Chapter 39
GIANNA
Chiara is lying in a room by herself, hooked up to many beeping machines and surrounded by yet more of them.
It looks like she’s in a spaceship or something, the machines feeding off her, making her sleep while they feast. I always hated sci-fi movies.
Almost as much as I hated ones where people die.
“She’s doing good,” Matteo says. “Her blood pressure is steady and good. So’s her heart rate. I think she’ll be just fine.”
“Fine? She was shot. How can she be fine?” My words don’t have any kind of bite to them. They’re like that soft cold breeze that sometimes blows on summer evenings reminding you of winter.
“How do you know so much about these things anyway?”
I glance at his face and it’s as though watching a reflection in glass, his features are all there, but there’s no expression.
“Because I spent days by my brother’s hospital bed hoping he’d wake up,” he says. “He didn’t and his vitals were never this good.”
There’s so much I don’t know about him. So much I wanted to know. But then decided I want to know nothing. But this… this is something we share.
“How did your brother die?”
“He was shot. By our enemy.”
It sounds like it hurts him to say the word enemy like it’s someone he hasn’t dealt with yet.
“So this is almost the same,” I mutter. “My sister was shot by her enemy too. My dad too. I guess you must really know exactly how I feel.”
This time I do manage to get the sarcasm out.
“I do,” he says quietly. “And I really didn’t want it to come to this. Maybe one day you’ll believe me. There’s nothing worse than watching your loved ones die and being powerless to stop it.”
The beeping around Chiara just keeps getting louder and louder in my head, even though it’s all been the same since we got here.
I want to go in, sit by her bed, hold her hand, tell her everything is going to be all right again.
That everything will be as it was. That we’ll spend summers at the family beach house again, go shopping with my mom, argue, laugh, drive in speedboats, play monopoly until one of us loses it. That she’ll live.
But the doctor said I can’t go in. And I don’t know if I’d be able to stand just sitting by her side anyway, waiting for her to wake up, hoping she does, fearing she won’t. That must’ve been hell for Matteo. I can see that much in his face, even if I don’t want to.
“I know about being a prisoner too,” he says quietly. “Being held against your will, knowing there’s no way out. No way back to the way it was.”
I round on him, my hands balled into fists and shaking. “Is that what’s going to happen to me. I’ll never have my freedom again?”
Why am I even asking him this? I already know the answer. Things will never be as they were for me. So it’d be useless to try and comfort my little sister with those lies. Because that’s what they’d be, lies. Dirty, stupid lies that make no one feel better.
“Do you get off on keeping me hostage? Because you went through the same thing, so you think it’s only right?” I ask, shaking harder and harder. “It’s not right. It’s horrible. And my sister just paid the price for it.”
“You’re here because I found a way to get everything back,” he says, so quietly I barely hear him. “And once I do, it’ll all be yours.”
“What I want is my old life, my family, my home. Why would I want anything from you?”
“No, you don’t,” he says, his face calm, his eyes more than a little sad. “You want freedom and an exciting life.”
He’s got me there. I did want all those things. With him.
“This is not the price I was willing to pay to get it.”
My sister’s face is paler than I’ve ever seen it. There’s no rosiness in her cheeks, her skin whiter than the sheet she’s covered with, the veins in her arms unnaturally dark.
The doctor comes to us. He’s put on a fresh pair of scrubs and combed his hair.
“I think that’s enough for today,” he says. “If she improves overnight, you’ll be able to go in to see her tomorrow.”
“OK, thank you,” I mutter and walk back to the waiting room where I sit in the nearest seat.
“Come on, I’ll take you home,” Matteo says. “You can get a change of clothes, take a shower, get something to eat.”
“Home? To that smelly old mansion? That’s not my home,” I say. “I’m staying right here until my sister wakes up.”
He takes a seat next to me and reaches for my hand, but I snatch it away before he can take it.
“You should go. I don’t need you here.” I wonder if that’s actually true. I wonder if I’d be so brave if he wasn’t here for me to lean on. I wonder if I’d be able to survive my sister turning for the worst in the night and me alone with her, or if I’d just die too.
“I’ll stay with you,” he says. “And thank you for not telling the cops what really happened.”
I scoff. “What choice did I have? I know who holds the keys to my freedom. But I didn’t do it for you.”
Or did I? Did I do it so they wouldn’t take him away from me?
It’s not a question I can answer right now. The only answer I need is to know my sister will survive. Everything else can wait.