on him, hitting him two, three, four times more in the face.
Only then can I relax enough to stand up and wipe my bloody hands on my shirtfront.
“Felice, get this fucking rat out of my sight. If he’s seen in this club again, he’s a dead man.”
I return to my desk and start unscrewing the silencer as Felice drags the mostly unconscious Albanian out of the room.
“That was the right decision,” Levi says. “But even beating him is risky.”
“Enough,” I tell him. “Shut up and give me a fucking cigarette.”
He lights it and hands it over. I take a drag, but it brings me no pleasure. I drop it into my glass of water where it extinguishes with a hiss.
10
Dani
When I have returned home from an endless shift—when I’ve seen kids OD and mothers holding their babies by the side of traffic collisions; when, in short, I’m so tired I think I could cry—I sleep like I’m dead.
But that also means I wake up like I’m coming back from the dead, complete with gasping and yelling. Especially when someone decides that calling me at midnight is a good idea.
I roll over and see that it’s Ricky, which immediately makes a pit open up in my belly. Ricky never calls me. It just isn’t something we do. Which means that, if he is calling, something is very, very wrong. Or maybe I’m just letting my imagination get the better of me.
“Yes?” I answer in a daze.
“Dani?” he blubbers. Oh God, he’s wasted. Music thumps in the background. My imagination was completely justified, I sense. The pit in my belly grows teeth. “Dani, something’s wrong. We need a ride. Wyatt’s freaking out on me. I’ll lose my job. Man, I’ll lose my job. Fuck! Can you get here?”
“Call an ambulance!” I yell, knowing what it is without having to ask.
“Please get here,” he moans.
“Where?” I can tell he isn’t going to make any sense over the phone. He’ll just keep blubbering.
“Sole Nero.”
I almost laugh at the absurdity of it. Fate really is fucking with me, even now.
Of course he’s at Angelo’s club, the one where we fucked, the place I’ve lived in my dreams these past few days.
But I’m in no mood for laughing. “I’ll be right there!” I yell. “Take care of my brother, Ricky!”
I get some really strange looks as I run across the street into my car still wearing my pajamas, but I ignore them. I’m thinking pointless, waste-of-time things so I don’t have to think about Wyatt lying in some alleyway outside the club, spit sliding from the side of his mouth as Ricky stands there uselessly. I hear that horrible death rattle again in everything: the car engine, my own breathing, the music blaring from an apartment.
Finally, after what feels like years swerving through honking traffic, I get to the club. I don’t even bother with parking, just pull up and sprint right by the bouncers. I think they’re so stunned to see me sprinting like an Olympian in my pajamas into the club that they don’t even react at first. That hesitation gives me all the time I need.
I know something’s wrong as soon as I get to the main dance floor. No music is playing and a huddle has formed around the middle. I push my way through, elbowing, kneeing. One man turns to me with a wry grin and a raised eyebrow. “Didn’t realize it was a theme party,” he says, and then—I am not kidding—he makes as if to loop his hand around my waist.
“My brother might be dying,” I snarl. “Do you want to be next? Move.”
I go around him and get to the center of the huddle. Wyatt is there, lying on his back, wide-eyed. He looks dead. That sentence keeps ricocheting around my head like a fucking pinball.
He.
Looks.
Dead.
My little brother, the person I’m supposed to be taking care of now that Mom and Dad are gone, is ghost-pale and shivering. Oh, thank fuck, he’s shivering. But could they be death quivers?
I turn off my mind and push past Ricky, who, as anticipated, is standing there about as useful as a chocolate tampon. “What did he take?” I growl. “Has an ambulance been called?”
Ricky’s eyes flit to her. He barely nods. He’s really out of it.
“Yes,” somebody says from the crowd, a sea of faces. “It’s been called.”
I put Wyatt in the recovery position to clear his airways, and then lean down and place my ear against his mouth. He’s breathing