Ricardo
Chapter Thirty
I call Dante.
It goes straight to voicemail.
I try again, then switch back to Julia.
No answer. No answer from either of them.
The city moves past the car windows in streaks of light and black glass, but I barely see any of it. Alessio drives too fast and not fast enough. Lorenzo is next to me, phone to his ear, voice low as he speaks to whoever the fuck is on the other end.
I don't care right now.
I try Dante again.
Nothing.
I call Julia again.
Nothing.
My grip tightens around the phone until the edge bites into my palm.
“Try the driver,” Lorenzo says.
“I did.”
“And?”
“He dropped them off, as planned.”
Lorenzo turns slightly, but he doesn’t say anything. Good.
Julia's voice comes through the speaker on my phone, friendly and pre-recorded, and something vicious inside me twists so hard I nearly crush the phone in my hand before the beep.
I end the call.
“Faster,” I tell Alessio.
The car accelerates through the next light.
My phone vibrates.
Unknown number.
I ignore it and try Dante again.
Lorenzo turns to me.
“Ricardo.”
“Not a word.”
He turns back around.
If he tries to calm me down, I may put my fist through the window.
We turn onto her block, and the world becomes red and blue.
Police cars crowd the curb outside her building.
Three of them. Four. More beyond the awning.
Two ambulances sit near the entrance, back doors open, lights cutting across the brick and glass.
Residents stand in clusters on the sidewalk, some in coats thrown over evening clothes, some in slippers, some holding phones up like the fools they are.
My blood goes cold.
Alessio stops too abruptly.
My phone rings with an unknown number, but I ignore it again as I jump out of the car before it is fully stopped.
“Ricardo,” Lorenzo calls behind me.
I ignore him.
The air smells like exhaust, rain on pavement, and fear.
Police tape stretches near the entrance. An officer stands by the door, blocking the path inside. Another speaks into a radio. A woman near the curb is crying into her hand. A man in a robe keeps saying the same thing to anyone who will listen.
“I heard three. No, four. It was four.”
I move toward him before I realize I have chosen him.
“What happened?” I ask.
He turns, startled, and takes one look at my face before stepping back.
“I don’t know. There were gunshots upstairs. Police showed up. Ambulances. They took someone out, maybe two people, I don’t know.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who?” I snap, and Lorenzo’s hand closes around my arm.
The man shakes his head too fast. “I don’t know. I didn’t see. They said some people are dead.”
The words hollow me out.
Some people are dead.
I turn toward the building.
An officer moves in front of me. “Sir, you need to stay back.”
I look at him.
For one dangerous second, I consider snapping his neck and stepping over him. Stay back. From Julia’s building. From my son and the woman I love.
Lorenzo steps beside me.
“Ricardo,” he says, low. “Not here.”
I hear him.
Barely.
My phone vibrates again.
Unknown number.
I answer before the second vibration finishes.
“Who the fuck is this?” I snarl.
There is a crackle.
A shuddering breath.
Then—
“Ricardo.”
Julia.
The ground tilts beneath me.
I turn away from the police, from the residents, from the lights flashing over the building, one hand braced against the side of the car because my knees nearly give.
“Julia.”
My voice breaks on her name.
Lorenzo’s head snaps my way.
“Where are you?”
“At the hospital,” she says. Her voice is thin and shaking. “I'm okay, but—”
Her voice cuts off on a sob.
“Julia.”
“It's Dante.”
Everything in me stops cold.
“He’s been shot.” Her breath catches, and I hear the sound she tries to swallow. “He’s in surgery.”
For one second, there is no more city. No more police cars. No more Lorenzo.
Only my son’s name and Julia’s voice.
“Which hospital?” I ask.
She tells me.
I am already moving before she finishes.
“Stay there,” I say. “Do you hear me? Stay there.”
“Ricardo—”
“I’m coming.”
I end the call and turn toward the car.
“Hospital,” I say to Alessio, already opening the door. “Now.”
Again, I'm out of the car before it has stopped.
Alessio says something behind me. Lorenzo is already moving at my side, phone to his ear, asking for the surgical floor, the trauma intake, any name attached to Dante Conti.
I hear none of it clearly.
Hospitals have a smell I have always hated. Antiseptic. Burned coffee. Plastic. Fear beneath fluorescent lights.
Tonight, it hits me in the throat.
“Dante Conti,” I say to the woman at the desk.
She looks up, startled by my voice, then by my face.
“Sir—”
“My son was brought in with a gunshot wound. Dante Conti. Where is he?”
Her hands move to the keyboard. Too slowly.
Lorenzo steps in beside me, smoother, saying the same thing in a less frightening tone. That is where Lorenzo excels, remaining calm when everyone is unreasonable and panicking.
The woman checks the screen.
“He’s in surgery,” she says. “Family waiting is down the hall and to the left. I can have someone—”
I am already walking.
Lorenzo follows.
The hall stretches for too long. White walls. Blue signs. People sitting in plastic chairs, some with their hands folded in prayer. A child cries somewhere.
Then I turn the corner and see her.
Julia.
She is standing near the end of the waiting area, still in the green dress.
For one second, my mind refuses to put the pieces together.
The dress I thought about all night.
The dress that made every man in that room look at least twice.
Now the silk is stained.
It takes a moment for the confusion to clear or for me to realize that it's blood. Blood across her skirt. Blood smeared along her side. Blood drying on her hands, beneath her nails, in the creases of her fingers.
My son’s blood.
Her face crumples the second she sees me.
“Ricardo.”
I reach her in three strides.
My hands go to her shoulders first, careful because I do not know where she is hurt, then to her face, then back to her arms.
“Are you hurt?”
She shakes her head, tears already falling. “No.”
“Julia.” My voice is too rough. “Are you hurt?”
“No. No, I’m not. It’s Dante’s. It’s all Dante’s.”
Something inside me tears and keeps tearing.
I pull her against me.
She folds into my chest with a sound that will live in me for the rest of my life. Her hands hover for a second before they grip my shirt, leaving rust stains on the fabric.
I do not care.
I do not care about anything but the fact that she is standing and my son is somewhere behind closed doors with surgeons cutting into him.
“What happened?” I ask.
She shakes against me.
“We got inside. Everything happened so fast.” Her voice breaks. She tries to swallow it down and fails. “He knew. I don’t even know how he knew, but he knew something was wrong before I did. He pushed me down behind the kitchen counter, and then there were shots.”
Lorenzo, had walked in after me, listens intently.
I keep my hands on her because if I let go, I may lose my mind.
“How many?” I ask.
“Two men.” She squeezes her eyes shut. “There were two men in the apartment. Dante shot them. He got them both, but one of them—” Her breath catches hard enough that she bends forward slightly.
I hold her tighter.
“One of them hit him.”
“Where?” Lorenzo asks.
“His side. There was so much blood.” She looks down at her hands as if she has only just remembered they exist. “I tried to stop it. I pressed as hard as I could. He told me to stay down first. He was bleeding, and he still told me to stay down.”
That is my boy.
Christ.
That is my boy.
My hand moves to the back of her head, holding her against me while I look over her shoulder at the closed double doors down the hall.
“He was conscious?” Lorenzo asks quietly.
Julia nods against my chest. “At first. He was talking. Then he—” She stops.
My heart stops with her.
“He what?” I ask.
“He passed out before they got there.”
I only keep standing because she is in my arms and because falling apart is not something I get to do yet.
“Who called it in?” Lorenzo asks.
“I did. Then someone in the hall. I don’t know.
People were shouting. I called 911. I tried to call Ricardo, but my hands were—” She looks down again at the dried blood coating her fingers.
“I couldn’t get the screen to work. There was blood on everything.
A paramedic finally let me use his phone at the hospital. ”
I close my eyes for half a second.
The unknown number.
She had called three times, and I had ignored her. Then I had snarled at her.
“Dio,” I whisper.
Julia hears it and starts crying harder. “I’m sorry, Ricardo, I—"
“No.” I take her face in my hands, forcing her to look at me. “No. You do not apologize to me.”
Her mouth trembles.
“You do not apologize,” I repeat.
“He was there because of me.”
“He was there because Mario sent him. Because I agreed. Because Dante is Dante.” My throat tightens around his name. “Because he would have chosen it even if we had not asked.”
She knows that.
It hurts her because she knows that.
A nurse approaches from the side, cautious. “Mr. Conti?”
I turn so sharply she stops walking.
Lorenzo steps between us before I can speak.
“This is Dante Conti’s father,” he says. “Do you have an update?”
The nurse nods, eyes moving over Julia, then me, then Lorenzo. “He’s still in surgery. The surgeon will come out as soon as there’s news.”
“That is not an update,” I growl.
The nurse goes pale.
Lorenzo touches my arm once in warning.
I inhale through my nose.
The nurse says, “He was taken back quickly. He had a gunshot wound to the abdomen. He lost a significant amount of blood, but he is alive and fighting.”
Alive.
Word seems too small right now. I need more than that.
“Thank you,” Lorenzo says, because I cannot.
The nurse leaves.
Julia sways slightly.
My grip tightens. “Sit.”
“I’m okay.”
“Sit.”
For once, she does not argue.
I guide her to the nearest chair, but she resists the last second, looking down at the blood on her dress.
“I’ll stain it.”
“Fuck it. Sit.”
She sits.