“Show me.”
Low. Growly whisper.
My own breath gets stuck in my throat. I’m so stunned that, for a moment, I don’t comprehend what he’s referring to. It might have been only two words, barely audible, but they carriedan ocean of volume. Strained. Startling. And a little savage. I’m not sure how I got all that from only two whispered words.
Swallowing around the lump in my throat, I slowly push my sleeve up.
“It… It wasn’t the dog’s fault. If he were treated kindly, he wouldn’t have lashed out. Um… After I brought Hugo home, his owner freaked out. He warned me not to tell anyone. To never claim that it was his dog that bit me, or…” I’m babbling. My heart is pounding out of control, and my breath is fast and shallow because…because that scent of an ocean breeze is getting ever more pronounced. I feelhimgetting close. Closer. “Anyway, it’s just a scratch. It’s not like he sank his teeth into me, so I haven’t reported it. If I had, animal control might decide to put Hugo down. I couldn’t let that happen.”
The gentlest touch caresses the inside of my forearm, just next to the remnants of the wound. A jolt of electricity zings through my body, across every nerve. I suck in a gulp of air, tasting that oceanic scent. Another light stroke over my healing scrape, and then…the ocean breeze shifts direction. Fades away. Retreats to distant shores.
Or back to the sofa its wearer was occupying earlier.
I wait. Will he say anything more? Hoping he will. Desperately wishing he would.
Perhaps I also have a weird quirk, like many of the Annex clients. Without warning, I seem to have developed an unexpected addiction. All of a sudden, I can’t stop thinking about my silent guest’s voice. Wanting to hear more of it. The hushed whisper wasn’t enough. It wasn’t sufficiently distinct from similarly spoken growls. It didn’t last long enough for me to etch it into memory.
But not a single other sound materializes from across the divide of the coffee table in the room. I guess I should continue my senseless talking. It is, after all, his request. But I can’t. Can’t make myself do it. So I let the silence descend.
If I keep mute, will he say something?
Just as I settle on testing my theory, there’s a loud knock at the door.
Time’s up, and now I need to say…something. I don’t know what. But when I open my mouth to speak, I hear footsteps.
Heavy. Controlled.
Fading away.
Chapter 16
The walls are closing in on me as I stare at the doctor while she explains how close I came to losing my mother yesterday. Dr. Reynolds is doing her best to explain Mom’s current condition in plain language, but none of the words are penetrating my foggy brain. I’m still stuck on the first sentence she said when we stepped out of the hospital room, leaving Mom to rest.
She is running out of time. Without the transplant, your mom may not survive another heart attack.
I clutch the mountain of papers—copies of waivers, release forms, and the healthcare proxy Mom signed, appointing me as her authorized agent to make medical decisions in the event she becomes incapacitated. Now that she’s been admitted to a hospital, and after the scare we went through a few weeks ago and over the past twenty-four hours, this was an absolute must. But if there is a silver lining in this nightmare, it’s that Mom has finally agreed to be evaluated by the transplant team and, if she’s deemed a candidate, added to the heart transplant waitlist. Not every person can hold steady when facing their own mortality. I don’t think any less of her for that. I’m actually hugely relieved that she hasn’t lost her fight entirely. That I won’t have to watch my mom die, unable to do anything else to help her.
Her decision, of course, doesn’t guarantee that a match will be found or that it will be located in time. Nor does it take into account our ability to afford the procedure or all the carebefore and after. However, now I have the power to work with the financial transplant coordinator on Mom’s behalf. And I’ll do everything I can to secure funding so Mom can be officially listed.
In a moment of weakness, I’ve come up with the idea of throwing myself at Ms. Zara’s mercy as soon as I see her on Monday. Maybe she’ll be willing to give me a loan. I’ll work for the Spadas for the rest of my life, if I have to, to pay it off. And pay it off I will. She knows she can trust me. And I hope Don Spada will agree.
Then, I’ll just need to find a way to earn enough to repay the debt. And there’s just one way I can think to make that happen. I already rescinded my earlier cancellation to work at the Annex tonight. Something I didn’t think would happen when we rushed Mom to the hospital yesterday.
I’m dragging my feet as I head out of the hospital to my waiting Uber. After spending all day and all night with Mom in the ER, I only have a few short hours before I need to be ready for an evening of entertaining my silent guest. Might not be as easy as it usually is, considering I don’t remember the last time I slept. Maybe I could squeeze in an hour or two of rest before heading out to the Annex, but with everything weighing on my mind, I’m not sure I could sleep.
The driver has the radio tuned to a local station that’s recapping the news. The volume is too loud, but as exhausted as I am, I can’t manage to care. My eyelids are too heavy to keep open while the announcer reports no new leads on the grisly murder of a local entrepreneur near a Beacon Hill dog park almost a week ago. The man was beaten to death, and his hand was cut off and pinned to a nearby tree.
Goose bumps break out all over my arms as the radio host speculates about who might be responsible. A gang hit. A crime of passion. The chatter makes me wonder ifla Famigliacould have been involved. Chopping off fingers is fairly common practice when it comes to certain offenses in the Mafia, but the whole hand… That’s not something you hear about every day. It’s a consequence that would probably be reserved for a majorly insolent act.
What in the world had that man done to not only be beaten to death, but to have his hand cut off, too?
I shake my head and take a deep breath, hoping it will calm my nerves. It doesn’t really work. I’ve been on edge ever since I got off the phone with Maggie.
Because I asked to wear a red dress tonight.
I slide into the back of the car and turn on my phone. The surprise, “short” dinner meeting with the delegates of a South American conglomerate that has been actively courting Ruffo Enterprises turned into a three-hour-long ass-kissing session. Their figurative lips must be raw from puckering up, but I couldn’t get out of it until I secured their international contracts—the one thing they were not willing to part with. Now I need to deal with a list of missed calls that’s a mile long, with the most recent being from Brahms.
“We finally located Mr. Zambowe, sir.” Brahms’s voice comes through the speaker of my phone. “He’s been living large on a moored yacht in the Bahamas since a week before he was tomeet you at the gala in New York. According to my sources, the guy has been as high as a kite every day, and doesn’t even recall how he got there. Keeps mumbling about receiving an invitation, and then…nothing else makes sense.”
