Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
Nova
The minute our flight lands and we’re back at the compound, I jump in my car to head to the hospital to check on my father. I’ve heard that he’s awake, out of the coma, but still being kept a few more days while he recovers.
“Wait up,” Ashton says, chasing after me.
I raise an eyebrow as I unlock the passenger door.
He climbs in beside me, and I hit the gas long before he has time to buckle his seatbelt.
I’m in a hurry.
He clicks his seatbelt and adjusts his seat to get comfortable. “Slow down, speed demon,” Ashton jokes, but I’m not laughing.
It’s been a hellacious day. At least Harper is okay, but Rhys—just the mere thought of him running into that building and my eyes burn all over again.
“Your dad’s awake. He’s fine, slow down so we don’t end up in a bed beside him or a coffin,” he mutters.
“That’s not funny!” I glare at him, turning my attention briefly away from the road.
“Stop!” Ashton screams as I nearly plow through an intersection, missing the stop sign.
I slam on the brakes, my heart pounding haphazardly in my chest as I gasp for breath. “Shit,” I grumble, realizing my mistake. Thankfully, no one got hurt, but it could have been another disaster.
One is enough for today.
“How about I drive?” Ashton offers and I scoff at his suggestion.
“No thanks.”
I don’t need him driving. I know how to get to the hospital, and I keep both hands on the steering wheel and avoid glancing at Ashton.
He’s too big of a distraction that I don’t need.
His silence is strangely comforting, and I concentrate on the road and traffic until we finally pull up at the hospital parking garage.
We head inside the hospital to the visitor’s center, receiving a sticker badge that I affix to my shirt. Ashton does the same and then his hand falls to the small of my back as we follow the maze of hallways to the elevator.
His gesture sends a flutter through my body and I regrettably pull away, tapping the button for the elevator repeatedly.
“It won’t come any faster when you do that.” His voice is light, carefree, without a worry in the world.
Probably because I’m the one shouldering all of it.
I bite my tongue, and when the elevator dings, I exhale a breath and hurry inside, pressing the button for the eighth floor.
Ashton is right at my side, this time keeping his hands to himself. He slides them into his pockets, glancing around awkwardly as we stand in silence.
The doors close and the ride up is anything but short or quiet.
Ashton hums and I raise an eyebrow, glancing in his direction.
I don’t know what tune is going through his head or if he’s making it up entirely. He keeps humming as I glare at him and he seems to ignore my irritability, like it doesn’t exist.
The elevator dings as we reach the eighth floor and I step out first, glancing at the placard in the hallway to determine where I go from here to find my father’s room.
It takes a second and then I make a right, another placard, another hallway. This time, I turn left and follow it until I get near the end of the hallway, across from the nurse’s station. The door is closed and Halsey, dad’s cousin, stands outside, playing bodyguard.
Halsey wordlessly nods for me to enter.
Even if he told me not to, there isn’t much he could do to stop me. I’d throw my security dog, Ashton, at him.
I inwardly snicker at the mental image of Hasley and Ashton fighting and brush it aside as I open the hospital room door, stepping inside.
Dad is hooked up to monitors, machines, they’re constantly buzzing and beeping, the sound and bright, stark halogen lights overwhelming.
Mom, surprisingly, isn’t at his bedside. I didn’t stick around long enough at the compound to see if she was home.
“Hey, you’re awake,” I say, stating the obvious. His head is bandaged with gauze wrapped around his forehead. The blood cleaned and gone from the shooting, but the evidence still staring right back at me.
Dad breathes a sigh of relief when he sees me and pushes the button on the bed to sit up farther. “Come in.” He waves me into the room.
Ashton is on my heels, right behind me, holding the door when I let go and stalk around to the opposite side of the hospital bed, taking a seat in the nearby vacant chair.
“It’s good to see you, sir. You’re looking much better,” Ashton says.
Dad almost gives a smile, more of a half-smirk, and glances from Ashton to me. “I hear you both went to Las Vegas. I swear if you got married—” There’s a tone in his voice that shows both concern and is laced with something else.
Anger?
I’m unsure. It makes my stomach flop.
He doesn’t know about the breakup.
“We didn’t,” Ashton says, quick to settle any confusion. “We went with the others to rescue Harper. Do you remember her abduction?”
Dad shakes his head no and winces. “I saw it on the television this morning. Is she—all right?”
“She’s fine,” I say, and my voice catches in my throat as I reach for Dad’s hand. He’s the only one who might understand what I’m feeling. “Rhys went with us…” my voice trails off.
The air heavy, my breath hitches.
“He didn’t make it,” Ashton says, saying the words that I can’t seem to voice aloud.
Dad nods, his brow furrowed, and his nose crinkles slightly at his obvious discomfort. “That’s unfortunate. Rhys was a good man. Always looked out for my baby girl.” He gestures for me to approach the bed, and I’m hesitant, if only because I don’t want to hurt him.
Biting my bottom lip, I move from the chair and embrace my father in a hug, feeling the tears spill quickly from the surface, the pain pouring out of me like a waterfall as I try to hold it back.
“He died protecting the family. An honorable and noble death,” Dad says, as if that makes Rhys’s departure any easier.
It doesn’t, at least not for me.
Ashton clears his throat. “I’m going to give you guys some privacy. Nova, I’ll be right outside in the hallway if you need anything.”
I wait until I hear the door clasp shut and finally pull back, wiping the tears. “Ashton and I broke up,” I admit. The words pain me almost as much as Rhys’s passing. I climb back into the chair behind me, sniffling and stealing a tissue from the box, doing my best to dry my eyes.
“I never did like him for you. My little girl deserves better,” Dad says. “Do you need me to fire him? If he did anything to hurt you—”
While I appreciate his threat, I hold up a hand to stop him.
“Ashton wants this life,” I say, my hands gesturing in front of me.
“It’s not what I want. It’s never what I wanted.
Mom was murdered. My first nanny along with her.
I just lost Rhys in an awful explosion with men who abducted my best friend.
There’s too much at stake. I’d rather lose Ashton in a break-up than any other way,” I confess.
A heavy sigh falls from my father’s lips. “Nova, you are one of the strongest people I know.”
I glance down, wringing my hands together.
I don’t feel particularly strong right now. I feel like I’ve hit rock bottom.
“That boy, Ashton, is wildly in love with you. I tried to keep him away; I had Dante order him to marry Harper!” Dad curses under his breath, not pleased that Ashton disobeyed a direct order. “You’re going to let a little bit of fear get in the way of your happiness?”
I scoff and rub my shoes along the floor, dragging my feet. “I don’t want him to end up in a bed like this, or worse,” I whisper. “I cared about Rhys. I loved him like a sibling, and he was taken from me.”
My breath catches in my throat, the tears surfacing all over again, and I wipe my face with the back of my hand, the tissue already soaking wet and worthless. I toss it in the nearby trash and steal another from the table.
“I don’t have to ask the specifics because I know Rhys died a hero,” Dad says.
Silently, I nod.
He’s right.
Rhys made sure that no one survived that second explosion, that the men who have been hurting our family are dead. He sacrificed himself to ensure our family’s safety.
“It was wrong of me to interfere in your relationship with Ashton. It’s obvious he cares about you, he’d do anything to protect you, and no matter how much you try to run away from it, you’ll always be the daughter of the mafia.”
I huff under my breath. “I don’t want this life. I didn’t ask for it.”
He sizes me up, his jaw tight. “No, but you didn’t stay behind when Harper was taken. I heard you rushed out of the compound and joined the rest of the team.”
“She’s my best friend, my brother’s wife. It had nothing to do with mafia and everything to do with family.”
Dad stares at me.
“What?”
The sly smirk on his face irritates me. “You’re not seeing the bigger picture, Nova.”
I shrug, annoyed.
“Mafia. Family. It’s one and the same.”
Sighing, I lean back in the chair, placing my arms on the hard armrests that don’t offer even the slightest bit of comfort.
I hate that he’s right and I bite my tongue. “It still should have been a choice, my choice.”
“Which part?” he asks. He adjusts the bed, bringing it down a couple of inches but still sitting up.
“Are you in pain? Do you need me to get the nurse?” I ask, noticing him adjusting the bed.
He waves a hand dismissively. “I’ll be fine. I’m more concerned about you.”
I don’t know why he’s worried about me. I’m fine. But he stares at me, his gaze heavy, filled with unease.
It makes my stomach tumble and I glance out the window into the city streets below.
“You’ve lost a lot in a short time, Nova. More than most. I don’t want you to give up someone else because of a what-if scenario.”
“It’s not a what-if when he made it perfectly clear he intends to work for his father after graduation.”
Why is my father defending Ashton?
“He wants to protect his family. I don’t see the harm in that, but I understand that you do.”
I scoot my chair back, the legs squeaking against the ugly linoleum flooring.
“It’s not the protecting family that is the problem.
It’s all the death, the violence, the threats that come with it.
I don’t want my children to grow up in a world without me or their father because there is always an enemy who wants us dead. ”
“Not every child born from mafia parents loses their mother or father. Luca—”
I cut him off before he can finish his thought. “Luca never wanted to become his father or have any involvement with the mafia. You know the only reason he’s involved is because he no longer has a choice.”
“He’d rather play hockey,” Dad says with disdain, and he sounds so much like Dante, it makes me physically ill.
I stand, preparing to leave, ready to head back when I glance up at the television and my butt falls back into the chair. “Turn that up, will you?”
It’s Harper’s picture on the local news and the media cuts to a press conference about to begin. The police chief of Breckenridge walks onto the stage in front of the press to give his statement and take questions.
“As you may have heard, Harper Ricci, the nineteen-year-old college student who went missing yesterday evening has been found alive. She’s at home, recovering with her family.
We’ve taken her statement and we are now launching a joint investigation with the F.B.I.
because we have reason to believe that she was being held in Nevada and their human trafficking operation originated outside of the Las Vegas area. ”
A plethora of questions from reporters all begins at once and he takes one question from the audience.
The woman provides her studio credentials and then says, “Can you tell us if there’s any relation between the blackout outside of Vegas city limits and this abduction?”
The police chief smiles and laughs. “Those questions you’ll have to ask the F.B.I.
, who will be offering a press conference later this afternoon with any new information that they uncover.
I don’t have any information regarding the blackout.
That’s well past my jurisdiction and pay grade,” he jokes.
Dad mutes the television and glances at me. “How the hell did you cause a blackout?”