“I’m going to Massimo. Yes, of course it was an accident but that’s bull shit. Everything else that happened wasn’t. I was high. I took more…” his voice trails off and I see he’s struggling to talk to us.
“Tell us,” I say. “Tell us what’s going on with you Dominic.”
“At first it was just to take the edge off. I got some prescription pills to help me sleep. Losing Pa and Andreas cut me deep. I thought as brothers we trusted each other, but Andreas worked with the other side to destroy us. It did something to us to second guess each other. First I over did everything to make sure I looked like you guys could trust me, then it got too much and I sought the hard stuff and it screwed with me. It screwed with me in a way that I couldn’t stop, or think beyond a sniff to make me feel like I could cope.”
“You should have come to us, Dominic,” Massimo says.
“I know. I know I should have. My problems made me feel fucking weak and weakness is not a thing associated with us. There we were on this path to revenge and I felt like I was losing my shit. It wasn’t important. I don’t have to be told I was wrong, I know I was. I know taking drugs wasn’t the way. I’m stopping. I assure you that. I’m so ashamed of myself and now my angel lies here suffering.” He looks back to Candace and takes her hand into his.
Her hand is attached to tubes but he plants a kiss on the tip of her fingers.
“My angel, you don’t know how much you mean to me,” he rasps rubbing over the tips of her finger. “I love you.”
I can’t say anything. There’s not a damn thing I can’t think of saying because he’s shocked me. He’s shocked and restored something inside me because he’s the same guy I know him to be. not the person who switched out on me over the last few weeks.
He bows his head, resting it near Candace’s hand.
It’s the change of the beeping on the heart monitor that turns my attention away from him. It’s faster. Panic makes me look back to Candace and my heart soars when I watch her hand run over Dominic’s head.
Her eyes open and close and she looks around.
We rush to her side. Her lips part and she looks at each of us but focusses on Dominic.
“Don’t. Don’t go.” Her voice sounds weak but I’m so glad to hear it. She squeezes his hand and he holds her gaze.
“I’m sorry for everything Candace.”
“Just don’t go.”
“I’m here,” he assures her. “I’m right here.”
“I’m going to get the doctors,” Massimo says.
He rushes through the door and gets the doctors.
Moments later my phone rings. I answer it because I know it could only be Nick.
It is. I asked him to check in with me if he hadn’t heard from me in a while. That way we’d keep a good flow of communication.
I answer and he sounds like he just woke up. he groans like he’s injured and that’s when I know something’s going on.
“Nick, what happened?”
“I’ve been shot. They took Isabella. Mortimer and Dmitri took Isabella. Alfonse was working with them,” he explains in one blurt.
I nearly drop the phone as the blood drains from me. I experience that daze of shock a person goes through when they hear something that can’t be real, and their brain can’t process it.
“What are you saying to me? Alfonse?”
“Alfonse… Kruv’ omertà. That’s what I heard him say. Kruv’ omertà.”
It suddenly all makes sense. He was the Italian.
He was the real traitor all along. As my brain processes everything I realize that anything that ever lacked sense makes every bit of sense now.
Alfonse was the man playing sides well before we were born, the perfect candidate to exact betrayal.
We would never have suspected him.