Page 285 of Ricardo

Ricardo stands beside me and rests one hand on my shoulder.

I look at Dante’s face, then down at our joined hands.

“I’m safe,” I whisper again, in case some part of him can still hear me. “You made sure.”

A soft knock sounds at the door.

Ricardo turns.

Lorenzo stands in the opening, his expression carefully unreadable.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” he says.

Ricardo’s hand tightens once on my shoulder.

Lorenzo looks from him to Dante, then back again.

“We received an answer.”

Chapter Thirty Eight

Ricardo

I look at Julia first.

She is still sitting beside Dante’s bed, one hand wrapped carefully around his. Her face is pale from exhaustion, but there is color in her now that was not there when we arrived. Hope, maybe. Fear too. The two have become impossible to separate.

Dante sleeps again, heavily, his breathing steady.

He woke.

Only for seconds, but he woke.

He asked if Julia was safe.

Of course that is the first thing he'd ask.

I touch her shoulder, and she looks up at me.

“I need to step out for a moment,” I say.

Her eyes move past me to Lorenzo waiting near the door.

She understands immediately.

“Go.”

“I will be close.”

“I know.”

I look at my son one more time, at the bruised pallor of his face, the IV in his arm, the lines and machines that have no place near him. My hand tightens once on the rail before I make myself release it.

“I’ll stay with him,” she says softly, reassuring me.

The words settle something in me, though they should not. She should be in bed. She should be eating. She should be protected from every difficult thing waiting beyond this room.

Instead, she sits beside my son with my child inside her and promises to keep watch.