Sweetest Sorrow (Forbidden Book 2) (8 page)

She got it, though, as much as she hated it. Being them almost got them killed. They couldn't risk it.

"Well, then, Matthew." She scowled as she said that name. "Since the water is working, I'm totally going to take a bath."

"It'll be cold," he warned, "until the hot water heater gets fixed."

"Pfft, as hot as it is in this place? It'll barely be room temperature."

"Whatever you say." He kissed her forehead before stepping away. "You enjoy your bath while I find a store. You need anything else while I'm out?"

"Cake."

He cut his eyes at her. "Cake?"

"Yeah, chocolate cake with strawberry icing."

"Chocolate cake with strawberry icing."

"Yeah, and like… sprinkles on it. I love sprinkles. Oh, some chocolate sprinkles. A fuckton of them."

He ran his hands down his face. "Chocolate sprinkles."

"Some kind of ice cream would be nice, too, to go with it, if you love me."

"If I love you," he muttered, walking out before she could say anything else. She laughed to herself, stepping out of the room behind him, watching as he disappeared downstairs. Genna waited until he was gone, until the car started up outside, before she made her way to the bathroom.

She almost hadn't believed him.

It felt too good to be true.

But the moment she turned the squeaky knob and water shot out of the faucet into the bathtub, Genna let out an excited squeal. It filled as Genna stripped out of her dingy clothes, discarding them on the floor. She stepped into the water, yelping as the bitter cold nipped at her skin. She didn't hesitate, her teeth chattering as she sunk down into it. It would warm up quick enough. There was
no way
she was waiting.

No soap. No washcloth. Hell, she hadn't even sought out a towel. But that mattered not to Genna. It was the best goddamn bath she'd ever taken in her almost nineteen years on Earth. The water soothed her achy muscles, washing the grime from her skin. She lay in silence, staring up at the ceiling, as the water warmed.

"It's going to be okay," she whispered.

For the first time since leaving New York, she actually believed it.

It's going to be okay
.

* * *

A
n old Lincoln Continental
.

1963? 1964?

Genna wasn't sure about the year, but the car was recognizable. Even broken down, the black paint faded and chipped, part of the body rusted out, she knew what it was as soon as she spotted it.

It was parked behind the house, visible through the living room window. The car had been through hell and back, ransacked just like the house, but still, she found it beautiful. The thing had charm.

Opening the back door, Genna stepped out into the hot summer afternoon, grimacing as the dry heat slapped her. Matty looked up when he heard her, smiling from where he was hunkered down beside the archaic air conditioning system, still trying to get it running. Probably a lost cause, but she said nothing, letting him do whatever he needed to do, whatever would make him feel better.

After all, it wasn't always about the ending. Sometimes it was more about what you did to get there.

She returned his smile as she stepped over to the car, surveying it. She ran her hand along the beat up front end, stepping around the driver's side as she glanced in. The vinyl seats were cracked, but otherwise, the interior appeared in decent shape.

"I wonder what happened to the people who lived here," she said. "They left a lot of stuff behind."

"So did we," Matty pointed out.

"We were running."

"Maybe they ran, too."

"Maybe," she said. "Do you think they'll ever come back for any of it?"

"I doubt it," he said. "Are we ever going back for our stuff?"

"We have no reason to go back. There's nothing there for us."

"Then what makes you think there's something here for them?"

"I didn't mean there was. I was just wondering if they still wanted any of it."

"Why?"

"Because I kind of want to keep this car for myself."

Matty laughed, setting down a wrench and plopping his ass down in the hard dirt, stretching his legs out. He was filthy, drenched in sweat. "Whether or not the owner wants it has always been irrelevant to you, hasn't it?"

"Funny."

"If they wanted the car, Genna, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be rusting out behind an abandoned house in the desert. But I don't really see what use it is to you. It doesn't run."

"I could fix it."

"Do you know how to fix it?"

"Not really, but I could learn."

"Is that smart? Fixing up a car in your condition?"

"Don't." She pointed at him. "I swear to God, I will suffocate you in your sleep if you pull that delicate pregnant woman bullshit on me one more time. I'm fully capable of doing stuff."

Matty shoved up from the ground, wiping his dirty hands on his pants, but it did little to clean them. Stepping over to her, she reached up, cupping her chin, smearing dirt along her jawline. "I know you're capable. I'm just saying…"

"You're saying blah blah blah sexist Barsanti shit, but I'm not going to listen to it. My father treated me like a fragile ice sculpture my entire life. Everyone acted like I was breakable, but I'm not. I'm not going to break. I don't need coddled. Don't
coddle
me."

"I promise not to coddle you," Matty said, pressing a chaste kiss to her lips. "Unfortunately, I think this air conditioner is fucked… unless you want to give fixing it a try?"

She scowled at him.
Smartass
. "I could've told you that. You need, like, a serious repairman."

"It probably needs an entirely new system. We'll have to make do. Maybe get some fans. Make it tolerable until I figure it out."

Tolerable seemed to be the name of the game. Genna glanced back at the house, studying the dirty outside. "How long are we going to be here?"

"Until we have somewhere else to go."

"And if we never have anywhere else to go?"

"Then we stay right here."

"So we've got an open invitation? The place is ours for as long as we want it?"

"Something like that." He eyed her. "Why?"

"I was just thinking, you know... maybe we should fix it up, too."

"The house?"

"If we're going to be living in it for who the hell knows how long, we should at least make it livable... a step up from tolerable."

He gazed at her, smiling. "Two months pregnant and you're already nesting."

"I'm what?"

"Nesting," he said. "Like how a mother bird builds a nest to lay her eggs in… when a woman's having a baby, she gets the instinct to make sure a place is all together for the baby to come home."

"Are you...?" She gaped at him. "Did you seriously just compare me to a bird?"

He laughed. "It's a real thing mothers do."

"How do you know?"

He leaned toward her for another kiss. "Because I know everything."

Groaning, Genna shoved away from him as she rolled her eyes. "I'll probably learn to tolerate this house of horrors before I tolerate that ego of yours."

"You love me."

"I do," she said. "But that doesn't mean I like you."

"Oh, but you do. You like everything about me. That Galante stubbornness just won't let you admit it." Smirking, he stepped past her. "I'm going to go take a shower now."

"I hope you freeze your balls off."

He laughed as he opened the back door. "Love you, too, Princess. Don't you ever forget it."

She watched him as he strolled into the house, trailing dirt with him. After he was gone, she turned back to the car, nodding to herself as she admired it.

Yep, totally fucking fixing it
.

T
he hospital
inevitably evicted Dante from the ICU.

He was put into another room, on another floor, in another ward. A private deluxe suite, they'd called it. It was the size of a fucking closet. His medicine decreased and the catheter was removed as they called in a physical therapist and let him move around on his own.

But still, he didn't speak.

He had nothing to say.

The doctors seldom showed their faces, the psychiatrist wrote him off, and the nurses? Well, leaving the ICU also meant leaving Nurse Russo.

His nurse on the general medical ward resisted looking at him, much less engaging in conversation. He preferred it that way. He was grateful. It gave him time to stew without interruption.

But still, he had to admit he missed Nurse Russo.

He kept replaying the moment she'd kicked his father out of the room, the look of determination on her face when she demanded he leave. Worked, too, because he hadn't returned as far as Dante knew. He'd had no more visitors. He was sure his father would be keeping tabs, like always, but he hadn't shown his face.

Dante wasn't sure how to feel about that.

A few times he considered calling him, ready to ask his questions, ready to hear the answers he feared, but every time he stopped himself for some reason.

Maybe he liked living with his head in the clouds. Maybe he liked the false sense of hope.

He couldn't shake it.

The hope had settled in his bones. Every second of every minute of every hour, a part of him refused to accept that something had happened to Genna.

Sitting up in the bed, Dante leaned over the side of it, his head down and hands covering his face, when a light rapt of knuckles echoed through the room from the door. Dante's heart did its bullshit hesitation as the hope flared. He raised his head, seeing the last person he expected to see.

Gavin Amaro.

Even Genna showing up wouldn't have surprised Dante as much.

"Man," Gavin said. "You look like shit."

Dante laughed dryly, the motion hurting his ribs. He clutched his side, grimacing. "Yeah, well, you should see the other guys."

"I have," Gavin said, taking a step into the room. "They look like they normally do."

"Exactly." Dante motioned toward himself. "All of
this
will heal, but there's no helping those assholes."

Gavin smirked, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned against the wall not far from the bed. He eyed Dante in silence, studying him for so long that it got under Dante's skin. While Dante wouldn't have called the two of them
close
, they got along well enough, more than he got along with most people.

A miracle, considering Gavin was as related to
them
as it got without being pure blood.

"Why are you here?" Dante asked quietly.

"Heard a rumor you were alive," Gavin said. "Couldn't believe it. Had to see it with my own eyes."

"Well, here I am. Nobody's killed me yet."

"Yet," Gavin repeated.

Dante nodded. "Yet."

"I'm glad," Gavin said.

"You? Glad I'm not dead?"

"If you can believe it."

"I don't know if I can," Dante said. "Never really took you for a sentimental bitch."

Gavin laughed at that, his laughter loud and infectious. "That's me. Sentimental bitch."

"Don't know why I'm surprised, considering I heard you had a kitten. That true?"

Gavin shrugged. "It's more of a cat now."

"That's just one step away from a fucking Chihuahua in a purse."

Again, Gavin laughed. "You don't know what you're talking about. Vito Corleone had a cat."

"No, he didn't. Marlon Brando picked up a stray cat on the set of
The Godfather
and it turned up in the movie. There's a difference."

"Brando was a cool guy."

"Brando was the kind of guy who would carry a Chihuahua in a purse."

"He was not."

"Dude had a pet raccoon. Who does that?"

"An artistic genius?"

"A sentimental bitch."

Another laugh, but no argument about that. Silence again overtook the room. Dante picked at his fingernails, finally clean from incessant showering, as Gavin's gaze bounced around at the horrendous flower garden that had popped up in the hospital room. He had something more to say. Dante sensed it. The unspoken words were so suffocating Dante damn near choked on the insinuations.

"You don't need to pity me," Dante said. "I don't want your pity."

"It's not pity."

"Then what is it?"

"Sympathy."

"You know, if you pick up a thesaurus, those words are synonyms."

Gavin sighed. "Yeah, well, it is what it is."

"And what exactly is it?"

Dante looked at Gavin, raising his eyebrows. Gavin stared back at him in silence before his expression softened, his lips tilting down into a slight frown. It was obvious he understood it then, that Dante didn't know specifics.

"It went down in Little Italy" Gavin said quietly. "Another car bomb."

Dante's stomach dropped. He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, pain tightening his chest. Fucking car bombs. Even to that day, he sensed the violent tremble of the ground, felt the flames lapping at his skin as he inhaled the suffocating smoke. It was a moment he'd never forget. It was something he wouldn't have wished on anyone. "Genna's BMW?"

Kidnapping him hadn't been enough. They had to attack his sister on top of it, the only innocent one out of them all.

"Oh… no," Gavin said. "Matty's Lotus."

Son of a bitch.

Dante's eyes opened. "Barsanti blew up his own kid?"

"No," Gavin said, hesitating before adding, "It wasn't him."

Maybe the medication was leaving a haze over Dante's brain, because it took a full minute for him to grasp the true meaning of Gavin's words. If a bomb had been planted in the Lotus, chances were someone else would've been responsible.

Someone else, being the Galantes.

Someone else, being Dante's family.

"No." Dante shook his head as he clenched his hands into fists.
No
. It didn't make any sense. "My father wouldn't have done it. He loves his kids. He does. He loves us."

"She wasn't supposed to be there," Gavin explained. "And she wasn't... at first. She showed up right before the car blew up. Guess she found out what was happening and wanted to stop it."

"How do you know?"

Gavin didn't answer, but he didn't have to. Dante saw the agony in his steel-colored eyes. It was the look of helpless remorse... the look of someone who had witnessed the kind of devastation that only something like a car bomb could cause.

Sighing, Dante's gaze flickered to the ceiling as his eyes started to burn.
Don't fucking cry. Don't cry in front of him. Don't cry in front of anybody. Don't fucking do it
. "This is my fault."

"You can't blame yourself."

"The hell if I can't. I should've been there. I should've done more to protect her. She shouldn't have been left alone to fend for herself."

"She wasn't alone," Gavin said. "She had Matty."

"And a lot of good
that
did her."

"He tried. After you… you know… Matty did everything he could for her. He wanted to get her out. Wanted to get her away from it all." Gavin paused, like he was considering what to say next, and finished with a whisper. "They were planning to make a run for it, before the car went…"

Boom
.

Once silence took over again, Gavin pushed away from the wall. "I should get going. If you need anything, look me up."

"I'll keep that in mind."

Gavin nodded, turning to leave. "And I meant it, you know... I'm glad you're not dead."

Dante waited until Gavin was gone before muttering, "Me, too, man. Me, too."

* * *

G
abriella stood
in the doorway of the cramped hospital room down on the general medical floor. Seven in the morning and her shift up in the ICU just ended. Two new patients had come in, one of which occupied the recently vacated bed in room twenty-two. More often than not, when patients left, it was because they lost their fight. But sometimes,
happy endings
happened, landing them on this floor on their way out the door, their last stop before being released back out into the wild.

She seldom saw people again once they made it there.

She tried to separate herself from her work.

But sometimes, she couldn't help it.

Sometimes, she had a hard time letting go.

Dante lay propped up in the small bed, his arm draped over his eyes. He'd gained a few pounds since she first laid eyes on him, but the hospital gown was still too big for his body, loose around the neckline, exposing some of the scars on his chest. The lighting was dim, even the television off, but the room still managed to feel lively, courtesy of the vast array of flower arrangements and balloons shoved in the corners and along the counters.

Those things weren't allowed up in the ICU.

"So, I heard you're really digging the red Jell-O… true?"

Dante's arm shifted, resting across his forehead, as his eyes drifted toward her in the doorway. "False."

"Oh, well, that sucks," she said, stepping into the room as she pulled the container of Jell-O from behind her back, along with a flimsy plastic spoon. "Because I happened to have some with me, but I guess since you don't like it..."

He held his hand out. "Give it to me."

"But I thought—"

"Hand it over," he said, "and nobody gets hurt."

Laughing, she approached, handing him the Jell-O. Shifting in the bed to sit up, he tore the foil top off of the plastic container and took a bite.

He wasn't eating. Gabriella had heard the complaints, the frustrated whispers passed along between nurses, ones that violated a dozen hospital rules (and even a few laws, for that matter). An intolerable patient. Uncooperative. Bad-mannered. A full-blown
a-hole
, quite frankly. He accepted nothing anybody offered and he certainly wouldn't thank you for anything forced upon him. A nurse's
nightmare
. The only thing he seemed to touch was the red Jell-O off of his food tray.

"You know, you can't live off of that alone. No fat, no carbs, no cholesterol, no vitamins… just mostly a crap-ton of sugar."

He nodded, continuing to eat it. "You moonlighting as a dietician now?"

"Maybe," she said, "or maybe I'm just concerned about why you're not eating."

"Ah, moonlighting as a
shrink
." He motioned toward the door with his spoon. "They make you come talk to me?"

"Nobody made me do anything. I shouldn't even be here. It's kind of a gray area, morally."

"I'm a gray area, huh?"

"Basically."

"That's good to know."

"They'll tube you again," she said, sitting down in the stiff cloth chair near the bed. "If you don't get enough nutrition, if you keep refusing to eat, they'll revert back to a feeding tube."

"And if I refuse that?"

"Then you'll be refusing medical care and there won't be much else they can do for you."

"That's also good to know."

She watched him as he ate the Jell-O. The container was nearly empty, the spoon scraping the bottom of it, when he said, "It doesn't taste right."

"The Jell-O?"

"Everything else," he said. "It all tastes like shit."

"It's not uncommon for your taste buds to have changed," she explained. "It's just temporary."

"I don't like it."

She wasn't surprised. He didn't seem to like most things. He'd been complaining since he woke up.

"Maybe someone can bring you something from outside," she suggested. "Like a family member or a friend or a girlfriend…"

He finished the rest of the Jell-O, tossing the empty container onto the small table between them but keeping the spoon to chew on. "You took care of me for weeks. Did you ever
once
see any of those around?"

"Your father."

"I'd rather starve."

"They said you had a visitor last night."

"I'm not asking him for anything."

"There's no one else you can call?"

"Depends. You offering to give me your phone number?"

"I, uh..." Crap, was he
flirting
with her? "No."

"Then no," he said. "No one."

She found that hard to believe, knowing what she did. Maybe visitors had been scarce, but
somebody
out there was thinking about him. Reaching over onto the table, she plucked the small card from a massive bouquet of lilies. "Do you like flowers?"

"Fucking
hate
them," he muttered, lying back in the bed again.

Gabriella read the card.

Huh
. Sticking it back in the bouquet, she moved on to the next one, and the next one, and the next one, finding the same general message written on each, amounting to '
good for you for not dying
' from an Italian dude with a newsworthy last name. She should've minded her own business. Heck, she shouldn't even haven been in his hospital room. But curiosity got the best of her, and he didn't object to her nosiness, his gaze trailing her as she explored.