucked up to my own ears.Haggard.Like I’m choking on her absence.
“Safe inside,” Luca responds.Elio’s at my side now.I feel his arm press against my own, a wordless gesture of physical support.In case my legs give out or some shit, I guess.
Ain’t gonna happen.Even if my lungs feel like they’re half-filled with fluid.
“Bring her out,” Elio says.“We’ll take her and go.”
