Page 109 of Knocked Up by My Dad's Mafia Boss

“All Saints. Room two-ten.”

She breathes out a sigh. “I’ll be there in an hour. And Samantha?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

I hang up the phone, walking back into the hospital room. “Your girl will be here in an hour.”

Reese grins, his whole face lighting up. “She’s coming here? Really?”

“Really.” I lean down and kiss him on the forehead.

Ricardo’s quiet on the way back home. He gets out and comes inside with me, then goes up the stairs without saying goodnight.

I noticed Dante’s car was missing from the garage. It’s already late, nearly two in the morning.Where is he?

I blow out a breath, hating myself. It doesn’t matter where he is. But I can’t stop worrying as the night goes on and he doesn’t pull into the driveway. I keep checking out my bedroom window.

Finally, near daylight, I fall asleep.

I dream of him.

28

DANTE

No matter how much I drink, I can’t seem to forget. The world goes blurry around the edges, my speech slow and thick, but I can still remember Samantha’s amber-brown eyes. The way she looked at me. Like I might have hit her.

My knuckles are bruised and bloodied as I clench my fist around my glass. The bartender gives me a sideways glance. “Bad night?”

I snort. “You could say that.”

“You do something you shouldn’t?”

“Something like that.”

He ticks his head at my nearly-empty glass. “That won’t keep you from making bad decisions, you know.”

“Might.”

The only bad decision it’s making me want to make is knocking on Samantha’s bedroom door, begging her on my knees to come back. All the fight has gone out of me. I think about bravingthe twenty minute drive back to my own apartment, but in my current state I’ll end up wrapping myself around a tree. I have a fleeting thought that maybe that might be best for everyone.

Instead, I call a cab. It takes them nearly half an hour to get there and I’m heaving into the bushes. Nothing’s coming up. I haven’t ingested anything but ginger ale and scotch since breakfast. The cab driver raises an eyebrow. “It’s an extra hundred if you barf in here, big boy.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I mutter, and he takes off. My stomach rolls but doesn’t completely revolt on the drive back to Elio’s mansion. The place that I’d once called home doesn’t feel like it anymore.

It feels like my own personal hell.

I fumble with the gate code but finally get it in, and the taxi pulls me up to the door. I slide him two hundred bucks.

“This is way too much, you didn’t?—”

“Just keep it.”

He grins, tips his hat at me. “You made my night, big guy. Get in safe.”