"Gigi didn't raise me to leave a dirty bar."
We close up. It takes three minutes because the bar is small and I'm fast and Emilio does what I tell him. I turn off the light and he holds the door. We walk down the corridor toward his room, and I don't even pretend I'm going to mine.
His hand finds mine in the hallway. Fingers laced, palms flat together, his grip warm. “For the record… you’re notjusta bartender. You’re my girl, which means you stay. If you don’t want to stay, that’s fine, but I’m coming with.”
My heart almost breaks out of my chest, and I’m at a loss for words for the first time, so I just squeeze his hand and memorize those words.
Aurelio is dying. His daughter is three floors up trying to sleep in a bed she hasn't slept in for three years. A mountain of a man is standing guard outside her door because that's how he says I love you. Alexandra is somewhere with a laptop and Kreiss's files and a word that made Dahlia's face crack for half a second.
And I'm walking down a dark corridor holding hands with a man I've known for three weeks who makes me feel like the empty space where my family used to be might not stay empty forever.
Gigi would say I'm an idiot.
Gigi would also say it's about damn time.
Chapter Fifteen: Emilio
Thenursecallsatthree in the morning.
I'm in bed with Savannah and her back is against my chest, my arm over her waist, her breathing slow and even. The phone buzzes on the nightstand and I grab it before the second vibration because I've been sleeping with one hand on it, waiting for this call, hoping it wouldn't come and knowing it would.
"His oxygen dropped again," the nurse says. Her voice is professional, but tired. "He's stable, but Dr. Mancini thinks you should come. All of you."
"How long?"
"Hours. Maybe less."
I hang up. Savannah stirs against me. "What is it?"
"Aurelio doesn’t have much time left."
She goes still, then her hand finds mine on her stomach and squeezes once, hard, and lets go. "Go."
I get dressed in the dark. Jeans, t-shirt, no shoes because the corridor is twenty feet and I'm not thinking about shoes. I'm thinking about a man in a bed three floors up who taught me how to tie a tie when I was fifteen and told me I'd amount to something if I could learn to shut my mouth for more than thirty seconds at a time.
I never learned.
The corridor is dark and quiet. I knock on Claudio's door twice, the pattern we've used since we were kids, two short knocks meaning get up, it's important. The door opens before I finish the second knock. He's dressed. He's been sleeping in his clothes. Of course he has. Claudio doesn't get caught unprepared for anything, including the death of the man who basically raised us.
"I know," he says. "Charlotte answered the phone."
Charlotte appears behind him. She's in a sweater and her face is puffy from sleep and she puts her hand on Claudio's back and says nothing. She doesn't need to. Claudio reaches behind himself without looking and takes her hand and holds it for a few seconds and then lets go.
"I’ll be back when it’s over," he tells her.
"I'll be in the kitchen," she says. "When it's over."
We find Leone in the hallway outside the private wing. He's been here for a while. I can tell because there's a coffee cup on the floor beside the wall and it's empty and cold. He's leaning against the concrete with his arms crossed and his head back and his eyes closed, and when he hears us coming he opens them and the look on his face is one I've never seen on Leone Costa.
He's scared.
Not of what's in that room. Of what comes after. Of the world without the man who built the one he's been holding together with tape and willpower for the past year.
"He's been asking for you two," Leone says. "Dahlia is inside." He looks at me and Claudio. "He's lucid. The doctor gave him something for the pain, but he wanted to be awake. He was very specific about that."
"Carmelo?" I ask.
"Inside, sitting and waiting. He's been in there since midnight."
