Dante retrieved a plastic bag from the closet and peered inside it. “Your clothes are covered in blood and pretty much ruined. Here’s your phone, though. I’ll text Vincent and ask him and Nana to try to find you something else to wear, not that I think bailing out of the hospital is a great idea.”
He grabbed a paper towel from beside the sink and used it to fish out my phone, which he handed to me before putting the bag on the nightstand. When I peered inside, I saw what he meant about the clothes. There was no way I’d make it very far dressed like an extra in a slasher film.
While I used some tissues to wipe my bloody fingerprints off the screen, he took his phone from his pocket and started composing a text. Then he glanced at me and asked, “What size do you wear, extra small?”
“Medium. Dude, just because you and your brother are built like professional wrestlers doesn’t mean everyone else is miniature-sized.”
He raised a brow and asked, “How did you know Vincent’s the same size as me?”
“Your other brother, Adriano.”
“Oh. Right. It’s going to take me a minute to get my head around that one.”
“He mentioned four brothers. I guess two of you are older than him, and two are younger.”
“How old is he?”
“Thirty-seven.”
“My brother Gianni’s thirty-seven, too,” he said. “This is all pretty wild. My parents died when I was seven, and I never knew they split up for a while. I guess I must have been about three or so when it happened.”
“That sounds about right.”
I fished the journal from the bag and wiped the blood off the cover before offering it to him. “He was curious about you, so he did some research. That’s how I had your grandmother’s phone number. When things with Greco got bad, he went to San Francisco. Even though he denies it, I think he did that because he really wanted to reach out to you. He was just afraid you’d reject him again.”
Dante returned the phone to his pocket and took the journal as he said, “I wish he’d tried again to contact me, on a night when I wasn’t drunk. Or even a couple of years later, when I’d had a chance to mature a bit.”
“Tell him that, once we find him.” I pulled up his photo on my phone, the one I’d snapped when we’d been in Romy’s apartment, and showed it to Dante. “This is Reno, by the way. He has a kid brother who’s ten years younger, and that’s where the nickname came from. Romy couldn’t say ‘Adriano’ when he was a toddler.”
He took the phone from me and muttered, “Jesus, he really does look like me.”
“He probably did when he was eighteen, too, but you turned him away.”
Dante handed the phone back and frowned as he asked, “Are you going to keep holding that against me?”
“No. I just wanted to make sure you felt really guilty about it before I let it drop.”
“I do.”
“Perfect.”
He started to flip through the journal, but then a tiny little old lady bustled into the room, followed by a tall guy who looked a hell of a lot like Dante, except that he was wearing glasses and was clean-shaven. “Nana and Vincent, meet Jack,” Dante said, with a sweeping hand gesture.
Nana’s white hair was up in a bun, and she wore a pink track suit and round glasses that made her look like an owl. She was carrying a shopping bag, which she thrust at Dante before grabbing me in a tight embrace. “You poor little thing,” she said, as she squeezed me. “Your message broke my heart, so I called Dante and made him charter a plane, and we got here as soon as we could. Now, don’t you worry. We’re going to find your boyfriend.” She let go of me and pulled a huge handgun out of her purse. “Then we’re going to put the fear of god into the son of a bitch that kidnapped him!”
Dante swore under his breath and plucked the gun out of his grandmother’s hand. She scowled at him as he tucked it into the back of his waistband, and I said, “I guess they don’t make you go through a metal detector for a charter flight.”
“No, they don’t, not when you reserve the whole plane. Then they treat you like a VIP,” she said. “Good thing too, because Dante and Vinny brought a shitload of guns along. Oh, don’t look so surprised, boys. What do you think, that I was born yesterday? I know what that funny-looking luggage is for, and it ain’t pool floaties.”
“Well, good. We might need them,” I said.
Nana started pulling things out of the shopping bag she’d handed to Dante. “Now look,” she said, “we don’t have much time. We’ve got to spring you from this hospital. Fortunately, I have a lot of expertise in this area. We need to do it pronto, too, before the fuzz shows up and starts asking questions. They get real uptight when gunshot wounds are involved.” She thrust a baby pink pair of sweatpants at me and explained, “Dante said you needed some clothes, and there wasn’t much selection downstairs in the gift shop. See if those fit. We got you some shoes, too, even though I was unclear on whether you needed any. But I got them anyway, because they match the outfit.”
She looked pleased with herself as she took a pair of hot pink glittery Crocs from the bag and showed them to me. I thanked her as I pulled the sweatpants on under my hospital gown. Except for being about six inches too short, they were a good fit. “I’m going to need to pull the plug before I can put on a shirt,” I said, as I gestured at my IV. “I just hope I don’t puke, because the sight of blood makes me queasy.”
I started to reach for the IV, but Nana thrust the shoes at Dante and said, “Let me. I know how to do this, too.” I pressed my eyes shut while she unhooked me, and then she said, “It’s only bleeding a little, and I have a bandage.”
Nana dug around in her purse while Dante shifted the bundle in his arms, and I dabbed at the puncture on my arm with a tissue. She handed me a hairbrush, a candy bar, a taser, and a giant hunting knife in a sheath before saying, “Here we go.” Then she daintily stuck a rainbow-striped bandage over the spot where my IV had been.