coming his direction. Dante didn't look. He did nothing but stand there, sipping water in front of the open refrigerator, as whoever it was entered the kitchen.
Silence overwhelmed them.
It sucked all the air from the room.
"Dante?"
Primo's voice was quiet. Hesitant. Dante took another sip of water before screwing the lid back on. Shutting the refrigerator door, knowing he wouldn't find his appetite now, he turned to the doorway to greet his father. "Dad."
The second Dante spoke, Primo's expression shifted, relief relaxing his features, like he'd feared Dante was a figment of his imagination. Maybe I'm not the only one waiting for ghosts to pop up.
"It's good to see you, son," Primo said. "Good to have you home. I never thought—"
"Never thought you'd see me again?" Dante guessed.
Primo nodded. "Not alive. I thought—"
"They killed me?" Dante guessed again.
"Yes." Primo took a step closer. "They sent me a message—a son for a son. The blood in the car… there was no sign of you anywhere."
"So you looked?"
Primo stared at him.
He didn't respond.
The son of a bitch didn't look for me.
"You looked, right?" Dante asked again, not dropping that. He knew his father well enough to know his silence meant he had no answer, but Dante wanted an explanation. "You said there was no sign of me anywhere, so I'm guessing that means you looked everywhere?"
Primo stared at him some more before offering an answer. "They had you. There was no point."
No point.
Maybe Primo hadn't meant that the way it sounded, but those words were like a knife to Dante's gut. On one level, he got it. He'd even told his sister once: when the Barsantis got their hands on you, there would be nothing left. But that didn't mean they shouldn't still look.
That didn't mean there was no point.
"Well, what do you know," Dante said, motioning toward himself. "They left some part of me to be found. Not sure how much is salvageable, but here I am."
Something in the tone of Dante's voice, or maybe it was the bluntness of his words, sent Primo's guard up. Dante saw it in the way the man's shoulders squared, the way his jaw clenched. The relief dissipated as fast as it came about. Primo's eyes studied Dante's face.
Dante knew the tactic. He'd seen it employed hundreds of times. His father stared people down, breaking them with silence, using intimidation as a form of punishment. He'd done it to countless men. Hell, he'd even used it on Genna. But he'd never tried with Dante before. He'd never had to.
And as they stood there, Primo staring him down, Dante realized it wasn't working. He was immune. He felt nothing but anger, the kind that burned cold and not hot. It wasn't volatile rage.
He was numb.
"We should talk," Primo said, breaking first, to Dante's surprise. He'd never seen his father let someone else win that game. "A lot has happened."
"Like the explosion in Little Italy?" Dante guessed. "I heard all about it."
Primo's eyes narrowed with a flash of rage, a flash of suspicion, before he straightened his expression out. His voice, though, betrayed his calm demeanor. "From who?"
Dante considered concocting some story to avoid what he knew would become an argument, but that was just a part of him that wanted to save face. Fuck it. "Amaro."
That answer shocked Primo. "Johnny Amaro?"
"No, his son."
"What the hell does that boy know about anything? When did you even talk to him?"
"He visited me," Dante said. "Came to the hospital."
"He did what?"
"He heard I was alive so he stopped by to see how I was doing." Dante paused, intending to drop it, but words kept flowing from his lips instead. "It's kind of fucked up, really... Amaro being the only person who bothered to check on me."
That struck Primo hard… just as hard as the mention of Genna had hit him at the hospital. The man flinched, his face paling, like he couldn't believe those words had come from Dante.
"I came to the hospital," Primo said, taking a step forward, pointing at Dante. "You know I did. You saw me there. That woman—that nurse—told me to leave. But I called every day to check on you. I called to make sure you were getting better. So don't give me that bullshit about Amaro being the only one who bothered, because no one named Amaro cares about you. No one named Amaro gives a fuck if you live or die."
"Maybe not," Dante said, "but someone named Amaro respected me enough to tell