Chapter 46
GIANNA
We arrived back at the hospital just after midnight. The nurses tried to stop us from entering, but I just walked right past them and let Matteo take the brunt of it. There wasn’t much of that to take, since they gave up pretty quickly.
I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I used to be so obedient, always wanting to do the right thing, to do what was expected of me, what was proper. Now I don’t care about the rules anymore. Any of them.
Chiara’s condition was unchanged when we arrived. Neither better nor worse. She’s asleep and they only let me see her for about five minutes before the nurse ushered me back out, muttering that it’d be better if I went home and came back in the morning.
But this waiting room might as well be my home. It’s where my family is. And I don’t have any other home.
“What’s happening with my mom and dad and Lidia?” I ask Matteo.
He’s been dozing off in his seat, having long since abandoned the idea of trying to hold a conversation with me, since all he got was one- or two-word answers.
I’m still not OK with how good he makes me feel even though he’s the reason I lost everything. My mind and my body are still standing on polar opposites on that and I’m floating somewhere in between, unable to decide where to land.
“Things are gonna work out,” he mutters, opening his eyes just a crack. “We should try to get some sleep. Maybe even find a motel.”
“Go right ahead, but I’m staying here.”
He shrugs and closes his eyes again. I almost tell him that I’m serious, that he can go get a motel room, that I won’t try to run or anything—which I won’t since that ended badly once before. And I won’t go to the cops either since they’re clearly all in Ferro’s pocket.
I don’t say it though. And I don’t know if it’s because I don’t want to be alone or because I want him here with me.
“So what happened to your family, anyway?” I ask.
Maybe my voice is a little harsh, but I do really want to know.
He’s been mentioning them a lot, trying to make me feel better about all this, and I’ve not been responding well to it.
But I now know he suffered a great loss, and I do feel bad for him.
Or at least one of the polar opposites of me does.
“They were all killed in a feud,” he says.
“Even the women?”
“Taken and married off,” he says, still not opening his eyes. “Some committed suicide before that could happen.”
“All except your sister?”
“She was the one the caused the feud,” he says, harshly. He sits up and stares at the opposite wall. “Rejected the guy she was supposed to marry, ran off with another, and we all paid the price.”
“And the guy she rejected killed your entire family?” I’m genuinely shocked at hearing this. “Why didn’t you just make her get married? Why didn’t she sacrifice herself? How could she just watch what was happening?”
He shakes his head, his hands balled into fists.
“Arranged marriages weren’t our family’s way.
And she was in love with someone else. She had a right to rebel.
And by the time it all went down, she was too damaged to fix any of it,” he says.
“Besides, we’d sent her to New York to live with relatives by then. ”
“Still, I’d come back… if it was me, I mean.”
“Would you?” he asks, his eyes as sharp as the sarcasm in his voice. “Because from what I can see, you don’t much like doing things against your will.”
“That’s a low blow, you tried to kill my family,” I snap. “Of course I resent you for it. But because my family’s lives depend on me doing what I’m told, I’m doing it. Aren’t I?”
The sharpness is gone from his eyes. He understands what I’m saying.
“I wish it was different.”
And the worst part is, I believe him.
He closed his eyes again, but I can feel he’s not really sleepy. The heat emanating from his slouched body is almost as fierce as when he looks at me.
“I’m sorry you went through all that,” I say. “It must’ve been hell.”
“Still is,” he says and opens his eyes to look at me. The heat is almost unbearable, and it definitely pulls me in the direction of the part of me that wants to spend the rest of my life by his side. “But it’s better now that I have you.”
He grins as he adds that, and it lights up his whole face in a way that makes me a thousand percent sure he’s telling the truth. That I am the light in his darkness, the one who can make his terrible past more bearable. Stuff every girl wants to hear and believe from her man.
“You don’t have me,” I mutter. “You stole me. From my family.”
“Having is the direct consequence of stealing, isn’t it?” he asks and sits up in his seat. His eyes are still full of that scorching desert sun. “Besides your family stole from me first when they didn’t come to aid mine. But that debt will soon be repaid now. Then maybe we can all start over.”
“What are you talking about? Why would my family have to aid yours? And why wouldn’t they?” If I know anything about my father is that honor always comes first for him. And he would never fail to respect it.
“It’s a long and complicated story,” he says. “But my grandfather and your father went back a long way. He should’ve helped us when we needed it. But like I said, all will be made right now.”
I just look at him, what he’s actually saying sort of clicking in my mind. But all I see is blood and war and death.
“You’re taking my father to fight in your war?”
He nods.
“So I’ll be able to see him? Be with him?”
He shrugs. “All in good time. You’ve proven to be a good carrot so far, and I prefer to use that to a stick. So you’ll have to do without your daddy for a little longer.”
“So I’m a carrot now?”
How can he say exactly the right things and then follow it up with exactly the wrong ones?
“A very pretty carrot,” he says and swipes a lock of my hair off my face. “A golden carrot.”
I turn away from him, stand up and walk towards my sister’s room. He doesn’t follow, and when I look back, he’s pretending to try and sleep again. But he’s not fooling me. I can feel his attention on me all along my back like the scorching desert sun.
He’s not my friend, he’s my captor. Not my lover, but my jailor. And he won’t return my family to me, he’ll get them all killed.
I have to stop him.