Page 8 of Dante
I drop to my knees beside him. My hands hover over his body, shaking, useless. Where do I even start? His face is gray. Waxy. His breathing is shallow, ragged.
"Dante." I grab his shoulder, shake him. Nothing. "Dante, wake up."
He doesn't respond.
The blood keeps spreading.
I press my hand against his side where the jacket is soaked through. Warm. Too warm. It seeps between my fingers and I gag.
Think. Think. Think.
I can't call 911. I know that much. Whatever happened to him, whatever he did—hospitals mean police. Police mean questions. Questions mean the Sartori family.
And the Sartori family means?—
I shove that thought away. Focus.
He's too heavy. I try to hook my arms under his shoulders, try to drag him inside, but he's dead weight. Two hundred pounds of muscle and bone and I can barely shift him an inch.
"Come on." My voice cracks. "Come on, you bastard, help me."
Nothing.
A door opens somewhere down the hall.
My heart stops.
Footsteps. Someone walking toward the stairs. Mrs. Patterson from 4A, probably. She takes her dog out every night at this time.
I flatten myself against Dante's body, trying to shield the blood from view. Trying to look like anything other than what this is.
The footsteps pass. Fade. A door closes.
I exhale.
But my hands won't stop shaking. My whole body is trembling now, that familiar feeling crawling up my spine. The one that comes before everything falls apart.
Not now. Please, not now.
I look at Dante's face. At the sharp lines of his jaw, the dark stubble, the scar through his eyebrow. He looks younger like this. Vulnerable. Nothing like the man who threw me over hisshoulder two years ago. Nothing like the enforcer who sat at my hospital bed for days.
He came here.
Of all the places he could have gone, he came here.
I don't have time to think about what that means.
"Stay here," I whisper, which is stupid because he's unconscious and couldn't go anywhere if he tried. But I say it anyway. "Don't you dare die in my hallway."
I scramble to my feet. Rush inside.
I yank open the cabinet above the fridge. My hands close around a bottle of whiskey. A gift from a coworker I never opened. I grab it, grab a dish towel, and run back to the door.
He hasn't moved.
The blood has spread further.
I kneel beside him again, uncap the whiskey with my teeth. The smell burns my nostrils.
