What We Do in the Night (Day to Night #1) - Stylo Fantome Page 0,113

“And if you fuck up Valentine's chances in that class, I'll file that restraining order, I don't give a shit who your father is.”

“Oh, you think you can threaten me?” she yelled, stamping her feet. “She's nobody, Ari! Just some piece of trash! I do not get dumped for trash. You're going to regret this, and you can sure as shit bet I'll make her regret this. By the time I'm through with her, she'll be -”

Ari didn't wait for her to finish her hollow threats. He slammed the door in her face, then swung the bolt lock shut for good measure.

She hollered and pounded on the door for a while, but Ari ignored her. He pulled out his phone and tried calling Valentine again, but still got no answer. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. Mercury must have gone into retrograde, because his day was already beyond fucked up – which meant something even worse was probably coming.

He canceled all his meetings and spent the afternoon in his apartment, alternating between calling Valentine's phone, texting it, and texting DelVecchio. Her boss had gone silent, too, though his phone at least rang a couple times before going to voicemail.

By the time it was eight, Ari started to get angry. She'd have to be at work in an hour and she'd been ignoring him all day. Unacceptable. He even tried texting and calling her burner phone, but it was just more of the same. No reply, and instant voicemail.

She wouldn't have blocked me, not over me being an asshole today. I'm an asshole all the time, that was hardly anything new to her.

Ari drove to her house. Her bike was in a heap in front of the porch, another surprise. She usually kept it inside, parked against a wall in her living room, he knew. He glared at it for a moment, then stood it up and propped it up on its kickstand. Then he jogged up to the door and started pounding his fist on it. A couple minutes later, her strange little roommate answered. She kept the chain lock on and peeked out through the crack.

“Where's Valentine?” he demanded, trying to look around her.

“Jesus, she's not here, 'Roid Rage',” the girl snapped. “So go knock down someone else's door.”

“Where is she?”

“Do I look like her keeper?”

“In the amount of time you're wasting being a bitch, you could already be telling me what I want to know, and I could be out of your hair,” he pointed out. She glared at him for a second longer, then she pulled out her phone.

“She's at the hospital,” she murmured, scrolling through some text messages.

“The hospital?” Ari was stunned. “Jesus, is she okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, it's Gam-Gam. She had another stroke.”

“Oh.”

Ooohhh. That's why she'd been at his office, and that's probably why she'd left his apartment in such a hurry. It had been an emergency. She'd been alone and upset and probably scared, so she'd ran to him.

And he'd yelled at her and told her to leave.

Christ, this is going to involve a lot of groveling. I wonder if she likes expensive jewelry?

“Which hospital?”

After the strange little goth girl gave him the name, he hurried back to his car. For once he was thankful that the firm had bought him a Porsche – he was able to weave in and out of traffic without any problems. But then he remembered how the firm had purchased his apartment for him, and had apparently kept access to it, as well. He wondered what else they'd held on to.

Valentine doesn't like this car, so it was time to get a new one, anyway.

Navigating the hospital was a bitch. Just finding a main reception area proved difficult. Then tracking down Eugenia Parker's room was another lengthy process. When he finally got there, it was to find a nurse sitting on a chair outside the room.

“Hello,” she said, setting aside her crochet work and standing up as he approached. “You must be Ari Sharapov.”

“Do I know you?” he snapped, moving to walk past her.

“No, but you pay me,” she said, and he finally paused.

“You're the new nurse,” he commented, and she nodded. “Where is she?”

“She's out for the night, I'm afraid,” the nurse sighed, looking over her shoulder at Mrs. Parker. “You can visit her tomorrow.”

“Where's Valentine.”

“Oh, yes, she said you might be stopping by. She had to go to work,” Nurse Crockett said. “She said she had to make arrangements with her boss, and that she