Chapter 28

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

ALYSSA

T he world around me seems both loud and dull at the same time. Sirens and lights blast through the shattered windows. My hand holds Dante’s, our blood mingling as it moves down my arm and drips off my elbow while we dangle upside down in the flipped car.“Dante,” I whisper weakly, my vision blurring.

He hasn’t even as much as groaned, and it’s making me so fucking anxious that he’s not alright. The car hit his side, and I don’t know how they’re going to get him out.

“Ma’am,” someone’s voice filters through the beating in my ears, the ringing silence. “Ma’am!”

I roll my eyes toward the window beside me the best I can.

“There you are, sweetheart,” the man lingering there in a fireman’s uniform tells me in a thick New York accent. “I need you to focus on me, alright?”

I shake my head. “Get him first. Please, get him out first,” I plead.

His eyes flick over to Dante momentarily. "I’ve got a team of guys getting that side open, alright? My priority is you.”

I want to argue with him, but I want him to get Dante out first. Then I’ll be fine.

Logic tells me that I don’t know if I’m fine.

Nausea swirls as the pain begins to flood through the haze of adrenaline.

I close my eyes to try to keep my composure.

“No, don’t do that. Stay with me, sweetheart,” the man says as I hear what sounds like saws against metal on Dante’s side.

“Look at me!”

I open my eyes and pin him with a glare. I don’t know why I’m so frustrated, but I want to go home.

I’m tired, and I don’t feel good.

“I’m going to cut this belt, alright? As soon as you drop, my friend Charlie here will help me pull you out, okay?”

I nod, sniffling. I hadn’t realized I’d been crying this entire time.

The fireman works some cutter through the belt, and when it pops finally, my weight flies free.

Charlie is there, though. He braces my fall, and the two men tug me out of the window slowly, carefully.

Like I’m breakable now , even though I survived the horrific crash.

Metal bending and squealing still fill the air as they work to get Dante out. I try to take a backward glance as I’m strapped to a board and lifted off the ground, but I can’t.

“Is he going to be alright?” I ask Charlie.

He’s young—my age, with kind brown eyes and red hair.

Funny. Charlie, the fireman with fire-engine red hair.

“I don’t know, ma’am. We have to ensure you’re going to be alright. That’s my job today.”

I’m shut into an ambulance, and two paramedics start to asses me before putting in an IV and hooking me to monitors.

The ride to the hospital is a blur. I can’t help but feel I’ve left Dante behind.

Is he still trapped?

Is he scared?

Is he alive?

“Ma’am?! Stay with me, alright?” the female paramedic says, working furiously over my body, accepting things from the man to my left.

Stay with her? I’m right here.

My vision pinpoints, seeming as if I’m going through a dark tunnel—one that might have death on the other end.

“Ma’am!”

My eyes close, and I listen to the sound of my heart slowing down as a peaceful, warm feeling washes over me—a feeling not many know and few come back from.

When I come to, I’m fighting mad. Hands hold me down as I grasp something that’s gagging me and yank it, which only gags me more.

“Calm down, killer. Antonio went to get the nurse. Breathe through your nose for a few minutes.”

It’s Lorenzo. A voice I recognize, even with my eyes closed.

“How long has she been awake?” a woman asks.

To which Antonio replies, “Only a few minutes. She came to out of nowhere and started yanking on her tube.”

“That’s typical. Alyssa, dear, can you open your eyes for me? If I’m going to take this out, I need you to help me do it, alright?” the nurse says.

I open my eyes, blinking through the remnants of sleep and the fog of what I can only assume are drugs to keep me sedated.

“There you are. Alright, this is how we’re going to do this…”

She gives me instructions to cough as she tugs to help ease the tube out of my throat so I don’t gag as severely. It still fucking sucks, but once it’s out, I take a deep breath of my own and wipe away the water trickling out of my eyes.

“Good job. Good to see you awake and alert,” the nurse says, looking over my poles and monitors. “I’m going to get the doctor and have him come assess her,” she tells Lorenzo.

Both men look ragged.

How long have I been out for?

I try to speak, but my throat feels like someone’s been inside it with sandpaper.

“It’s alright.” Lorenzo sits on the edge of the bed, grabbing my hands and covering them with his own. “Dante is stable now. He’s had two surgeries, and he’s in rough shape, but they finally have him stable.”

I clear my throat as Antonio leans over with a glass of water, holding the straw steady for me to drink.

Once the water slides down, I feel a sense of renewed energy, even if it’s false.

“Will he be alright?” I whisper.

Lorenzo looks at Antonio before answering, and I don’t like its implication. “We don’t know. They’ve put him in a medical coma so that he has the best chance of recovery.”

The news hits me like a ton of bricks. My body flushes with worry and sadness, waves of emotions crashing together like the ferocious waves of the ocean during a storm.

I don’t know how to handle them, either. They’re nearly choking me.

“Brynne and Slate should be here soon,” Antonio tells Lorenzo, to which Lorenzo nods.

“They left their honeymoon?” I whisper, my voice breaking through here and there as it tries to return.

Another look passes between them.

“Stop doing that shit, I’m right here. Talk to me.”

“Sorry,” they both mutter.

“Their honeymoon ended two weeks ago, Lyss,” Antonio says, taking my hand from Lorenzo.

He squeezes it, and it feels like the only thing keeping me sane.

“Two weeks,” I say, eyes watering. “I’ve been here for two weeks?”

The door opens, Brynne walks in, and then she stops dead. Her hands cover her mouth, and then she rushes me.

Lorenzo and Antonio fade to the corner of the room where Slate walks over to them, hands in pockets as they whisper amongst themselves.

“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.

The machine beside me inflates and deflates Dante’s chest. Yesterday, he’d taken breaths over the machine, but today, none.

“Yeah, look at me,” I bite out in reply.

Antonio puts the flowers with the many others. Some are from other families in the city, and some are from those supported by the Ricci family members, who only wish to convey their love and prayers.

“You alright?” Antonio asks, coming up beside me. He rests his hand on my shoulder in silent comfort.

I’m getting increasingly weary and disillusioned by the idea that Dante isn’t going to come around.

It’s been weeks, three to be exact. He should be waking up.

Logically, I know they’re keeping him sedated because of the massive injury he sustained to his head in the crash. They had to alleviate pressure by doing surgery, so they wanted his body to have time to heal itself. Slowly.

The longer I’ve been bedside, the angrier I’ve gotten.

Not at Dante, not even at the Romanos.

At myself.

“Alyssa?” Antonio asks when I don’t answer.

“I’m fine.”

Standing, I walk over to the trash.

My broken ribs argue with me after I toss the ice cream a bit too rough for their liking.

“Why don’t you go get some rest? I’ll stay with him.”

I’ve been beside him since I was discharged. I showered in his bathroom, slept in a chair next to the bed, and ate whatever food the cafeteria would send to his room.

Other than when Brynne and Slate come and bring me home-cooked food.

I’ve been arguing with them about leaving and holding steady in that argument as time passed, but today, I’m tired.

“I think I will,” I whisper. “I’m going to go home and rest.”

Though, I have an antsy energy in my chest as I say the words. It’s as if I don’t believe them myself.

“Good,” Antonio says, face lighting at the idea of being the one to get me to see reason. “Go and get some rest and take time for yourself. I’ll be here and won’t leave until someone else relieves me. He won’t be alone.”

I nod. How do I tell him I’m not worried about Dante being the one alone, though? How do I admit to even myself that I’m concerned about being without Dante when I didn’t want to fall for his stubborn ass in the first fucking place?

“Rest,” I mutter, grabbing my purse. Brynne brought it to me a few days ago in case I decided to leave and return to the townhouse.

“Pauly is downstairs waiting on me; he’ll take you where you need to go,” Antonio says, and I barely hear him as I head for the elevators.

The ride home is filled with racing thoughts and anxious energy that even Pauly picks up on because he asks me if I’m alright nearly fifty times.

I let myself into the townhouse and headed straight for the bedroom.

I don’t run the bath, though. And I don’t get into bed; I do as Antonio told me.

I head to the closet, get my bags, and fill them.

This situation has shown me why I should’ve stayed true to myself.

There’s so much pain needling through my heart and soul that I can barely breathe. I can’t function through it, which is how my mom felt.

Albeit she was cheated on and he left her, but if I were to get through this…. If I were to get through this, I would fall even more in love with Dante, only for him to eventually leave or get shot, or…

I swallow through a sob, hearing myself scream as if I’m having an out-of-body experience.

“I can’t do this. This is too hard,” I cry, slumping to the ground with a handful of clothes, clutching them to my chest like they’ll make it better.

Nothing is going to make this better.

Nothing but time.

All of this is my fault for being too weak. Dante might not be in that bed had I not been weak. If I would’ve stuck to my guns and kept him at arm’s length, we wouldn’t have been on a date, and they wouldn’t have caught him unaware.

I crawl off the ground, stuffing the clothes in my suitcases, renewed in my decision.

I can’t be for him what he is already becoming to me.

Weakness.

So, as I robotically shut down my emotions, I internally sever the ties that have begun to bind me to the Enforcer I should’ve never let in.

I’m going to do what he can’t. I will save us both by leaving and being the bigger person.

Not because this is too hard, but because we both don’t deserve this hurt.

If we fall deeper, it’ll only hurt worse.

I’m going to save us both.

Even if it kills me.