Page 141 of Valentino

Breathing. Asking about me. Refusing to sit down until someone made her.

So completely Amanda that my eyes sting against the table.

My fingers curl against the sheet, reaching for beads that aren't there. The rosary is gone. In Basile's house. In an evidence bag. Somewhere I can't reach. My father carried it through worse nights than this one, and right now I'd trade damn near anything to feel the worn beads in my hand again.

I walked into that house to die.

That was the trade. My blood for hers. Enzo's grief wanted the right man, and I gave him one.

I made peace with it at the gate.

Men like me don't get rescued from rooms like that. We are the ones who pull people out. When our turn comes, no one comes through the door.

Tonight, someone did.

I press my forehead harder into the table.

I don't have the rosary. I don't have the words. The prayer comes anyway, rough and wordless, pulled out of the part of me that still remembers how to ask.

Twenty-two years, I prayed like a man making payments on a debt.

I never asked God to save me.

He did it anyway.

The needle pulls through again. Stitch by stitch, someone puts me back together.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Amanda

Dante Castellani stands in the doorway.

In Italy.

In my hospital room.

"Thank God," I say.

It comes out wet because I'm already crying. The tears come fast, no warning, like my body waited until I saw someone familiar before it let go.

"Oh, thank God. Thank God."

He crosses the room without hurrying and takes my hand in both of his.

"Hello, Amanda," he says, like we ran into each other at dinner.

I hug him.

He stiffens immediately. Dante hates hugs the way some men hate confession, and I don't care. I press my face into his lapel and hold on. He smells like cigarette smoke and expensive wool, and under it, something familiar enough to hurt. Chicago. Vittoria's house. Sunday dinners. Men talking low in the next room while Aria kept putting food on my plate.

I grew up on the edges of these people.

Right now, Dante is the closest thing to home I have.

After a second, his hand comes up and pats my back twice.

For Dante, that is practically weeping.