Sweetest Sorrow (Forbidden Book 2) (48 page)

"I love you," Dante said quietly.

Her eyes flickered to him with surprise. "I love you, too."

He smiled slightly, his vision blurry. "Don't let me die alone in the dark, Gabby."

Gabby
. He'd never called her that before, even though she'd asked him to.

"You're not dying, Dante," she said, "nor are you alone. Nor is it even
dark
right now. You're going to be just fine."

"Good," Dante said, closing his eyes and grimacing as she poked and prodded. "Because if I die, I really think Gavin might cry."

"Fuck you," Gavin muttered, standing close enough to hear.

Sirens blared in the distance. EMS, maybe. Police, most likely. A shooting in broad daylight tended to ignite a full response. Medics surrounded Dante within minutes, putting him on a stretcher while officers fired questions his way that he had no desire to answer.

As Dante was loaded into the back of an ambulance, he heard his sister's voice. His eyes drifted to where she stood along the curb, flanked by Matteo and Gavin, police surrounding them, asking the same questions they'd asked Dante.

"Wait, it wasn't
you
?" Genna asked, her voice high-pitched, forced, as she addressed a uniformed officer. "I swear I thought it was. You didn't kill that guy? You sure?"

Man, she was a terrible liar.

She smiled at Dante, but it didn't last long. Her expression shifted as she clutched her stomach, doubling over in pain. She tried to straighten back up, but the second she did, her eyes rolled back and she dropped.

Matteo caught her before she hit the sidewalk.

"Genna?" Dante tried to climb off of the stretcher, but the IVs in his arms tethered him in place, tugging when he moved. Before he could yank them out, medics restrained him, pinning him against the stretcher. "You can't
hold
me. I know my rights!"

"
Go
, Dante," Gabriella begged from outside the ambulance. Not allowed to ride along, officers said, not until she'd answered their questions.
Bullshit
. Matteo knelt beside Genna as medics rushed to her side. "I'll meet you at the hospital."

"But—"

"I swear to God, Dante Galante, if you don't go to the hospital this time, I will end you
myself
. If the blood loss doesn't do it,
I
will."

He intended to keep arguing, but his chest burned, his head pounded, and he wanted more than anything to actually
survive
, so he let them take him to the hospital.

He let them
triage
him.

He let them assess his wound before stitching him up and pumping him full of somebody else's blood and sending him to a recovery room. No surgery needed. Fractured a rib, but hell, he'd fractured a few of those before. That was nothing new.

Give them a day, they told him, so he gave them an hour... an hour before he was sure he wasn't going to die if he skipped out.

He refused further treatment, signing their 'I'm a dumbass but promise not to sue you for it' release form before roaming the hospital, searching for Gabriella. She'd promised to meet him there, so he had no doubt she'd be around
somewhere
.

He spotted her after a few minutes down in the cafeteria, ordering coffee, and staggered up to her. "Can I get one of those, too?"

Gabriella looked at him with shock. "What are you doing?"

"Looking for you."

"I'm right here," she said. "Why aren't you in a
bed
?"

"I got released."

"Against medical advice?"

"Maybe."

She rolled her eyes, muttering under her breath as she gathered the coffees—three of them. "
Idiot
, I swear to God. You're seriously going to die one of these times, and what am I supposed to do then?"

Dante pulled her into his arms, damn near knocking the coffee cups out of her hands. He held her, breathing her in. Vanilla. The hospital stench surrounded them, but she smelled nothing like it. She was the calm in his storm. "Can we just get out of here?"

"Not yet. Your sister…"

"What about her?"

"She's having the baby."

Y
ou are
who you choose to be.

Johnny Amaro had told Matty that once. He never forgot it. He'd been living in New Jersey, going by the last name Brazzi, when his father asked him to move back to New York. For a decade, Matty had waited for that moment, had agonized over if his father would ever welcome him back home. But Matty had just turned eighteen at the time and had been accepted to Princeton, and he'd already given up on them being a family.

And if he were being honest, he didn't
feel
like a Barsanti anymore.

Matty had confessed that to Johnny Amaro, expecting his uncle to lecture him about family loyalty, but that had been the man's response:
you are who you choose to be
. Guilt nagged at Matty for years afterward, and he eventually tried to be that person, but it wasn't
him
.

He'd chosen differently.

And as Matty sat beneath the blinding fluorescents in that busy hospital waiting room, he just kept wondering... who
was
he? If he wasn't a Barsanti, what did that make him? The name was inked on his chest, a permanent part of his body, but what the hell did being a Barsanti mean for somebody?

Sighing, Matty dropped his head down low, running his hands through his hair. The clock ticked away, torturous minutes passing where everything he knew remained in limbo. Every time a door opened, every time someone walked in, his head darted up, eyes seeking
somebody
, desperate for information.

Emergency C-Section. Full placental abruption.

That was all they'd told him as they'd hauled her away.

Genna was having their baby.

He couldn't be there for her.

They told him to wait.

Wait…

Wait…

Wait…

Please, God, let them be okay.

"She's going to be fine, you know," Gavin said, sitting to Matty's left. "We're talking about Genna with a G here. That girl is damn near as tenacious as her brother. They're like cockroaches."

"Gavin…"

"I'm just saying, it'll take a nuclear bomb to wipe those two out. I'm not worried about either one. Dante's like the Hulk. He probably couldn't kill himself if he wanted. It's that Galante blood. Hell, it wouldn't even surprise me if
Primo
walked through that door right now, still kickin'."

Someone entered then, and Matty glanced up. Not Primo, no, but close enough to be concerning.
Dante
. He stood across the waiting room, his expression stoic, nothing sympathetic about his eyes as they pierced right through Matty.

The guy hated him, no question about it.

He probably always would.

And that feeling was mutual.

Dante wandered over, still wearing a bloody shirt, earning him concerned looks from everyone he passed. A deranged look swaddled him, everything disheveled, his bloodshot eyes lined with dark bags, like sleep was just a fleeting memory. He dropped into the empty chair to the right of Matty, slouching and stretching his legs out, tilting his head back to stare up at the bright ceiling.

"I fucking hate this place," Dante muttered.

He was talking to himself, but Matty still responded. "So do I."

"Can I third that?" Gavin asked. "Thank God my father's being released this week so I never have to come back here."

Dante laughed dryly. "I said that after they released me and I've been back twice since. It's a fucking curse."

"Just when I thought I was out," Matty muttered, "they pull me back in again."

Gavin laughed at the
Godfather III
quote, while Dante closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's like summoning fucking Satan."

A grin touched Matty's lips. "You sound like your sister."

"You mean my sister sounds like
me
," Dante said. "I taught that girl everything she knows."

"Hence why she's so aggravating," Gavin pointed out. "Got that from him."

"Oh,
fuck off."
Dante stood to pace around, his gaze scanning the room, settling on the clock on a far wall. "How long has she been wherever the fuck she is? How long is this supposed to
take
?"

"Relax," Gabriella said as she approached, handing coffees to both Matty and Gavin before shoving Dante back into the chair. She dropped two white pills into his palm and offered a bottle of water. "Take this."

Dante looked at her. "Vicodin?"

"Tylenol."

"You couldn't find anything stronger?"

"Yes," she said, "it's called a morphine drip, which they would've been happy to give you had you not checked yourself out like this is just some motel instead of a friggin hospital."

Dante popped the pills in his mouth and took the water from her. He drank damn near half of it in one guzzle before grabbing Gabriella and drawing her to him. Instead of pulling her into his lap, he stood up, slipping around her, shoving her into the chair so he could pace again.

"True or false," Dante said, "the security guards are armed."

Gabriella glared at him. "I swear to
God
…"

"I'm not going to do anything," he said, shooting her a look. "I'm just wondering, if I burst into an operating room, what my chances of getting killed for it are."

"Some of them carry guns," she said. "So I'd say you've got a pretty good chance of being shot."

"Noted."

He paced a few more seconds before Gabriella jumped up, grabbing ahold of him, shoving him back into the chair so hard he winced. She dropped the bottle of water into his lap, pointing right at his face, close enough the tip of her finger jabbed the end of his nose. "You stay right here. I'm going to go see what I can find out. Ugh, if anyone around here is even still talking to me since I got
fired
."

Matty expected an argument from Dante, tensing as he waited for that famed Galante temper, but Dante just sat there, stretching his legs out and leaning his head back, staring up at the ceiling again.

"She got fired?" Confusion laced Gavin's voice. "When?"

"This morning," Dante muttered.

"Why?" Gavin asked. "What did she do?"

"Me," Dante said.

"Oh." A moment of silence passed before Gavin broke out into laughter. "Ah man, really? She lost her job for fucking around with you?"

"I don't see why that's so funny."

"Because," Gavin said, "you're the
worst
consolation prize ever."

Dante shot right back up, and Matty barely had enough time to move out of the way before the bottle of water hurled by him, hitting Gavin in the chest. Dante paced around, eyes continually flickering between the clock and the exit, before he turned his gaze on Matty. "How can you just sit there? Are you not bothered
at all
by this? Do you just not give a shit about my sister?"

"Of course I'm bothered," Matty ground out, "but making a scene doesn't help anybody."

"Helps me," Dante argued. "I feel a hell of a lot better when I'm
doing
something."

"I bet you do," Matty said. "Doesn't matter who gets hurt as long as the great and powerful Dante Galante feels better about himself. My brother can attest to that."

"Oh, whoa, whoa,
whoa
!" Gavin jumped up, sliding in front of Matty's chair when Dante came at him, hands clenched. "You start fighting and you'll
both
get thrown out of here, and then I'll be the only one who gets to see the baby, and while I'm not going to lose any sleep over that fact, I'm pretty sure Genna wouldn't forgive
either
of you assholes for it."

"Is there a problem here?" a stern voice asked, approaching them. Matty looked around Gavin, seeing an older man in a blue uniform behind Dante.
Security
. No gun on him, just pepper spray clipped to his belt, not enough force to stop someone like Dante but certainly enough to piss him off
more
.

"No problem," Dante said, his tone clipped. "Except that this hospital is
bullshit
."

"Everything's fine," Gavin said, smiling as he addressed the security guard. "This one's just getting a little impatient. He's going to take a seat and shut up now, though… isn't he?"

Gavin glared at Dante, who just shrugged as he sat back down. Security eyed him warily before strolling over to the side of the room, leaning against the wall to keep an eye on them.

"We're going to have to find some constructive way for you two to work this shit out," Gavin said, retaking his seat. "A boxing ring. Paintball. Couple's therapy.
Something
."

"There's nothing to work out," Matty said.

Dante motioned to Matty. "What he said."

"Well, that's a start," Gavin said. "You're agreeing on something. I mean, you're agreeing that you hate each other, but that's something, so… keep up the good work."

It took a minute at most before Dante was back out of his seat, and a minute after that Gabriella resurfaced. Matty stared at her as his heart hammered in his chest. He'd tried damn hard to keep calm the hour or so they sat there, waiting, but every second that passed without news was more opportunity for
complications
.

Dante stopped pacing as Gabriella approached him.

"You just don't listen, do you?" she asked, shaking her head.

"You wouldn't love me if I did," he responded. "Did you find out anything?"

"She's in recovery," Gabriella said. "They're moving her to a room."

"And she's okay?" Dante asked.

"She's fine," Gabriella confirmed. "The baby, too."

Matty closed his eyes, exhaling at those words. He felt like he'd been holding his breath for an entire goddamn hour.

"Nobody would give me more than that," Gabriella said, turning to Matty with a frown. "They wouldn't even tell me what she had."

"It's a boy," Gavin chimed in, slapping Matty on the back. "Baby boy Barsanti."

Dante groaned, running his hands down his face as he dropped back into the chair. Up and down, up and down, like a damn teeter-totter.

"How do you know?" Gabriella asked suspiciously, looking at Gavin.

"Matty-B told me," Gavin said. "He knew what they were having."

Gabriella shot Matty a look before turning to Dante.

"Don't look at me," Dante muttered. "Nobody tells me shit."

Gabriella scowled, kicking his shin, before turning back to Matty. "So, a son, huh?"

"Yeah," he whispered. "A son."

He had a son.

Twenty minutes
. Twenty more agonizing minutes before someone appeared in the waiting room to address Matty, to tell him Genna and the baby were both safe and sound in a room down the hall.
212
. The second those words came from someone's lips, Matty was out of his chair.

"About fucking time," Dante grumbled, trying to stand up, but Gabriella blocked him.

"We should let Matty go first, you know, to see them," she said. "Give him a minute."

"He's got
one
minute."

"Thirty minutes," Gabriella argued, "at least."

"Fifteen," Dante countered, "at
most
."

Matty didn't hang around to hear the rest of that conversation, wasting not a second longer. Room 212. The number rang through his mind as he raced down the hallway, breaking out into a sprint.
212. 212. 212
. He skidded to a stop when he saw it etched on a panel outside a closed tan door. 212. He didn't bother knocking, his leftover patience still somewhere back in that waiting room. He thrust the door open, bursting inside, and came to a dead stop as soon as he did.

Genna sat in the propped-up hospital bed, hair an utter mess, hospital gown askew. Her face was ashen, but the smile on her lips… the smile made her
glow
. Her eyes were fixed downward, to the small bundle cradled in her arms, wrapped up in a white blanket trimmed with pink and blue. So much warmth radiated from her, so much
love
, that it lit up the entire room. Nurses moved around her, checking vitals and tinkering with machines, but Matty paid them no attention.

His eyes were only for
her
.

Growing up, Matty never wanted children of his own. He never even imagined a reality where he'd bring one into existence. His world had been destroyed when he was just a kid, ripped to pieces by the life he'd been born into, a life he never asked for. But in that life, the one his father had brought children into… the life Genna, too, had been given… you didn't get a choice in the matter. The moment you took your first breath, you became a part of it, and nothing short of death would help you escape. He'd tried, so many times, and each time, something drew him right back in. Because the life didn't give up on you, and it wouldn't let you give up on it, either. There was no
live and let live
in their world… it had been
kill or be killed
. His best friend lost his life, and so many times… so many fucking times… Matty wished
he'd
been the one to die instead.

And that, he knew, was no kind of life for a child. He wouldn't have wished those feelings on his worst enemy. He
hadn't
wished them on his worst enemy. Because according to the life, the one he'd been forced into, his worst enemy sat in front of him, cradling a baby he never knew he wanted until it became his reality.

Now, standing there, he couldn't imagine a world without them.

"Daddy's here," Genna whispered, barely loud enough for him to hear, before her gaze lifted, meeting his across the room. "He looks like he's three seconds away from a trip to the psych ward, but he's here."

Matty stood frozen, in utter silence, until the nurses walked out and left them alone. Slowly, he approached, stepping closer to the bed, as he glanced down into Genna's arms, at the little boy he knew he couldn't live without now. A little boy he'd protect for the rest of his life, a little boy he'd fight to save from the world he'd grown up in.

Dark, thick hair and tanned skin, soft, round cheeks with just a hint of pink. He looked nothing like his mother and everything like Matty. It was like staring at a baby picture of himself.
Surreal
. The baby was fast asleep, his mouth open just a bit as he breathed through it.