“Take as much time as you need,” she says with a smile that doesn’t do a damn thing to comfort me.
A sob catches in my throat as I walk over to my father’s bedside. I’ve never thought of Francesco DiMicheli as small. He’s always been larger than life… so engaging and gregarious. With a look, he could command rooms, men, and an entire empire. He’s the kind of man who walks into a restaurant and gets the best table without asking. The kind of man people cross the street to avoid or cross the room to impress, depending on which side of his world they live on.
But lying in this hospital bed, hooked up to machines that breathe for him and pump drugs into his veins and monitor every beat of his heart, he looks old, weak, and helpless.
It’s jarring. Seeing the façade cracking right in front of my eyes.
There’s a tube down his throat that connects to a ventilator. Wires snake out from his hospital gown, an IV stuck in his righthand. His torso is covered by thick, white bandages, hiding the damage underneath. The steady blip of the heart monitor is the only sound in the room besides my stilted breathing.
I pull a chair up next to the bed and take his hand. It’s cold. I lace my fingers with his, tears stinging the backs of my eyes.
“Hi, Dad.”
Nothing. Just the machines speaking for him.
“The doctors say you’re stable, which apparently is medical speak for ‘alive but we’re not making any promises.’ There’s still a bullet near your spine they couldn’t get to. Your vitals are holding, but nobody will tell me what that actually means long term.”
I pause for a second, my gaze dropping to our entwined fingers.
“So. A marriage contract.” I study his face, willing some reaction to my words, fluttering eyelids, quivering lips, anything. “You signed away my future to Eamon Molloy a year ago and didn’t think to mention it to me. Not at Sunday dinner. Not at Christmas. Not during any of the fifty-something phone calls where you asked about my company and told me you were proud of me.” My throat tightens. “But were you really? Proud of me? Or were you just keeping me busy until you needed to cash me in?”
The hisses and beeps are my only response.
I press my free hand to my forehead. “You know what the worst part is? I’m not even surprised. Not really. Because this is what you do, right? You make plans. You move pieces around a board. And the people who love you just have to deal with the fallout. We don’t get a say about how the game is played and who gets crushed in the process.”
I stare at my father for a long minute, anger knotting in my chest at the memory of Eamon’s smug demeanor when he approached us with that mask of concern firmly in place. As if I couldn’t see past his bullshit façade. He came in like a predator, pounced on his prey, chewed it up, and spit it out.
“Eamon Molloy is dangerous, Dad. I could see it in his eyes. He’s not offering us protection. He’s buying access. To our territory. Our connections. To me.” I grip his hand tighter. “And Zio Vinnie said we needed to consider it, that the danger is too great for us to ignore. He said if you signed it, it must have been what you wanted, that it’s the only thing to keep all of us safe and free from a takeover by the Russians. He’s nervous. Like Mom and Luna. Like everyone else will be when they hear about what happened.”
My voice drops.
“But is this really what you wanted for me?”
I give his hand a little squeeze.
“I need you to wake up. I need you to look me in the eye and tell me why. Because right now, the only explanation I can come up with is that you didn’t think I could handle the truth.” My eyes sting. I blink hard and swallow the gaggle of tears lodged in my throat. “And that hurts more than anything Eamon Molloy could ever do to me.”
I sit with him for a while after that, grasping his hand and listening to the machines.
When I finally stand up, I lean down and press my lips to his forehead.
“I’m going to figure this out. Whateverthisis. But when you wake up, you and I are going to have a very long conversation. And you’re not going to like it.”
I smooth a crease in his blanket near his shoulder and tuck it around him to keep him warm.
With my heart hanging low in my chest, I walk back to the waiting room. Luna is awake when I get back. She has a cup of what looks like vending machine coffee in her hand.
“How is he?”
“The same.” I drop onto the couch next to her. “Stable. Still in the coma.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“More like berated him.”
She almost smiles. Almost. “Good. He deserves it.”
We sit in silence for a minute. Luna picks at the rim of her Styrofoam cup, bits of it dropping down to the tile floor.
