she said that. He knew she was talking about Dante, considering she'd been too young to ever remember Joey being alive. Matty remembered him, though. And one thing he never forgot about him was that if you gave Joey ice cream to eat, he'd mix it up until he could drink it. "Really?"
A small, wistful smile ghosted across Genna's lips. "Yeah, we'd wait until it was all melted and just slurp it from the bowl. It drove my parents crazy. I still do it sometimes, but he doesn't..." She paused, her smile falling. "I mean, he didn't. After my mom died, he stopped. He grew up too quick after that."
Genna stared down at the ice cream in silence, lost in a memory. Matty stayed quiet, giving her that, and didn't chime in until she took another bite. "Joey used to eat his ice cream that way."
Her eyes widened. "He did?"
"Galante family trait, I guess. Can't even eat ice cream right. Gotta make things messy."
Genna laughed, her expression brightening just a bit. "I am pretty good at making things messy."
"That you are," Matty agreed. "Might even go so far as to call it your specialty."
Chapter Six
Manhattan found itself in a late summer heat wave.
Dante could feel the passing of time as he sat on the small metal bench along the sidewalk, in front of the hospital, the muggy heat sticking to his sweaty skin. It had barely been August the last time he remembered, but there it was, already September, fall just a few weeks away. Blinked, and he missed it, the days ticking by. It was like sleeping through a month of your life… a month where everything you knew vanished.
It was like waking up in a new world, a different world, a world Dante didn't fucking like.
This world was stifling.
"I see you've been sprung."
The familiar female voice ghosted across Dante's warm skin, so close he damn near shivered. Nurse Russo stood just a few feet beside him, clad in her blue scrubs.
"More like I escaped."
"With the doctor's blessing?"
Dante shrugged. "Figured he was tired of looking at me."
Laughing, Nurse Russo took a step forward, motioning to the metal bench. "Mind if I join you?"
Dante slid over, giving her some room. "By all means, plop your ass on down."
She sat down, not leaving much space between them. A hint of her perfume wafted toward him, subtle but sweet, barely strong enough to be detected yet it was enough to make his head swim. Vanilla. He'd been lightheaded since he signed the release forms, leaving against medical advice. They wanted to keep him a few more days, out of precaution, but he'd denied that request.
But as he sat there, he wasn't sure why he'd insisted on leaving. It wasn't as if he had anywhere to go.
"I'm Gabriella, by the way." She held her hand out to him. "Friends call me Gabby."
Dante hardly touched her hand before pulling away. "Dante, but you already knew that."
"I did," she said, "but it's nice to hear you say it, seeing as how you were refusing to say much at all."
"Yeah, well, you never know who you can trust," he said. "Besides, they didn't care about anything I had to say, so there was no point in saying it. They wanted to hear what they wanted to hear, and I'm not really in the business of placating assholes."
"I get it," she said. "It's kind of sad, though."
"What?"
"You feeling like you can't trust anyone."
"I wouldn't call it sad," he said. "That's how life is."
"Sounds lonely."
Lonely, yeah… that he would admit. The life he chose was a lonely existence. People always surrounded him, but very few were ever actually there. Forced smiles, frozen faces, the warmest greetings known to man. All of it, every second, every moment, was calculated, fabricated, little more than premeditated motions. People rarely smiled at him to be friendly. No, they smiled to hide their fear. They smiled to get on his good side, to gain some leverage, to feel like they had the upper hand. Nobody wanted to be on his bad side, so they smiled, grinning from ear-to-fucking-ear, dreading what would happen if they didn't.
Dante hadn't intended to become this person. Hell, he still wasn't sure it was even him. He was little more than a caricature, a face attached to a name. That was what it meant to be a Galante. People came with a predetermined set of beliefs about what kind of man he would be, and he spent his life