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“That’s so much better,” I marvel, and Jimmy nods.
“Keep that bandage on unless you’re in the shower. No lifting, for at least a week,” he warns. “I’ll come back and check on you in a few days.”
“Jimmy,” I say, tears suddenly springing to my eyes. “I don’t know how to thank you—”
“Your husband will thank me with money,” he says gruffly, and picks up his bag, walking toward Nico.
Nico comes back into the living room.
“What can I do to help?” he asks, and I’m so grateful to him if I wasn’t married I would have kissed him.
“Help me get him upstairs,” I say. “We both need a bath.”
Nico nods. I pat Dante’s face softly, and then a bit harder.
He finally rouses, looking at me. “What happened?” he asks, his voice slurred and hoarse.
“You got stitched up. You did good, baby,” I say, my voice choked with tears.
Nico tugs him up by his good arm and puts himself under his good shoulder, walking him up the stairs. Dante cries out a couple of times when he has to brace himself on the banister, but we very slowly make it to the bedroom.
“I need to rest here,” Dante says. “Fuck the bath.”
I giggle almost hysterically at his words and sit down hard next to him on the bed.
Nico exits the room quietly, as if he were never there at all.
Dante looks at me, his eyes glassy still from the booze and the medication, not to mention the shock.
“Are you okay, pretty girl?”
The way he’s asking about me when he’s the one who’s hurt warms my heart. “I’m fine, Dante,” I assure him.
“Your face,” he says, cupping it with his right hand, his good hand. “They hit you.”
His voice sounds mournful instead of angry.
“Yeah, a couple of times. I kicked one of them in the nuts,” I say, smiling a little.
“Atta girl,” he says with a weak smile. “I feel like shit,” he admits.
“You lost a lot of blood.”
Dante looks down at himself as if for the first time. His bare chest is stained with blood and it’s pooled in his bellybutton, drying there. “Shit. I guess I did.”
I smile a little at that.
“Let me help you get cleaned up,” I say, and he doesn’t complain as I undress him, starting with his boots and slacks and then tugging down his boxer briefs.
I need a shower, too, but I’ll handle that after Dante is all cleaned up. I hate having the stink of the Gallos’ warehouse on me, the way that man had hit me. I keep reminding myself that he’s dead, shot in the throat. I’d seen him as I walked out, him and the nicer guy, too.
“Gallo did this,” Dante says suddenly, and my eyes dart to his.
“We don’t know that,” I say slowly.
Dante stares at me intensely. “Tell me what you do know, Mia.”
I swallow. I don’t want him to go off half-coked, going after Vincenzo. If he goes after him injured, then Vincenzo will have the upper hand.
