Chapter Twenty-Two
Caitlin
For the first two minutes of consciousness, my mind was gloriously blank.
All I could focus on was the warm cocoon of blankets I found myself in, how comforting it felt.
But it wasn’t long before my wrist, face, and head started to throb in sync, like they were each sharing a heartbeat.
Quickly on the heels of that was the pain: the headache in my temples, the soreness on the back of my skull, the ache in my cheek, the throb in my stomach, and the sharp, tight pain in my wrist and forearm.
It all came rushing back then. My dad. The betrayal. His escape. My attack. Running to Gav for help. The treatment from a very kind Salvatore.
He’d shown me my X-ray right after the scan, and I could see where the original fracture had been and how much larger it had gotten. I guess there was no hope of a comfy 3D-printed cast in my future. And a lot of wrist rehab in the coming months.
But I’d been lucky, all things said and done, to be able to walk away without surgery. And only needed a tiny patch of hair shaved so Salvatore could stitch my head back together.
My stomach heaved at that thought, making me shoot up in bed, wondering if it was going to pass or if I was going to need to make a mad dash to the bathroom.
It was right then that I noticed the nightstand.
And despite everything, a giant smile cracked my face, wide enough to make my sore cheek scream.
Because Gav wasn’t the type of guy to just set up a glass of water and my bottle of pain medicine.
Oh, no. The nightstand was a cluttered mess of everything he thought I might need.
From a bottle of blue sports drink and my pain meds to three of my different stomach medications—including the one for nausea that I automatically reached for and popped the cherry tablet in my mouth.
He also had the book I’d been reading sitting there, two of those ice packs you can shake to life, and a bottle ibuprofen.
Looking around as the anti-nausea meds went to work, I noticed there was a brand new, super fluffy blanket draped over me on top of his usual bedding. That explained the warm and cozy feeling.
He had the TV on, the droning documentarian’s voice likely meant to keep me fast asleep and maybe protect me from overhearing any noise in the apartment.
Because I wasn’t naive.
The Family was about to be very involved in my business, whereas he’d kept them mostly out of it before.
If my understanding of the situation was right, Ira was screwing over my father in some way. And screwing over my father meant screwing over the Costas.
At least that was what it seemed like.
I guess we wouldn’t have any more information until we talked to my father.
Once I was sure I wasn’t going to get sick all over, I carefully climbed out of bed and made my way into the bathroom. Where I was confronted with a reflection I barely recognized.
Despite having slept long and deep, I looked rough—pale, red-eyed, swollen, and bruised. But I supposed it could have been a lot worse, so I tried not to harp on it as I brushed my teeth. Though that bruise under my eye was aggressively staring back at me the whole time.
I remembered wanting to have a black eye as a kid. I used to think they were so edgy and cool. The reality was a lot different.
Finished, I followed the scent of fresh coffee and something sweet out to the kitchen. Where I found Gav standing dressed in slacks and a sweater, pouring coffee into my new special cup, my creamer sitting next to his hands.
I once dated a guy for eight months who never remembered how I took my coffee.
I liked how much Gav paid attention.
“Thought I heard the water running,” he said, pouring just the right amount of creamer, stirring, and holding the mug out to me. “I already put the sugar in,” he told me with a knowing smile.
“Thank you,” I said, pausing to sniff it before taking a sip. Perfect. “You know, if this mafia capo thing doesn’t work out, you could have a bright future as a barista in those trendy coffee places you detest.”
“It’s good to have back-up plans,” he agreed, eyeing the paperboard containers sitting on the stove. “French toast, eggs, hash browns, and bacon.”
“No fruit? Yogurt? Cottage… cheese,” I said, gagging a little at even the words on that last one.
Gav chuckled. “Nope. You get a grace period of me not trying to encourage you to eat anything healthy.”
“In that case, I want pizza for lunch. With garlic knots. And garlic bread. And, no, they’re not the same. And baked ziti.”
“That it?”
“I mean… I wouldn’t mind splitting some eggplant parm too. It’s healthy,” I added.
“Deep-fried eggplant?” he asked, shaking his head. “But we might need to make that dinner. This is lunch,” he said, waving to the breakfast foods.
“What time is it?”
“Eleven.”
Eleven? I had to have been knocked out for upward of twelve hours.
“You needed the rest,” he said, reading my thoughts.
“Yeah. Also explains why everything hurts.”
“Did you take your meds?”
“Not yet. I wanted to eat first.”
“I’ll nuke everything. Sit.”
With that, we ate French toast, eggs, and slightly soggy bacon and hash browns, talking mostly about the horrible documentary he left on the TV which he’d seen—and I can’t make this up—four times.
“So, what’re my instructions for bathing?”
“I’m going to need to wash your hair for you in the sink for a while. You’ve got to try to keep those stitches as dry as possible. Other than that, we just have to wrap up your cast. Want to take a bath? I bought all that fancy bath shit.”
‘All that fancy bath shit’ included six different bath bombs in varying colors, shapes, and scents, two different kinds of bubble bath, a loofah, and under-eye masks.
So he drew the bath with all the ingredients as he gently washed my hair in the kitchen sink, rinsing away all the dried blood and rubbing my scalp.
“Gonna need you to quit making those noises,” he said, voice raspy as he took the sprayer to the soapy strands.
And as much as a certain part of me ached at the sound of his voice, my body was too tired and achy, so I kept my mouth shut and let him dry my hair, then part it down the center, carefully brushing and twisting it into braids on each side.
“This will keep the hair away from the stitches.”
“How did you learn to braid?”
To that, he snorted. “My sister forced me to make friendship bracelets and shit with her when she was little. I guess some of it stuck.”
With that, he led me into the bathroom and helped me undress. Instead of the usual hunger, there was a tightness in his jaw and around his eyes as he looked at the mottled bruise across my stomach.
“And once you get out, you can change into this cloud-like ridiculousness,” he said, producing a long-sleeve top and bottom set of the fluffiest material I’d ever seen in a crisp white with little daisies printed on it. “And these.” He piled fluffy socks on top of the pile.
“You thought of everything.”
“I want you to be comfortable,” he said as he turned off the tap, then ripped open the package and carefully placed the under-eye masks on my skin.
“Mission accomplished.” I paused, watching him for a second. “Are we going to talk about it?” I asked.
Gav drew in a deep breath. “Eventually. But not right now. Maybe over that absurd dinner you requested.”
So we didn’t talk about it.
Not as we sat on the couch, watched a show, then read our books. Not after I woke up from a little nap and snacked on junk food.
But when there was a knock on the door sometime later and Gav let Leo into the room, I had a feeling the discussion was imminent.
“I grabbed the pizz—Jesus Christ,” he said as his eyes landed on me. “Oh, sweetheart.”
I barely knew this man.
But he looked wrecked at the idea of what happened to me.
“I’m okay.”
His eyes tightened. “I thought I was picking up the wrong order with all this,” he said. “But now I see why you need all the comfort food.”
He wasn’t wrong.
I reached for an antacid and chewed it as the men went about setting the table and spreading out the food.
“Are you joining us?” I asked. “We have more than enough food.”
“That’d be nice,” he said, going back to grab a plate and glass. “How are you feeling?”
“Not bad, considering. Gav hasn’t let me do anything.”
“That’s ‘cause he was raised right.” There was a certain kind of pride in that, and I got the impression that the older brothers—Nico and Leo—had a big hand in raising the younger siblings in their large family.
So it was no wonder he took a little credit for the good man who was sitting across from me.
“So, are we going to talk about the elephant in the room?” I asked after we all started to dig in.
Both men glanced at me.
“It’s okay. I’m not as fragile today as I was yesterday. We can talk about it.”
Leo looked dubious, but Gav nodded, knowing me well enough to accept that I knew my limits.
“It would be helpful if we had a blow-by-blow of as much as you remember about the conversation with your father,” he said.
So I launched into it, giving them as many details as surfaced. Which was a lot of them. My brain refused to let a single detail go. I guess because it was such a tense, sometimes heated confrontation.
“And this cabin,” Leo clarified. “It’s Upstate?”
“Yeah. I have the address on my ph… oh.”
“I sent someone to search for your phone,” Gav told me.
“I can look it up on my laptop too.”
“Good. That will help. We need to get in touch with your father,” Leo said. “Whatever information he has on Ira, we need. But we might need you to coax him to talk to us. He’s afraid of Ira. But I bet he’s also afraid of us because of whatever shit Ira is wrapped up in.”
I worried my bottom lip, and Gav reached across the table to touch my hand. “We are not going to hurt your father. You have my word on that.”
“But what if he stole from you?”
“Then we’ll work something out. We’re not in the business of maiming or killing the family members of people we care about.”
“We have the word from the boss,” Leo added, seeming to know it would be my next concern. “No one is hurting Daniel.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
“We want to know what Ira is into. Especially if he’s not working independently,” Gav added.
“If there is another organization at play, we need to be aware of that. From everything you’ve said about your father, it seems like he was working legitimately for us.
Until Ira got involved. And Ira knew exactly the right button to push with Daniel. ”
“Me.”
“Yep.”
“How do you think Ira found me? Just searched my address like Zeno does?”
“I’m thinking, because he tracked you to the garage, he likely put a tracker on your car,” Leo said.
My gaze shot up.
“A tracker.”
“Yeah.”
“On the car I just sent my father to a remote cabin in?”
“Fuck,” Leo said, already on his feet and reaching for his phone. “Sweetheart, I need that address now.”
I’d never moved so fast in my life, grabbing Gav’s phone and signing into my email from there, searching for the booking email, then sending the screenshot to Leo, who’d been on the phone no fewer than four times in the span of time it took me to get the information.
“I want to come,” I said to Gav as he rushed through his apartment, grabbing a gun off the top shelf in his bedroom closet.
“Babe, no.”
“He’s my dad.”
“And you’ve already been hurt on this.”
“You’d be there. And Leo. And whoever else he has called. No one will be able to get to me. But my father will need me after this.”
Gav looked conflicted but nodded.
“Okay. But if I say you stay somewhere, you stay, okay? I couldn’t stand watching you get hurt.”
“I promise.”
“Then grab your shoes. We leave now.”