Ricardo
Chapter Forty
Dante’s room is quiet now.
Earlier, everyone came through in pairs because the ICU nurse allowed nothing more, and no one dared argue with the terrifying woman.
Mario and Victoria first. Victoria tenderly touched Dante’s hair and told him she expected him to keep improving because she was running out of patience.
Diego came in with Lorenzo and tried to make some comment about Dante using a gunshot wound to avoid work, but his voice failed him halfway through, and Lorenzo just rested one hand on my son’s shoulder.
Matteo and Tomasso stood at the foot of the bed like sentinels who had been charged with guard duty. Edoardo said little, not unusual for him. Alessio said even less, definitely unusual for him.
They all looked at Dante too long before leaving.
I understood it.
It is difficult to make yourself walk out of a room when someone you love is lying in it with tubes in his arm and monitors broadcasting his heartbeat. Even when every doctor tells you he is stable. Stable is a word meant for charts.
It does nothing for a father.
Now the room is empty but for the three of us.
Dante sleeps in the bed, pale still but better than he looked last night. The bruised shadows beneath his eyes are still there. So is the oxygen tube beneath his nose, the IV line in his arm, the dressing hidden beneath his gown where a bullet opened him and a surgeon put him back together.
A few hours ago, Dr. Kessler lowered his medication.
So far, nothing has changed.
At least, nothing I can see.
Julia sits beside me on the small couch beneath the window, curled into my side in one of the soft sweaters Victoria brought her.
I make a note to check with Lorenzo on getting Julia her things.
I'm certain she doesn't want to go back to that apartment, but having her own clothes would be a comfort to her.
She fought sleep for nearly an hour, insisting she was only resting her eyes, but eventually exhaustion won. Her head is against my shoulder, one hand tucked between us, the other resting near her stomach as if, even asleep, some part of her is aware.
Our child is there.
Too small and too new yet.
And still, every time my eyes fall to her hand, something in me shifts.
A son in the bed.
A child inside the woman asleep against me.
A bastard somewhere outside these walls who put one in danger and sent men to take the other from me before I even knew it existed.
My jaw clenches.
Harrison Winthrop.
The name has become insistent in the back of my skull.
I know there is a plan in motion. I know we are gathering footage and connecting dots. Luca is using his connections to pull threads attached to other women Harrison has hurt. Our people and Luca’s are working together to take down a powerful family.
Everyone is doing exactly what needs to be done.
Correctly.
Slowly.
I hate it.
My hands remain still because Julia is sleeping against me, and I refuse to wake her with the violence inside me. But in my mind, I am already at Harrison’s throat. I have been there since the moment I saw Dante’s blood on Julia’s hands. Since I understood just who put it there.
And I know this process is not going to be quick. I know before I ever get my hands on Harrison that we have to take down the family. That may take months, and I have to be patient.
But I want my hands around his throat now.
I've never had a problem with patience before. Not before that bastard came after what's mine.
He had entered her home and turned her safe place into one where she had to watch my son almost die, where she had to keep him alive with her bare hands.
My eyes move from Dante to the glass wall beyond the room and the life there.
Out of necessity, the rooms in the ICU are all made of glass. It feels like too much exposure where there should be privacy. There's movement where there should be peace.
Even now, nurses pass with computers on rolling carts. A doctor in blue scrubs stops at the station, speaks to someone briefly, then moves on. Across the hall, I see an older man sleeping with a breathing tube in his throat while a woman sits beside his bed with a paperback she isn’t reading.
A nurse adjusts a medication bag in another room.
A family stands outside a door of yet another room, speaking in low voices to a doctor. One of them cries silently into a tissue.
Death moves through this place as frequently as life.
I hate that Dante is here.
And I hate that Julia spends the first days of her pregnancy in these walls. I hate that she knows this room well enough to know which chair is more comfortable, which nurse will bring extra blankets without a fuss, and which vending machine is a hopeless cause.
She shifts slightly in her sleep, burrowing into me.
I lower my mouth to her hair and breathe her in.
Almond lotion and hospital soap mingle on her hands. The combination is wrong.
For a moment, the memory of last night cuts through my thoughts.
Her at my window. Her hands on my chest. Her lips on my skin when she said she missed me. Her body beneath mine as we joined.
Celebrate with me.
I close my eyes for one second.
Then I open them and look back at Dante.
His eyes are open.
Everything inside me stops.
He is watching me. Watching Julia against my side.
His gaze is clearer than it has been since he came out of surgery. Heavy, yes. Tired. Clouded with medication still. But present in a way he has not been yet. His eyes move over Julia first, where she sleeps against me, then back to my face.
I do not move right away.
I am not sure what I expected to see there.
Anger, maybe.
The old hurt. The betrayal that was still between us before bullets and blood cut through everything else. The accusation he has every right to hold against me. Against us. Against the way his life had changed around him before he even knew.
But that is not what I see.
Dante looks at Julia with the same protectiveness as always.
In the hospital, nearly dead, and still his concern is for her first. Just like his first thought when he woke up was to ensure she was safe.
A breath I didn’t realize I was holding leaves me.
My arm around Julia tightens instinctively. She stirs, and I loosen my hold quickly.
He is awake. He is really awake.
Then he looks at me.
His voice, when it comes, is rough from disuse. “Tired.”
I understand he's talking about her and not himself.
“Yes,” I say. “It's been a long few days.”
Moving carefully, I ease away from Julia. She makes a small sound of protest in her sleep, then curls up against the back of the couch without waking.
I rise from the couch and move to the side of the bed.
He watches me approach.
His eyes follow me until I am standing over him.
There is no anger there.
There is something softer.
Something almost like relief.
“How do you feel?” I ask.
He considers this for a moment.
“Groggy,” he says. “Thirsty.”
I reach for the water cup on the tray beside his bed.
I hold the straw to his lips.
He takes a small sip, then lets his head fall back against the pillow.
For a few seconds, he only breathes.
I set the cup down.
“Pain?” I ask.
His gaze shifts toward me. “Some.”
“I’ll call the nurse.”
“No.”
The word is quiet, but clear.
I stop with my hand halfway to the call button.
“Not yet. I don't want to sleep anymore." He looks over at Julia again. “She’s always here when I wake."
“She hasn't left,” I say. “Aside from when the doctors make her. And even that's been tough."
A faint smile touches his lips. “Of course.”
He looks back at me.
There may be anger there later, when he is stronger. When he is off the medication. When he can hold more than one thought without pain dragging him back under. I will take it if it comes.
But right now, he’s alive and awake, and that’s the only thing that matters.
So painfully alive that my throat tightens.
“You scared me,” I say.
I didn't mean to say that.
Dante blinks slowly.
"The great Ricardo Conti," he says. "Scared?"
His words are laced with humor, but he doesn't have the energy for the joke.
I can't manage a smile.
“I have never been so scared in my life.”
Dante looks away from me, toward the window. The city lights reflect in the dark glass.
“Me either,” he says, so quietly I almost don’t hear him.
My son, who fears nothing, was afraid.
"I thought," he says roughly, "that they would get her before I—"
Before he could stop them.
He wasn't afraid that he was dying. He was afraid he would die before she was safe.
I thought I understood the depth of the friendship between Dante and Julia.
But this...
This is something different entirely.
It's love, but not the romantic kind.
It's something pure.
A bond as deep as blood but outside of it, somehow.
For the first time, I realize the depth of my betrayal and just how badly I messed up.
Regardless, I can't regret my relationship with her. I'm not capable of it. But I can regret the way I handled it.
I reach out and rest my hand on top of his head. His hair is damp and plastered to his forehead. I gently push it back.
He doesn't pull away.
He leans into my touch.
Like he did when he was a small boy and scraped his knee. Or when he was a teenager and his heart was broken for the first time.
Like he knows I will make it right.
And I will.
"They didn't," I say.
His eyes close for a moment.
When he opens them again, I can see the exhaustion is starting to pull at him again.
"Sleep," I say.
He shakes his head, a slight movement against my hand.
After a moment of silence, he says, "Sorry."
The word tears me apart.
"You have nothing to be sorry for."
"Punch," he says after another long moment, but his words are starting to slur as sleep calls him back.
I shake my head.
"I deserved that and more," I say, my own words thick with emotion. "Don't worry about it."
He wants to say something else, but the words won't come. He tries again.
"Sleep," I repeat, my hand still on his head.
Behind me, there's a soft shifting of material, and I know Julia has just woken.
Dante's eyes slide over to her, just slits now.
“Dante,” she whispers.
He tries to smile, but it's just a ghost of one.
“Hey, Jules,” he rasps. Then his eyes flutter shut, and he's gone again.