Mafia Queen

Chapter Twenty-Three

Angelo

I stared straight ahead at the gray of the hospital wall in a daze. If I stopped concentrating on my breathing—in and out, in and out — I was sure it would stop entirely.

This was a dream; it had to be. Luca was gone. My best friend, my brother, gone. One minute he was standing next to me and the next he had run back into the building searching for more men. Why did he always have to be the fucking hero? For once in his entire life, why couldn't he have been selfish? Why couldn't he have let the paramedics do their jobs and gone home to see his family?

They found his body pinned underneath a beam, burned beyond recognition. The only identifying feature was his wedding band. He was one of twelve bodies they pulled. In one night, forty-five people were lost between the explosions, all because of fucking Niko Almieda.

Survivors were being brought here for clearance, and it was a madhouse. There were news crews swarming the emergency entrances, trying to get a glimpse of what was going on. The warehouse burned to the ground, and we had swept it countless times. No survivors found.

I couldn't bear the thought of telling Charlotte, but she couldn't hear it from anyone else. A little while ago, I texted Julia to check in on everyone, but that was before I knew about Luca. I was expecting Char to call at any minute. The explosion was all over the news and I knew when she couldn't get ahold of Luca, she'd be frantic. This would tear her to pieces, and Luca was the only one I'd ever seen who could put her back together. Tonight, that would be my job. It would be my job until she could do it herself, if that day would ever come.

The explosion was two hours ago now, and I knew men were waiting for some kind of direction. They wanted to fight, they wanted to help, but all I wanted to do was sit here on this disgusting hospital floor and pretend none of this was happening.

Luca had been in my life for as long as I could remember, the one constant person I could count on for anything. I should have gone in after him, or made him stay out there, or done something. He'd saved me countless times and when he needed me most, I had let him down. I gritted my teeth, fighting back tears as best as I could. He couldn't be gone.

When we were fourteen, he and I were out late one night exploring an abandon house in the middle of a field by where we lived. It was late, and we snuck out, and if anyone caught us, we would have been in insurmountable trouble. We were joking around, being typical teenage boys, when all of a sudden a flock of crows came tearing out of the attic space. We both shrieked, sprinting out of the house as fast as we possibly could. We got out to the porch and started laughing at ourselves, not paying attention to things around us.

I stepped on a rickety old board and my leg went right through. I cried out in pain, stopping Luca dead in his tracks. It was almost dawn now and people would certainly realize we weren't home. I begged him to go home without me so he wouldn't get in trouble since his dad was much stricter than mine, but Luca refused to leave my side. We stayed there for hours until we were finally able to get my leg out. He supported me as we walked the entire way back to the estate and fabricated some wild story about how we'd heard a noise in the middle of the night and gone out to investigate. No one thought twice about it, but that night was ingrained in my mind forever. It was the night I realized how much Luca and I relied on each other, that I knew no matter where we went in life, we'd be doing it side by side. He'd stand by me on my wedding day, be the godfather of my children. We'd grow old drinking beer and barbecuing on the lake with our families. In one split second, that was gone.

"Get off of me!" Charlotte's hysterical voice filled the hospital corridor, jolting me out of my trance.

She was here. Fuck. I rubbed my forehead, trying to compose myself. I needed to pull it together, focus my energy on her now, on Luca's children. They would need me now more than ever, and I couldn't let Luca down again. I had to make this okay for them.