Page 142

"Where is he?" I pull back and grip his sleeves. "Where's Valentino? Nobody will tell me anything. I've asked everyone. I asked a janitor, Dante."

"Next room." He watches my face when he says it. "The doctors are with him. They hurt him badly enough that he needs them."

Badly enough.

My stomach drops.

"But he's alive." My fingers dig into his arm hard enough to wrinkle the suit. Under normal circumstances, that would be a capital offense. "Right? He's alive?"

Dante nods once.

I'm already sitting, but somehow my legs still give out. I fold forward on the edge of the bed, one hand clamped over my mouth.

Alive.

One call away.

Breathing on the other side of painted drywall while doctors put back whatever Enzo tried to take from him.

Alive, and I still can't get to him.

Dante reaches into his jacket and hands me a phone.

"Call whoever you need," he says. "I have to speak with the police and our lawyer." He says police like an inconvenience and lawyer like a weapon. His mouth tilts a quarter inch. "Don't escape. The man outside the door is nervous."

"He should be." Something warms in his eyes, barely there, before he leaves.

I dial the number I've known by heart since college. It rings once.

"Hello?"

"Vee."

The sound Vittoria makes breaks me open. She's crying before I finish the syllable, raw and breathless, the kind of crying I've heard from her maybe twice in fifteen years.

"You're okay," she keeps saying. "You're okay. Tell me you're okay."

"I'm okay. I'm in a hospital bed wearing a gown that doesn't close in the back, so my dignity is in critical condition, but I'm okay." My voice wobbles. I push through it. "You should see the bruise on my head, though. Spectacular. I can't even post it. Instagram would ban me on sight. Violence guidelines."

She laughs.

It comes out soggy and surprised, and then I'm laughing too. Both of us laugh-crying into the phone like idiots, and it's the best sound I've heard in days.

A deep voice says something behind her, low and accented.

"Is she all right?"

"Tell Dmitri I'm fine," I say. "Also tell him when I get home, I need a full week with you. Alone. No husband. He can patrol the perimeter or whatever it is he does."

Vittoria relays this. There's a pause, then Dmitri's voice comes closer to the phone.

"I'll think about it."

"He'll think about it," Vittoria says.

Then her voice changes. Softer. Lower. The voice she saves for me when there is no audience.

"Amanda. Are you okay okay?"