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The doctor nodded and made a note of what I assumed was my name and walked away.
“Thank you,” I said to Roman.
He nodded and sat down. Defeat was the one word I would use to describe him in that moment.
“What about Franco?” Isabella asked.
“Stable”
“Of course. Of course he’s stable while his son is in there possibly dying.” I sank down into a chair, and Isabella wrapped her arms around me.
“Shh. Remember, you have to be strong. He needs you now more than ever.”
I nodded, wiping away tears and snot.
We sat in the waiting room for a long time. Isabella excused herself to make some calls, to make sure the sitter could stay with Effie longer, to check on Luke. Roman and I remained silent, lost in our own misery. All the while, my ankle throbbed.
“He should never have goaded Dominic like that. He’d sworn never to do it.”
I turned to Roman. “What are you talking about?” I hadn’t been in the room, not until it was almost the very end.
Roman glanced at me. “Franco isn’t Dominic’s father, but he loved my sister. Loved her enough to keep it hushed. To act like Dominic was his son all along. He had no right to tell him like this.”
“You’re worried about Dominic? He deserves to be the one in there, not Salvatore.”
He met my gaze. “No one should be in there. Period.”
“I may be a horrible person, but I don’t agree.”
He sighed. “You’re nowhere near a horrible person.”
He got up and left the room. I remained where I was. Isabella stayed with me until, almost four hours later, a doctor finally came out, looking for next of kin.
“That’s me,” I said, although it wasn’t quite me. “Lucia DeMarco.”
He checked his sheet of paper. Satisfied, he looked back at me. The space of that second stretched to an hour, and I dreamed the worst, thought I should prepare myself to hear it, but how did one prepare to hear something that terrible?
“Mr. Benedetti is an incredibly lucky man. And his will to live is tremendous.”
I smiled, feeling a thousand pounds lift from me. “He’s going to make it?”
“He shouldn’t have, not given the route the bullet took, but he is. He’s asking for you.”
“I can see him?”
“Only for a few minutes. He needs to rest. We’ll sedate him, but he’s insisting on seeing you first.”
“He’s pigheaded,” I said, wiping away fresh tears. I followed the doctor, a joy filling me that I’d never in my life felt before. Never knew possible.
I walked into the private room, where machines beeped and doctors and nurses worked around the bed where Salvatore lay, eyes closing, then opening, turning his head away from the nurse who tried to attach yet another tube.
“Salvatore!” I hobbled over to him and took the seat someone pushed behind me.
He opened his eyes and gave me a weak smile. He kept opening and closing his hand, and I placed mine inside it. He stilled then, lay back, and shut his eyes. I sat there and watched, not sure if he held my hand or I held his, not sure it mattered anymore. I watched him sleep, counted the needles in his arms, watched them inject something into the tube of one of the IVs.
“He will be out for a while. You can go home and get some rest. We’ll call you when he’s awake.”
“No,” I said, not taking my eyes off him. “I’m staying here.”
“Ma’am…”
I felt Salvatore’s tiny attempt at squeezing my hand and turned to the doctor. “I’m just as pigheaded, just so you know. I’m not leaving.”23SalvatoreI probably dreamed Lucia calling herself pigheaded, but it made me smile all the same. And every time I opened my eyes, there she was, sitting by my side. At first, she still had blood on her. My blood. Then she looked like she’d showered and changed. I saw Roman too, but she was my constant.
She’d remembered what I’d said. What I’d promised her. I vaguely recalled her voice, telling me I hadn’t yet kept the promise to give her the life she wanted.
I had changed rooms. I knew it from the way the light came in the window. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been in the hospital until finally, I opened my eyes, feeling a little less groggy, and the things around me didn’t seem so like a mirage.
Was it a mirage? Was Lucia a mirage?
“Hey.”
I looked up at her beautiful, smiling face. She still sat in the same place, holding my hand, watching me.
“Hey.” It felt strange to speak.
“How do you feel?”
“Like I’ve been run over by a truck.”
“Do you remember what happened?”
My mind traveled back to that morning. My father, Roman, Isabella, and I in my dining room. Dominic. Dominic with a gun. My father telling him he wasn’t his son. Calling our mother a whore.
