Chapter 23
CASSIA
The glass hits the floor before I understand what’s happening.
Then Dante follows.
His shoulder catches the table, sends plates crashing, and his body is folding wrong, all wrong, and I’m screaming his name before I know I’m standing, before I know I’m moving, before I know anything except no no no no no.
I hit my knees beside him. My hands find his face. His skin is gray. Clammy. His eyes are closed and he won’t open them, won’t look at me, won’t answer.
I force my hands to steady. They don’t listen.
“Dante.” My voice breaks on his name. “Dante, please. Please.”
Nothing.
Blood pools beneath his head where he struck the floor. Dark against the hardwood. Spreading.
“No. No, no, no.”
I’m touching his chest, his shoulders, his face. Trying to find him. Trying to bring him back.
“Dante, wake up. Look at me. Look at me.”
His chest rises. Falls. Too shallow. Too slow.
“Someone get Giada’s bag from her car. Now.”
Lorenzo’s voice cuts through the chaos. I don’t look up. Can’t look away from Dante’s face. From the blue tinge creeping into his lips.
“Dante, please.” I’m crying. When did I start crying? “Please don’t do this. Please don’t leave me. I need you to open your eyes. I need you to hear me.”
Hands grip my shoulders. Try to pull me back.
I twist away, clutch at his shirt.
“Don’t touch me. I’m not leaving him.”
“Cassia.” Giada’s voice. Close. Calm in a way that doesn’t match her white face. “I need to get to him. I need to help him. You have to let me in.”
I stare at her. My hands won’t unclench from his shirt.
“Let me help him,” she says. Softer now. “Please.”
I let go.
She slides in beside me, fingers finding his throat, pressing against the pulse point. Her other hand goes to his chest.
His chest rises. Falls. Rises. I match my breathing to his, tethering myself to each inhale like a rope I can’t let go of.
“Pulse is weak but present.” She pulls back his eyelid, shines a penlight from her pocket. Curses. “His pupils aren’t right. Too small.”
She leans closer, checks his mouth, his skin. “He’s sweating but cold. Breathing too slow. Heart rate dropping.” Her mouth thins. “He’s been poisoned.”
The word hits like a fist to the sternum.
Everything stops.
She’s reaching for her bag. “In the wine or the food. I need to know what.”
Poisoned.
We were just. He was just.
“Renzo!” Giada’s voice sharpens. “Where’s my bag?”
“Pietro’s getting it.”
Lorenzo appears in my peripheral vision. His face is stone.
“What do you need?”
“I need to know what he ingested. Check his glass, the wine, anything he ate that was different from the rest of us.” Her hands move over Dante’s body, clinical, assessing. “And I need the medical wing prepped. Full toxicology setup. IV lines ready. Activated charcoal if we have it.”
“We have it.”
Lorenzo turns, starts issuing orders. His voice carries across the chaos. Sharp. Efficient. Terrifying in its control.
I watch Dante breathe. Rise. Fall. Rise. Fall.
Don’t stop. Don’t you dare stop.
“Nico.” Giada again. “I need a toxicologist. The best one in the state. I don’t care what it costs. I need them here in less than an hour.”
Nico has his phone out. His charm has vanished. His easy smile is gone. He dials without hesitation. His voice drops an octave. No wasted motion.
“I know someone at Tulane. Owes me a favor.” He’s already talking before I process the words. “I’ll get him here.”
He moves toward the hallway, phone pressed to his ear, voice low and rapid.
“Marco.”
Giada’s voice makes Marco flinch. He’s standing by the table, frozen, face blank with shock. He looks young. Too young. A boy watching his brother die on the dining room floor.
“Marco, I need you to focus. Can you do that?”
He blinks. Swallows. Nods.
“His wine glass. Don’t touch the rim. Get it. Get the bottle. Get anything he ate.” Giada’s hands haven’t stopped moving, checking Dante’s pupils, his reflexes. “We need to know what’s in his system. Can you do that?”
“Yes.” His voice comes out rough. He clears his throat. “Yes. I can do that.”
He moves. Not fast, but deliberate. Careful. He grabs Dante’s glass by the stem, holds it up to the light.
“The olives,” he says. “He was the only one who ate the olives from the antipasto. And the bread with the oil. He dipped it twice. I watched him.”
“Get all of it. Don’t let anyone touch that table.”
Marco nods. Keeps working. His hands aren’t steady, but they’re moving.
Pietro appears with Giada’s medical bag. She tears into it, pulling out equipment I don’t recognize. Vials. Syringes. A stethoscope.
“Dante.” I touch his face again. His skin is wrong. All wrong. “Dante, can you hear me? I’m here. I’m right here.”
Nothing. His eyes stay closed.
“I need you to wake up.” My voice cracks. “I need you to look at me. Please.”
Giada slides a needle into his arm. Pushes something into his veins.
“What is that?” I ask. “What are you giving him?”
“Atropine. It’s a guess.” Her mouth is a thin line. “Until I know what poison, I’m treating symptoms. If I guess wrong, he dies.”
“Dante.” I lean closer. My forehead touches his. “You have to fight. Do you hear me? You have to fight this. You don’t get to leave me. You don’t get to.”
My voice breaks.
I never told him I love him.
One. Two. Three. The numbers come back on their own, stitching through my panic like a lifeline I didn’t reach for.
“I love you.” I whisper it against his throat. Where his pulse should be hammering. “Do you hear me? I love you. I never got to tell you but I do and you don’t get to die without knowing that.”
Four. Five. Six. The count tangled into the syllables of his name in my head, each number a heartbeat I’m demanding from him.
A sob tears through me. I can’t stop it. Can’t control it.
“Cassia.” Giada’s hand on my arm. “I need to check his airway. I need you to move back a little.”
I don’t want to. Can’t bear to put even an inch between us. But I do. Because she’s trying to save him.
“Renzo.” Giada’s voice carries. “I need a stretcher. We need to get him to the medical wing. I can’t work on him here.”
“Called for it already.”
I look up. Lorenzo is standing near the entrance, phone in hand. His face hasn’t changed. But I see his other hand. Pressed against his thigh. His fingers white at the knuckles. He’s holding himself together by sheer force of will.
“Romano.”
The name drops into the silence like a stone into water.
Lorenzo doesn’t look at me. His eyes scan the room. The table. The empty chair where a man sat twenty minutes ago.
“Where is Romano?”
No one answers. Because no one knows. Because he was here, eating and drinking and smiling, and now he’s gone.
“Find him.” Lorenzo’s voice is quiet. That’s what makes it terrifying. “Every exit. Every vehicle. Every road out of this city.”
A pause.
“He doesn’t get to breathe until I say so.”
Soldiers move. Scatter. The room empties of everyone except family.
And Nonna Rosa.
I notice her for the first time. Standing at the threshold, rosary clutched between her fingers, tears streaming down her face. Her lips move in silent prayer.
The same woman who fed me in her kitchen this morning. Who called me cher and dawlin’ and told me the dough could take it. Who teased Maria about the Valentino boy.
She’s praying for him now. For all of us.
“Stretcher’s here.”
Two soldiers appear with a collapsible stretcher. Lorenzo moves forward, and so does Marco, abandoning the evidence on the table. They position themselves on either side of Dante.
“Careful.” Giada watches every movement. “Support his head. He hit it when he fell. And keep the IV line clear.”
They lift him. My husband. The man I love.
He looks small. Broken.
“Cassia.” Nico is beside me. When did he come back? His phone is away. His hand is on my elbow. “Come on. We’ll follow them to the medical wing.”
I can’t move. My legs won’t work.
“I never told him,” I hear myself say. “He doesn’t know. What if he dies and he never knows?”
“He knows.” Nico’s voice is steady. Certain. “The way he looks at you? The way he talks about you when you’re not in the room?” He squeezes my arm. “He knows, Cassia.”
I want to believe him. I want it so bad my chest splits open with it.
They carry him out of the dining room. Through the hallway. Past the study where he kissed me this morning. Past the stairs we climbed together last night.
I follow. One foot in front of the other. Nico’s hand on my arm. The only thing keeping me upright.
The medical wing is on the east side of the compound. I’ve never been inside it. Never needed to.
The doors swing open. Bright lights. Gleaming equipment. A room that looks like a real hospital, because of course it does, because this is what the Santoros built. A world unto themselves.
They transfer him to a bed. A real bed with rails and monitors and machines that start beeping the moment they connect him.
Giada is barking orders. Scrubbing her hands. Pulling on gloves.
“Everyone out except medical staff.” Her voice leaves no room for argument. “Renzo, I need the toxicology samples delivered the moment Dr. Biagi arrives. Marco, make sure that evidence is secured. Nico.” She pauses. Looks at me. “Keep her close. She shouldn’t be alone.”
She shouldn’t be alone.
Lorenzo doesn’t leave. He stations himself in the corner, arms crossed, face unreadable. Watching. Waiting. I don’t think anyone has the power to make him go.
Marco disappears to secure the evidence. Nico guides me to a chair in the corner. I sink into it. My legs give out at last.
From here, I can see Dante. See the rise and fall of his chest. See Giada working, moving, fighting. See the monitors that track his heartbeat in jagged green lines across the screen.
Too slow. Is it too slow? I don’t know how to read it. I don’t know anything.
I know that twelve hours ago, I woke up in his arms.
Eight hours ago, he brushed flour from my cheek and told me I looked happy.
An hour ago, he raised a glass and said to family.
Twenty-three minutes ago, his eyes went vacant and he fell.
And now my husband is dying and the man responsible is running and I never said the words that mattered most.
I watch the monitor.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Rise. Fall. Rise. Fall.
The beeps blur with his breathing and my pulse until all three are the same rhythm, the same prayer, the same desperate demand that he stay.
Giada moves around him. Connects another IV. Checks his pupils again.
Please.
Lorenzo doesn’t move from his corner. A statue carved of grief and rage.
The monitor holds steady. Holds.
The doors open. A man with a medical bag, older, urgent.
“Dr. Biagi.” Giada’s voice is clipped. “Samples are being brought. I’ve administered atropine and started supportive care. I need you to identify the compound.”
They talk in words I don’t understand. I’ve stopped listening. All I can hear is the monitor.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Dante’s chest rises. Falls. Rises.
I shut my eyes. Press my hands together until my knuckles ache.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
If I think it hard enough, maybe he’ll hear me. Maybe it will be enough to bring him back.
Maybe.
Please.