"But somebody pulled him out," Umberto said. "Somebody helped him."
"I told you to stop anyone who got in the way," Primo said. "I told you not to let anybody help him."
"I know, but—"
"Another but?" Primo sat up straight. "I told you this was too important for you to let anything get in the way. We had one shot at this. One. Failure isn't an option. So I want to know what you were thinking. I want to know who was so important that you ignored an order!"
Umberto hesitated, like he didn't want to answer, but he had no choice. "It was Dante."
Primo forced himself not to react to that information. Dante. His son had made himself scarce since his hospitalization, the Dante returned not the same one Primo had raised. An imposter walked around in his body, wearing his face, constantly getting in the way. He'd gone from being the apple of Primo's eye to the bane of his existence.
Primo hadn't been sure what to do about it. He'd held out hope that he'd come around, but months had passed and things progressed in the wrong direction, only getting worse.
"Did you confront him?"
"Dante?"
"Amaro."
"Oh, yeah. He took one look at me and knew what was happening, so my questions mostly fell on deaf ears. I did get one thing out of him, though."
"What?"
"That you were right."
While he should've felt relief, hearing confirmation, Primo was overcome with anger. "He told you that?"
"In not so many words," Umberto said. "I told him we were looking, that we wouldn't stop until we found what we sought. He told me we could tear the city apart all we wanted, but we weren't going to flush them out, because, and I quote, 'They left New York'."
Primo stared at the wall as he tried to control the fury building up inside of him. Someone had to have helped them. Someone had to be protecting them. They'd conspired before to shield Matteo from his reach and someone was doing it again.
Only this time, they were hiding his daughter with him. His own flesh and blood, betraying him time and again, trying to get one over on him, but he wouldn't let it happen.
No bodies in the car. Primo wasn't stupid. Barsanti's defeated behavior told Primo that he had nothing to do with it, that he had no idea of the truth. His misery was genuine, his common sense clouded by grief. They hadn't been hiding anywhere they'd gone before, but they had to be somewhere.
And he'd find them.
"Bring Dante in," Primo said. "If someone tries to stop you, kill them… even if that someone is him."
There's a particular smell in hospitals that most people associate with sickness, but Dante knew the odor came from a specific chemical. Iodoform. It treated skin infections as an antiseptic and cleaned corridors as a disinfectant, clinging to patients and everything around them, even following Gabriella home on her scrubs every morning.
Dante fucking hated it.
Because all the knowledge in the world couldn't keep him from associating the stench with dying. It was unconscious, a sensation that hit him the moment he stepped foot in Presbyterian hospital.
His chest tightened, his lungs on fire. Or fuck, maybe that was still the smoke inhalation…
Men packed the waiting rooms, filling the chairs and lingering in the corners, some wandering the hallways while others lurked outside the doors, waiting for news. Dozens of them, from bosses down to street soldiers, held vigil, a few different families present in a show of solidarity.
But Dante noticed, as he took in the crowd, that not a single Galante had come… no one except for him. It was no wonder, knowing what Dante knew, what Dante suspected every other man there believed to be true, based on the skeptical looks cast his way. The Galante family was the culprit. The sins of the father fucking up his kids again.
Dante didn't stop, didn't acknowledge anybody, heading for the elevator and heading up to the ICU. He stepped off onto the floor, pausing to collect himself. An alarm went off in the distance, a loud blare of beeping assaulting his ears.
"You're actually here."
Gabriella leaned against the wall beside the elevator, appearing exhausted, although her shift wasn't even halfway over.
"You look like you knew I was coming."
"I did," she said. "Someone called Gavin from downstairs, said you were spotted in the building. I was sitting there when they warned him."