I knew all that.
I just hadn’t expected to experience it myself.
Snapshots of what I thought was reality pushed through my subconscious to the all-encompassing black abyss I kept falling into.
I knew the hospital was in the United States—I heard English from the doctor, and I heard my mother crying and asking if I would be okay.
I focused long enough to tell them my age, my name, and what I thought had happened. I believe I answered all the questions. I was just too tired to answer more.
Blackness found me, and I went under again.
When I came to, I heard my sister’s voice. She was crying now too.
Everyone was always crying.
Had a week passed, a day, just an hour?
She wasn’t alone with me though.
“She’s going to be okay, Izzy,” Dante said. His voice was the one I needed to hear.
My muscles relaxed, my body stopped tensing, the pain in my head seemed to vanish.
But then I heard the strain in his voice, the little quiver. “Izzy, don’t cry. She’ll be just fine, huh? And then we’ll be back to work. You and me, right?”
That sounded odd.
Wrong.
Him and her.
“She has to be,” Izzy whispered. Then I heard footsteps pacing back and forth. “Thank you for staying with me and her tonight. I don’t think I could be alone.”
“I wouldn’t leave.” Dante’s voice was firm, solid, like he wanted to comfort her.
Not me.
A soft breath was taken before she whispered, “I know. I’m … You always take care of me, Dante. Jesus, when no one else did, you took care of me.”
“And I always will, Izzy. You’re my girl, you know that?”
I heard rustling, and it was enough to make my eyes open to see what I needed to see.
Izzy was in Dante’s arms, her lips on the lips I thought were mine.
He didn’t fight her off.
He wasn’t even pushing her away. His hands were on her shoulders.
He’d said she was his girl.
And then the hospital did what hospitals do. It recorded my heart beat—how it picked up, how suddenly it started going a million times a minute—as I stared at them, eyes wide.
Immediately, Dante’s hands pushed her back like he could hide what I’d just seen. He rushed toward me, but my mind ran away.
I whispered, “You let her kiss you.”
And I was gone again.
27
Fight for the One You Love
Dante
There’s a moment when a person knows they’re in love because they find themselves wondering what can be done to make the other person happy, even if it causes their own pain.
They find themselves doing things that are completely against their own logic.
Iago probably could have fed us more information. He probably could have been an asset in one way or the other. The authorities didn’t need unnecessary clean-up either.
Yet, I found his demise necessary. I contemplated ripping him apart limb by limb in front of her. I was blind in my love for her, too furious to see any other way.
Love for her would breed that emotion in me always. It was the only thing that could rip me from my calm. It made it clear that Lilah would have been better off without me. She needed a stable person in her life, someone to comfort her and be a steady rock when life got hard.
But I could protect her.
She was my lamb. And I was her wolf.
And no one, not a single soul, would protect her better than me. And if I was going to bring her pain or torture, feast on that prey like a predator, I would do it in the best way possible because I knew her. I breathed with her, molded to her, and was within her. We were one entity, and no one was going to tear us apart.
When she passed out on that cabin floor, I had been ready to meet her in heaven or hell had we not got her vitals stable. We called in medics and doctors to check her, and her brain injury was monitored as we flew her home.
I was by her side every moment I could be. I fielded questions and answered calls. I don’t think any of the family thought to ask anything because it was technically part of a drug bust. Izzy explained our undercover work to her parents. She admitted it because she’d finally accomplished the job. Case closed. Her brothers weren’t home yet, but I saw how her parents looked at me. Her mother’s brow furrowed, and she rubbed her forehead like she wasn’t sure whether to thank me or smack me.
“Mrs. Hardy—” I started.
“Oh, don’t smooth the waters now, Dante. I’ll probably want to thank you later. I just need a minute to take it all in.” She waved off any explanation I could offer and hugged me in the hospital’s waiting room.