Page 108 of Enforcer
“Girl, you’ve taken ten years off my life these last two weeks,” Brynne says, sitting on the edge of the bed and gingerly working strands of my hair behind my ears.
“I’m sorry. It was such an awful accident,” I swallow. “I didn’t think I was going to survive.”
Her smile is a bit off and indecipherable, and I don’t have the gall to ask her the meaning behind it.
“Well, I’m thankful you’re a fighter. Dante’s giving it hell, too. He’s getting better every day.”
“I want to see him,” I say, ripping the covers back on the left side of the bed to move my legs off.
As soon as my eyes run over the tube coming from beneath my gown and over my thigh with urine filtering through it, however, I realize I’m in no shape to go wandering through the halls to him.
Brynne pulls the covers back over me, tucking me back in. “You can see him once you can get there without tubes sticking out of you, okay?”
Tears fall down my cheeks, and Brynne hugs me close.
“I’m so sorry for all of this,” she says, holding me as if it’s the only way she can improve anything.
“You don’t need to be sorry,” I tell her. “Accidents happen, B.”
She sits back, eyes filled with ghosts of things her lips don’t say.
“What? What is it? Tell me, for fuck’s sake,” I plead, voice barely above a whisper.
“It wasn’t an accident.”
I swallow the fear and bile that rises. “What do you mean?”
“The Romano family made a move against both families. They sent a message back for the one Dante sent them.”
My heart is racing, and the pounding of it in my ears is so fucking loud I can barely think to say anything in reply.
“And what message did he send them?” I ask.
It must’ve been awful to answer in such a way as they had.
She winces. “Their cousin’s head in a box.”
I realize now that I’m lucky to be alive. Not that they meant to leave me alive.
“We’re going to retaliate, don’t you worry,” Brynne says, rambling off to tell me how they will avenge us in detail, but I can’t listen.
This life is becoming something I can’t take. It’s bad enough that Dante has chiseled his name into my fucking soul, but now there are attempts on my life? Also, to think that I could still lose Dante to this wreck…
I can’t fathom it all.
It’s heavy.
This is the reason I never let myself get close to anyone. The hurt drilling holes in my heart as we speak is the exact fucking reason.
Even if I lose him in a wholly different way, I’m still going to become my mother.
Because I’ll be a shell of myself without him, even if it pains me to admit it.
One Week Later
“Look at you!”Antonio says, coming into the room with flowers sprouting from a crystal vase.
I’m beside Dante’s bedside, eating ice cream from a styrofoam cup the nurse gave me.