I have to turn my head to see the couch and the one person sitting there.
For a split second, with the shadows and the lighting and the world being so narrow, I think it’s my father.
I blink, and the hazy image resolves itself. It can’t be Dad. His hair was more gray than that, and he’d never be caught dead wearing sandals.
Sandals, in winter?
The person is on his phone, not paying any attention to me. I look away, to the other side of the bed that was completely dark, and spot the tray with the water bottle on it. I reach for it, but that takes so much effort that my hand lands on the tray with a hard thud.
The noise alerts the person on the couch. He puts his phone away and gets up, walking over to me, and picks up the water bottle.
“I thought you’d be asleep for longer,” he says.
I know him. I know I do, but the name is slipping through my brain right now, like all the images of the world around me.
“Who?” I ask.
His eyes widen. “Wait. Are you going to pull an amnesia on me? Sorry, Sir, I don’t remember my own name!”
I shake my head. “I know. Blaze Bouchard. I was with…”
Pandora.
I sit up, clutching the side of the bed. “Where’s Pandora? Is she okay?”
The man takes a sip of the water and rolls his eyes. “Okay, you are not getting points with me just for being worried about her.” He sets the water bottle down on my lap. A few drops spill from the straw onto the sheet.
Points?
Realization flashes through me.
Giulio Pavone.
I’m alone in a hospital room with Giulio Pavone.
I swallow hard and reach for the bottle. It takes me a few times to grab it, because my hands don’t go where I want them to. “Is she all right? I remember… we were in the explosion. We were about to be freed, I think? I heard Asch and River. But I don’t remember anything else.”
Giulio pulls one of the chairs closer to my hospital bed and rests his arm on the bed railing. He stares me in the eyes, and something is off, but I still don’t know what.
After a few seconds, Giulio nods. “Yeah. She’s alive, and in one piece. According to Damien, and I think I can trust him.” He taps the bed railing. “I should kill you here. I’m pretty sure I gave you a shovel talk about how I would destroy you if anything ever happened to her.”
Maybe it’s the painkillers that keep me from panicking.
“You just said she’s all right,” I point out.
Giulio bursts out laughing. “Fuck. I hate that I can see what she sees in you, Baby Bouchard. You’re fucking ballsy.”
I don’t think any of this situation is funny at all, and I’m not sure I want Giulio to knowwhat she sees in me, but if it keeps him from stabbing me in the hospital bed, I’ll take it.
“Where is everyone?” I ask. “Why are you here?”
He grins at me. “I just told you. I’m here to maybe kill you. And everybody else got sent home. I saw your buddy Asch beg to be allowed to stay, but they’re busy with the triage from the fucking explosion you caused. Also, the cops started sniffing around, and River wisely pulled Asch away.”
Cops. Fuck.
With my dad dead, I won’t have half the sway I had before. Anyone who was there might be able to pull strings too. We still have all the data we stole from them, but this won’t go away that easily.
“How fucked are we?” I ask Giulio. “In the event you don’t murder me.”
