Sweetest Sorrow (Forbidden Book 2) (4 page)

"But—"

"You heard me," she said, jabbing him in the chest with her pointer finger. "We've done it your way, Matty, and that's cool, but I'm not useless. And I swear to God, if you don't stop treating me with kid gloves, I'm going to punch you so hard you see stars for a week. I mean it. I'm
not
fragile. If I were, I would've already shattered by now."

Matty stood there, stunned by her outburst. Maybe she wasn't fragile, but she wasn't indestructible either. As much as she tried to conceal it, there was vulnerability beneath her hard exterior. He had seen as much the night before when she cracked, pent-up grief and fear shining through.

But he believed she meant it… he didn't doubt that she would hit him if he didn't take a step back, if he didn't give her space. So as hard as it was, as much as he hated it, he waved her away. "Go on then, Princess."

Grinning, Genna reached up on her tiptoes and planted a quick peck on his lips before turning away. Matty let down the truck's tailgate and plopped down on it, watching her strut down the highway.

Thirty minutes.

She had half an hour before he went after her. Instinctively, he glanced at his wrist, groaning when he came up empty. He never replaced his watch after Genna hustled it from him in their game of pool. Sighing, he leaned back on his elbows, not yet letting her leave his line of sight, his chest aching more the further away she got.

Maybe he'd make it twenty minutes instead.

She disappeared from the highway, cutting through some trees back toward the houses. Matty drummed his fingers on the rusty truck bed, impatiently counting in his head. How long had it been? Five minutes… ten… maybe fifteen?

It felt like hours to him.

Jumping to his feet, he wiped the sweat from his face with his shirt as he walked away from the truck. He'd made it a few steps when an older-model black Honda Accord sped toward him, swerving off the side of the road and skidding to a stop in the grass in front of Matty. Alarmed, he took a step back, eyes wide when the driver's side door flung open and Genna popped out.

He gaped at her. "What the hell did you do?"

"Got us some help," she said, leaving the door open as she rounded the front and banged on the hood.

"You stole another car?"

She cut her eyes at him, amused. "Come on, you're not
really
surprised, are you? I mean, this is sort of what I do, isn't it?"

"Not surprised," he said, shaking his head. "More like impressed."

Genna stepped to him, fisting the front of his sweat-streaked plain white t-shirt as she smirked, pulling him down for another kiss. "Told you I wasn't useless."

Matty transferred their things to the backseat of the Honda before climbing behind the wheel. He took a quick stock of the car as Genna settled into the passenger seat, cold air blasting out of the vents in the dashboard. He scanned the interior, noticing a small screwdriver jammed into the ignition.

Leave it to Genna to consider thievery tools a
bare necessity
.

Shrugging it off, he put the car in gear and pulled out onto the highway, giving a quick glance at the broken down truck in the rearview mirror as he sped past it. "So a Honda, huh?"

"Yeah, you got a problem with that?"

"No." He let out a laugh at her defensive tone. "Why would I?"

She shrugged, relaxing back into the seat. "Some people do. But mid-90s Accords are probably the most commonly stolen cars. They're also one of the most
popular
cars. So that means there's a lot of them out there, and they go missing all the time, and well... it's easier to stay inconspicuous when you blend in."

"You put a lot of thought into that."

Genna turned to watch out the side window. "You might prefer to live in the moment, but I like having a plan. The easiest way to keep out of trouble is to always stay a few steps ahead."

* * *

T
hey drove
for about an hour until the gas light in the car lit up, flickering a dull orange, the needle hovering near empty. Matty pulled off the highway to the first store they came upon. Genna went inside, snatching a pack of Twizzlers from the candy aisle and tearing it open, gnawing on a rope of licorice as she strolled through the store. After fixing herself a cherry slushie, she grabbed a bag of cheese puffs and a honey bun before heading to the front. Matty stood by the register, paying for their gas, when Genna plopped her stuff down on the counter. He glanced at it, his eyes lingering on the open pack of licorice, and smiled as he pushed it toward the cashier. "All of this, too."

Glancing around, Genna's eyes drifted toward a rack of newspapers. She stepped that way, freezing when she caught sight of one. Right on the front page, big and bold, bore the headline:

Explosion Rocks Manhattan Neighborhood

She felt like she couldn't breathe when she saw the photo below it of the charred remains of Matty's gorgeous Lotus Evora.
So cruel
. Grabbing the newspaper, she stared at it, her hands trembling.

Front page of the fucking national news.

"That, too," Matty said behind her. "The newspaper."

Once their stuff was rung up, they collected it and headed out to the Honda. Genna's snacks were already forgotten, her abandoned slushie melting, as she fixated on the paper. After pumping gas, Matty climbed in the car, but he didn't drive away yet.

"What's it say?" he asked.

Genna scanned the article, struggling to absorb the words.

"It says you're presumed dead," she whispered. "They haven't found a body, obviously, but they're combing through the wreckage."

"What does it say about the explosion?"

"They suspect a mob hit. They, uh…" Genna faltered as she stumbled over the name
Joseph Galante
. "They compare it to the explosion that killed Joey, saying they haven't seen this level of violence in organized crime since that summer."

Matty said nothing else, starting the car up and pulling back onto the highway. Genna read the article twice more before discarding the newspaper in the backseat. She felt sick to her stomach and couldn't handle much more of it.
No more reading newspapers, ugh
.

"Did it mention you?" he asked after a while.

Genna shook her head as she grabbed another piece of licorice. "Not a single word about me."

What did they think happened to her? Was her father scouring the streets, searching for some sign, some way to bring her back home? Or did he simply write her off?

Neither would surprise Genna.

D
ante was dead
.

He was sure of it.

Death was a son of a bitch, but it came mercifully quick. There one second, gone the next. He'd been awake, and suffering, and then nothing.
Nothing
. It was almost like being put to sleep.

It had all been taken from him in a blink.

Yeah, Dante was dead.

But somehow, someway, he was still fucking breathing.

He inhaled sharply, but it was like sucking air through a straw. He was suffocating, drowning in the bitter darkness, while loud shrieks pierced his ears. Confusion clouded his thoughts. He couldn't see a damn thing. Fiery red splotches melding with pitch black, like blood drops in a void.

He couldn't get a grip. Nothing he did made a difference. His body no longer worked. He couldn't move a fucking muscle. His voice was lost.

Heaven wasn't meant for him.

He was in
Hell
.

But goddammit, some way, some how, his lungs kept inflating.

"You need to hold on, okay? Can you do that for me? Try to relax. We’ll get you through this."

The soft-spoken voice, serene and feminine, broke through the haze. It felt like déjà vu, like he'd heard it before. Like maybe this wasn't the first time he'd been told those words. Like maybe, somewhere, somehow, she'd already called to him. They washed through him until he could almost
feel
them, a strange sensation rushing through his comatose veins.

It took every ounce of strength he had to break through the darkness. Bright white light blasted him, blinding him, as he forced his eyes open. Blinking, his vision cleared just enough for him to make out a blurry face. It was just a flash of creamy skin, dark hair and dark eyes, but there was something kind about them, something kind about
her
. It was something that warmed him from the inside when a soft smile touched the corners of her pink lips.

He was looking at an angel.

He was sure of it.

The piercing shrieks continued, so loud he almost didn't hear it when she spoke to him again.

"That's it," she whispered. "Just keep holding on."

The bright light surrounded her like a halo.

She was an angel of mercy.

She'd almost rescued him from the pit.

The sight of her nearly brought him back to life, but the world faded black again, and he could do nothing to stop it.

Dead
.

Days. Months. Years. It still didn't matter. Dante had figured they would kill him, and he could've sworn they did. But that voice just kept calling to him, urging him to hold on, pulling him to the surface, again and again.

The first thing Dante saw, when regaining consciousness, was the face again.

That
face.

It was still blurry, and he struggled making everything out, but he saw her standing by his side. While her presence should've brought Dante relief, panic bubbled in his chest. He couldn't move.
Literally
. He inhaled sharply, shrieking shattering the air when he did. He tried to turn his head to see where the noise was coming from and caught a glimpse of his surroundings.

Wires and tubes ran from his body in all directions, hooked to machines all around the room. Alarms went off as a heart monitor raced, the obnoxious blaring and beeping grating his skin.

A hospital.

The worst Hell there is.

“Try to relax," she said as she reached over to quiet the machine. "You may not like it, but the ventilator's helping."

It took Dante a moment to understand. The ventilator. 

He might've still been dead, but now he realized he wasn't going to stop breathing... not as long as a machine did it for him.

It took some effort, but Dante managed to lift one of his arms as the woman tinkered with a machine beside him. He felt around on his face, his fingertips faintly grazing over bandages, before he found the piece sticking out of his mouth, the tube shoved down his throat. He wrapped a hand around it and pulled, panicking, and gagged when it started to budge. More alarms sounded, and the woman jumped into action, shouting for help. Others descended upon the room, crowding around him. It was a blink to him, flashes of people moving, as wooziness set in, a strange sensation rushing through his veins after a man shouted, “Sedate him!"

The woman appeared again then, looking down at him, another smile on her lips, but this one was different. This was a smile of sadness, not one of relief, as she shook her head, a peculiar twinkle in her dark eyes, like maybe he amused her. “What are we going to do with you, Mr. Galante?"

He tried to respond, his lips parting, but no sound came out. Not a breath. Not a whisper.
Nothing
.

“It's okay,” the woman said, leaning closer. “Whatever it is can wait."

Not long after those words registered, darkness crept in, swaddling Dante like a blanket. As the world faded black around him, all he could think was,
if I have to die, please… please… don't let it be alone in the dark again
.

He fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, drugs running through his system so intense that he felt not a damn thing. And when he awoke later, he couldn’t move.
Again
. This time, though, he couldn’t even raise his arm. He managed to cut his eyes to the side, unnerved, his gaze settling on his hand. Thick cloth bands secured him to the bed like handcuffs. He struggled against them, trying to pull away, but they were too strong, or maybe he was just too weak. Exhaustion crept in a minute later, and he just lay there, gaze flickering to the ceiling, feeling defeated. Helplessness wasn’t something Dante was accustomed to, and it wasn’t a feeling he liked. A fucking machine was doing most of his breathing. Could he even say he was alive if his lungs wouldn’t work without help?

The glass door across the room slid open. Dante didn’t bother to try to look. Whatever drugs flowed through his veins faded more and more as the seconds ticked away. He flexed his fingers, the tips of them tingling, but he did little else in the way of trying to move. With consciousness came pain, a dull ache echoing through him, growing stronger.

He preferred it, though… preferred it to the numbness.

Someone approached, pausing beside the bed. Dante noticed them from his peripheral but didn’t turn his head, instead closing his eyes to block out whoever it was.

“I know you’re awake.” Her voice was borderline playful, so close her words ghosted across his battered skin. “Your vitals give you away."

Dante opened his eyes again, his gaze meeting hers. His vision was clearer than it had been, clear enough to get a better look. She wore a pair of blue scrubs, a white badge clipped to the pocket. Try as he might, he couldn’t make out any of the words written on it.

Even in dim lighting, though, Dante could tell she was beautiful. She was young, probably fresh out of nursing school, with a smile he suspected lit up a room, even one his presence darkened. Exotic, maybe even Italian, the kind of girl he could've brought home without any objections. In another life, he might've pursued her. In another world, he could've seen himself with a girl like her.

But in reality, she was probably much too sweet, much too kind for her own good.

The only angel he was destined to know was the fallen one.

He looked away again and stared at the ceiling. How long was this going to last? He had no idea how much time had passed. He didn’t even know where he was. There were dozens of hospitals in the city. He could’ve been at any one of them. Last thing he remembered was a basement. How the hell had he gotten out of there? He couldn’t wrap his mind around it.

He should’ve been dead.

He
should
be dead.

Why wasn’t he?

“You’re the most strong-willed person I’ve ever encountered,” the woman said, pressing a few buttons on some machines beside him. “You’re just laying there, not in distress at all, not fighting the ventilator."

Without looking at her, Dante struggled against the restraints to make a point. There wasn’t shit he could do strapped down like a prisoner.

She laughed lightly. "Oh, no… I
know
you’d try to rip it out if your hands were free. You’ve done it a few times this past week."

Week.

He’d been there a week?

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” she continued. “Most patients, they find it excruciating. We have to keep them so sedated they’re comatose or else they choke on the ventilator. And I get it, you know… it’s uncomfortable. Unnatural. I understand why they fight. But you’re just lying there, silent and still, biding your time. I’ve never seen someone so stubbornly calm before."

Dante glanced at her again. Her curiosity seemed genuine, but any explanation he offered wouldn't be what she’d want to hear. The truth was something he knew someone like her couldn't handle... not without it altering her view of the world.

Some people were fueled by hope.

Others, like him, long ago realized there was no hope for the future. There was only the present until your luck ran out.

His was damn near a dry well at that point.

So he didn’t fight, he didn’t struggle, because death wasn’t something he feared. His last breath wasn’t something he’d dread. The time would come, sooner or later, when he’d close his eyes for the last time, never to open them again, but that didn’t leave him terrified of falling asleep. He’d accepted death at five years old, when his parents called in a priest to pray over him. Lying in a hospital bed not much different than the one he was in then, his chest ravished by fire, he silently prayed he’d die so he’d stop
burning
.

Since then, he’d just been waiting.

Waiting for that prayer to be answered.

Waiting for the fire to finally be put out.

Not that he looked forward to dying, because he didn’t. Some battles were just a lost cause. And if he had to die, he was going to die with some goddamn dignity, not crying like a bitch over a machine pumping air into his lungs.

A moment later, a doctor walked in, flipping through a chart as he approached the bed. Dante eyed him not nearly as kindly as he eyed the nurse. The doctor was a small man, wiry with thick-rimmed glasses and thin gray hair. He paused at the edge of the bed, not an ounce of compassion in his eyes and certainly none in his voice as he spoke. “Mr. Galante, I’m Dr. Crabtree, I’ve been taking care of you since you were brought in. We’ll be weaning you off of the ventilator soon. I’ll have the restraints removed as long as you’re cooperative, but we’ll have to reassess that if you act out. We won’t tolerate any of that roughneck behavior here. Do you understand? Nod if you do."

Dante just stared at the man. He'd raised his voice, like he was afraid he wouldn’t be heard. The condescending tone grated Dante's nerves. He figured a lack of reaction should be answer enough, but the doctor waited, eyebrows raised, like he expected some acknowledgement.

Dante nodded once.

Whatever it takes to get the hell out of this bed.

“Good, good…” Dr. Crabtree looked quite pleased with himself. “I'm glad you’re choosing to cooperate."

The doctor nodded toward the nurse, giving her permission to free him. She untied the restraints, getting rid of them. As soon as Dante was free, he reached up, feeling around on his face, fingertips grazing along the ventilator.

He almost did it.

He almost pulled the son of a bitch out just to spite the man.

The nurse shot him a look, though, that stopped him right away. It was a warning, daring him that he wouldn’t like what happened if he went through with it. Dante wasn’t one to take orders from just anybody, but he didn’t push it, not this time. Instead, he held his hand up, pressing his thumb and pointer finger together and wiggling them, making the motion like he was holding a pen. The doctor’s brow furrowed, terrible at
Charades
, but the nurse smiled.

“He wants something to write with,” she said. “I guess he has something to say."

Dr. Crabtree hesitated, like he was debating whether or not to allow that, but obliged. “Go ahead and get him something… something that isn’t sharp, you know, that he can’t hurt anyone with."

The nurse seemed a little put off by the request, her face twisting as if the insinuation was absurd. Dante would’ve laughed, well… if he
could’ve
. It was obvious the doctor knew who he was. She, on the other hand, probably had no idea what kind of man she was dealing with.

She returned with a yellow legal pad and a bright red crayon, looking like she’d taken it straight from a fresh pack. She held it up as she walked past the doctor. “This too pointy for you?"

The doctor glanced at it and seemed to consider it for a second. “That’ll be fine."

The moment the nurse turned, out of the doctor's line of sight, she rolled her eyes. Approaching the bed, she slipped the crayon into Dante’s hand, her fingertips brushing across his skin as she let go. She adjusted the bed, sitting him up a bit further, before holding the pad up to him so he could scribble on it. It took a hell of a lot more effort than he thought it would, the crayon slipping out of his hand, his grip weak, his fingers trembling, but he managed to spell out a single sloppy word.
When
.

“When?” the nurse read aloud.

“When, what?” the doctor asked, his face buried in a chart.

Reaching up, Dante again grasped the ventilator. Before he could do anything more, the nurse yanked his hand away.

“He wants to know when you’re going to wean him off the ventilator,” she said.

Dante cut his eyes at her.
Huh
. Intuitive.

“Soon,” the doctor said again.

Dante took the crayon and beat the tip of it against the paper, leaving sharp red marks all over the word ‘
when’
.

“He wants to know how soon,” the nurse said. “He wants a time-frame."

The doctor sighed dramatically. “Within the next twenty-four hours."

Dante glared at him. Not good enough.

He used the crayon and tried to write again, blindly scribbling on the pad, right over the first word he wrote. The nurse watched him, her eyes narrowed as she riddled it out. “No— concert? Constant? Concept? Consent?” Her eyes widened as she looked at him. "Oh, consent!"