Indebted to the Mafia King
Repercussions

Dante

I sit in an armchair I dragged into the master bedroom in my safehouse upstate, watching Dr. Fletcher and his nurse tend to El. She looks so small in the bed, the hollows of her cheeks sunken and her hair lank. Not seriously injured, the EMT said. Still, I'm thrilled I had enough time to hire Fletcher and the nurse before the raid. They're discreet, professional, and fast. They talk to each other in snippets of conversation that give me the barest hint of what's going on. "Saline. Her veins are shrunken."

"Heart rate elevated, but not dangerously."

"That laceration is likely infected. We need penicillin and a disinfectant."

I don't dare interrupt them. I can't imagine stealing a second Eleni might need to get better. Tear streaks mark her face, and she was already crying when I got in the ambulance. In the end, Camila had her in that fucking house for two weeks. Two goddamn weeks. I am counting my blessings she's not in more danger, but I'm fucking terrified.

Tony leans in the doorway. "Dante, I need to talk to you."

"Fuck off," I say without any heat, without looking away from El.

"Now." Tony's voice holds a note of iron I almost never hear from him.

I twist. My best friend, my caporegime, is pale with an expression I've never seen before.

El makes a small, pained noise, and I whip back around. "Talk here or wait."

Tony grabs my arm and hauls me out of the chair. "Fucking now."

I'm too stunned to do anything but stumble after him. Sure, we've fought, even physically. We grew up side-by-side. But he's never touched me like this before. Tony rips open the door to a random guest bedroom and shoves me inside. "Henry Alcott led that raid," Tony says.

My stomach drops. He's putting it together.

"So?" I ask.

He scoffs. "You think I'm fucking stupid. Great. I put my kid brother's fucking funeral on hold to follow your sorry ass around the city, and you want to treat me like a goddamn secretary."

"I don't think you're stupid." My temper is exhausted from control, drained and hapless, but it starts to stir anyway. "I made you my fucking caporegime, didn't I? And you know good and well Seb deserves a capo's funeral, with everyone around him."

Crack. Tony backhands me. The hit only barely registers as pain. Bone-deep shock radiates out from the point where I feel my cheek split and a thin ribbon of blood drizzle down.

"You don't say his name until I bury him," Tony says. "It's not yours."

I bite back the retort that I watched him grow up just the same as Tony did. There is something in the ice-blue eyes of my best friend that I don't recognize. I don't wipe the blood away either. "Once," I say. "You can do that once because I know what you're going through. Touch me like that again, and you'll regret it."

We stare at each other for a long moment, violence crackling between us like lightning strikes. Tony has his gun. I don't.

"When they took Eleni," I start.

Tony scoffs. "It's always fucking her, isn't it? Shit, Dante, I'm starting to think Uncle John was right."

I draw myself up to my full height. "Fifteen years together. That's why I'm not taking your fucking gun from you right now. I am your don, Antony Bellini, and it would do you well to remember that." Tony's jaw works. "Fine. Give me your fucking story."

"None of my men had anything." I begin circling Tony with the same crisp bearing. He at least has the training not to watch me. "I'd just left you on the street, covered in blood. And fucking Henry Alcott turned up, saying he was here to hunt the Russians' boss."

"Well, that's fucking handy," Tony mumbled.

I let that slide. For the last time.

"I said what he wanted to hear," I continue. "And then, I looked into our dear old friend Henry. He's here because of speed transfer. Before he left, he created a hole in an important witness' protection detail, just enough to scuttle the Luciano case in Chicago. He's dirty, and I can prove it with three phone calls. So I didn't promise him shit."

Tony huffs a breath. "But you're still in bed with him."

"Him and a colleague, Jace Covett, who belonged to Thano Coppola before his untimely end." I meet my old friend's gaze. "Because I deemed it best for the Staten Island Saints. And because I know how this goddamn looks, because I'm not as fucking stupid as you seem to think I am, I was keeping you out of it. I didn't want you in the mud with me."

"They're feds, sir," Tony says, though the sir seems to pain him. "You can't trust feds."

"And I don't." I stop in front of him. "I trust you. I trust our organization. And I will use any leg up I need to get us where we belong. Capiche?"

He nods sullenly.

"Go back to the city." I turn away from him. "Muster the capos. Make sure everyone is all right and tell them the time for hiding is over."

"You're dismissing me?" he asks, incredulous.

I whip back. “I'm giving you an order."

He holds my gaze for a long moment, then leaves the room. A second later, I hear the door to the house slam, followed by an engine turning over. I exhale, all the tension melting out of me. Tony and I have never disagreed like that before. Dr. Fletcher's nurse knocks on the door frame. "Excuse me, Mr. Cattaneo?"

I shake myself and force a tired smile. "Yes?"

"Dr. Fletcher will see you now." She jerks her head back toward the master bedroom.

I smooth down my jacket. "Let's go."

She puts a hand up, then pulls a gauze out of one of the pockets of her smock and daubs my cheek. It comes away red, and I wince as her touch makes it pulsate. "Shouldn't need a stitch, but I have bandages." She holds out a few paper packages.

"I'd rather not waste the time," I say honestly. "But thank you, Nurse...?"

"Adelaide." She smiles. "Come on."

We walk down the hallway in silence and return to the room where I left El. So much has changed in my absence. An IV stand sits next to the bed, drizzling something clear into her arm, and a beeping heart monitor stands on the other side. Thankfully, the monitor offers a steady beep, beep, beep that allows me to believe Eleni really is still alive, looking like this with her eyes closed. Dr. Fletcher brushes off his hands and steps over to join Adelaide and me.

"She's unconscious, on some pain meds. I don't suppose I need to tell you she's not in good condition." He smiles ruefully.

I shake my head, my heart hammering. "How bad is it?"

"Nothing she can't recover from, I believe." He looks over his shoulder and shakes his head. "She's a tough young woman, I'll tell you that."

"I know." I've never known anything more.

"She's dehydrated and extremely undernourished." He turns back to me. "But the thing to really keep an eye on is an incision on her ribs. Shallow, normally wouldn't be anything to look twice at, but she clearly wasn't bathing, so it's infected. We've got her on a basic course of antibiotics now"-he gestures to the IV-"but it's important to make sure that doesn't develop into something dangerous like sepsis."

I nod.

"Adelaide will be staying on to handle cleanings, changing bandages, and general care, but take it easy." Dr. Fletcher eyes me. "I mean that."

"I wouldn't risk her," I say fervently. "What about...the other thing I mentioned?"

He pulls a vial of blood from the pocket of his white coat. "I'll confirm the pregnancy as soon as I return to my office."

I exhale sharply. Part of me thought I'd get to know right away whether my baby had also been captured by the Russians for two weeks. But I can wait.

"I'm headed out," Dr. Fletcher says.

"And I'll give you some space." Adelaide smiles as the two of them leave the room together.

I drag the chair from the foot of the bed to the head, right next to the IV, and take El's hand. A single strip of her finger is paler than the rest, where her engagement ring used to sit. I don't think I've ever been angrier than the day the tracker led me to the Hudson. Without anything else to do, I pull my ring off and slide it onto her thumb, the only place it will fit. "Never again, El," I whisper. "Or you, little one."