31. Liana
LIANA
I keep screaming Sonny’s name, wanting to see my boy, but no words will come out. Just harsh breaths. I can’t move my limbs. I can’t open my eyes.
I’m in hell. That’s what this is. Beth killed me and now I’m stuck here in hell forever, unable to move, knowing Sonny’s right there.
“You can’t go. It’s always been you, Li—”
I hear Dario’s voice, disjointed, in my dreams. I don’t know what he’s talking about, why his voice sounds so cracked and strained.
Where am I? All I can feel is cold, slipping down my limbs. Am I dying?
I finally manage to crack my eyes open.
“Li?” Dario’s face slowly comes into focus. God, he looks... terrible. Exhausted, like he hasn’t slept in days, stubble on his chin, bags under his eyes. “Li, baby, are you waking up?”
I open and close my mouth.
“Water?” he asks. When I nod weakly he hurries to the sink to pour me a cup, bringing it back with a bendy straw.
I drink and it’s like nectar of the gods, cold and slick going down my throat.
I open my mouth again.
“Sonny?”
“He’s alright. Down in the cafeteria with Giovanni.”
“How... how long have I been out?” The words come out small and weak.
“Little over a week,” he says, looking at his watch. “Eight days.”
“Eight days!” I nearly screech but my vocal chords won’t let me. “I have to see Sonny, Dario, I—”
“I’ll text Giovanni to bring him up,” he says gently, slumping down in the chair. “I should call the doctors in. They’ll want to do tests.”
“Not yet,” I plead.
He looks at me, right into my eyes, and there’s something on his features I can’t quite name.
“Thought I lost you,” he says finally in a croak, and hugs me to him, burying his face in my neck.
My arms slowly go around him. I can’t help it. He smells good despite the fact that I’m sure he hasn’t showered in days. He smells like something uniquely Dario that comforts me.
“Beth is...” I trail off, knowing she’s likely dead.
“Gone.”
“Sonny didn’t get hurt?”
“No. He was just a little scared. Not hurt. Me and Giovanni have been taking care of him.”
My breath catches in my throat and I search his face, wondering if he’s put it together that Sonny is his. It seems he hasn’t.
I nod slowly. “Thank you.”
“I really need to get the doctors, have them check you out.” There’s a pleading edge to his voice as he stands, and I nod.
He calls to the nurse’s station and in a few moments there are three doctors prodding me, doing tests.
“Follow the light.”
I do as they say and then they ask me a set of questions about what year it is, who the president is, that kind of thing.
I answer and they all look at me as if I’ve grown two heads.
“Were those the wrong answers?”
“No. No, I’m just... surprised,” one of the doctors said. “You were down a long time.”
“Down?”
“You died on the table, ma’am,” another, younger doctor pipes up. “Took us nearly twenty minutes to get you back.”
“O-oh.” Something like a spear shoots through my heart. Beth, who’s been my best friend for my whole life, is dead.
She tried to kill me and my son, and now she’s dead.
And I feel...
Nothing.
I don’t even feel fully present, don’t feel right. It feels like maybe Beth did kill me and I’m just floating through the motions.
After the doctors finish, Dario paces around my room as if he’s nervous.
I follow him with my eyes until his pacing in a circle gives me a headache.
“You can sit down, you know. It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”
He stills and sits, but his leg still jiggles.
“Dario. What’s going on?”
“I almost lost you,” he says again, lower. “You said you were leaving and what did I do? Went out drinking with Rocco, tried to drown my sorrows. That’s why I wasn’t there, Li.”
“You couldn’t have known—”
“But I did know,” he says fiercely, looking up me. “I knew that she betrayed our family, that she’d go after you next.”
“You couldn’t have imagined it would go down like it did. It’s not your fault.”
He scoffs and looks away from me.
I reach over to grab his hand, pulling it into my lap and squeezing it.
“Dario. It’s not your fault.”
He lets out a long breath and wipes at his eyes. He’s been so kind to me since I woke up, so... soft. It reminds me of when we first started seeing each other, how attentive he was then.
Giovanni knocks lightly on the door and my son tackles me. I make a sound in the back of my throat, grunting and laughing as I hold him close.
He kisses all along my face. “Mama! I knew you would wake up! Didn’t I tell you, Uncle Giovanni?”
“He did. Tells me every day his Mama is going to wake up,” Giovanni says with a smile.
My chest aches. Oh, my poor boy. Waiting nearly a week for Mama to wake up.
“And I was right!” he chirps, hugging me tightly.
“You were right,” I say softly, hugging him back.
Sonny reluctantly lets me go when Giovani offers him a trip to the gift shop to get me a balloon.
“I’ll get you the biggest one, Mama,” Sonny tells me as he leaves the hospital room, and I smile and wave at him.
“You two are good with him,” I have to admit, and Dario grins.
“We just did the best we could. It was mostly Giovanni, if I’m honest. I was kind of... a mess.”
“Because you thought I was...”
“They told me you might not wake up,” he says flatly, and I reach out for his hand again. He interlinks his fingers with mine.
“I did wake up.”
“Thank God. Li, tell me you won’t leave. That you won’t have the marriage annulled.”
“I thought that was always the plan,” I say hesitantly. I don’t want to have it annulled anymore, if I ever did.
But God, what does that say about me? I remember the pocket watch, possibly identical to the one my father had. Had Dario killed him?
“Not now,” Dario insists. “Please, move back in with me. Get settled. Get better.”
I nod slowly. It’s not really like I have any other choice. Beth is my only other support and now she’s gone.
I feel this hole in me when I think about her. Like something was there but now it’s missing and I can’t quite remember how it felt when it was full.
It’s infuriating. I wish I could just forget. All of it.
I sit up and Dario helps me, fluffing the pillow behind me. He brushes my hair back from my face.
“You won’t leave?” he asks again, and I smile.
“I won’t leave. Where else would I go?”
He doesn’t answer, just drawing my knuckles to his lips.
They don’t discharge me for two days, and poor Dario keeps falling asleep in the chair next to my bed.
When Giovanni brings Sonny for a visit I gesture to the sleeping Dario.
“Take him home and make him rest,” I tell him.
Giovanni kicks Dario awake.
“Let’s go home, boss.”
“No,” he says, words thick with sleep, hair hanging over his face. Like a little boy.
I roll my eyes but I can’t help smiling.
“You won’t go home?”
“Not until you do. I won’t sleep until you’re in bed next to me.”
My eyes widen but Sonny doesn’t bat an eye, playing with his trains on the side of my bed.
“Alright, then,” I say finally, quietly, feeling more pleased than I have any right to.
It isn’t until we’re on the way home the next morning that I ask Dario what I’ve been wanting to know.
“Your father and my father... they didn’t get along?”
He shakes his head. “No. Some fight over a pocket watch, of all things.”
“A pocket watch?” My ears perk up as I look over at him.
He chuckles low in his throat. “My father gave me this old silver pocket watch. I was wearing it at an event your father was at. He was drunk and accused me of stealing it. We got in a fight about it. A physical one.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Papa never could hold his liquor.”
Dario barks out a laugh. “He sure couldn’t. Barely got a hit in. Turns out, it was a pocket watch he gave my father when they were young and friends. I guess he was offended that my father gave it to me.”
I laugh along with him, but I’m not sure it’s funny. That small event wouldn’t be enough for Dario to kill him, would it?
Nothing makes sense anymore. I’m married to the man who broke my heart, my father and my best friend are both dead, and he’s my only support.
What’s happened to my life?
Sonny heads off to his room, tired after being at the hospital all week, and Dario holds an arm tight around my waist, escorting me to the master bedroom.
“I guess I’m moving rooms,” I drawl, and Dario glares at me.
“Don’t play with me right now, Li. I’m serious, I won’t sleep unless you’re next to me.”
“Alright, alright, grumpy bear,” I tease, stripping down to my underwear and crawling into bed. I’m exhausted, too. They never let you sleep in the hospital, coming in and out to check your vitals all the time.
He watches with dark eyes as I undress, doing the same. He’s down to just his boxer briefs when he gets into bed, pulling me close before pulling the covers over both of us.
He settles in, my head pulled against his chest, and when we’re skin to skin he seems to finally relax, letting out a long breath through his nostrils.
“There,” he sighs, and soon enough, he’s snoring with his arms locked around me.
I couldn’t go anywhere if I tried. Not that I want to. My eyelids already feel heavy.
But as soon as I close them, I see Beth’s face twisted in a sneer when she tried to kill me.
I wait until Dario is well and truly asleep before getting up and heading downstairs.
I nearly scream when I see Sofia is in the kitchen, making tea.
I press my hand against my heart.
“You scared the daylights out of me!”
“Did I? It’s still early, thought the lot of you would still be asleep,” she says with a chuckle, pulling out another teacup.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Well, if I slept for a week I’d have trouble, too.” There’s the lilt of a tease in her voice and I smile.
“You knew about that?”
“Of course. The boss was gone all week. Wouldn’t leave your side. Neither would that boy of yours. Dario tried to have Marie watch him, but he wanted to be at your bedside.”
I can’t help but crack a smile.
Like father, like son. Both stubborn as mules.
“We were all rooting for you, miss.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“After his parents went, the boss was different. Sad. He’s better now that you’re around.”
“He is?”
She nods. “There’s life in his face again, blood in his cheeks.”
I go quiet, sipping the tea.
“He loves you, you know. And the boy, too. He never was good at showing it.”
My mouth goes dry.
“Thank you for the tea, Sofia,” I whisper, getting up and leaving the kitchen. I head back upstairs and into Dario’s room.
He’s still sound asleep, like I knew he would be, but he grunts and draws me back into his arms when I climb into bed and disturb him.
His arms lock tight around me again, and this time, when I listen to his heartbeat, I’m able to drift off into a blissfully dreamless sleep.