Page 137 of Beni

“Anyway,” Marcus said, shaking his head, “Ma wanted to come back and sit with him for a bit, but she didn’t want to take you away, if you wanted some more time. I said I would come back and ask for her.”

“She’s his mother. She can come back whenever she wants.”

Marcus smiled. “She knows … but that’s not our ma’s way, you know?”

Well, she was learning.

“Tell her it’s okay.”

He nodded, and then quickly left her alone with Beni again. It wasn’t long before the click of Cara’s heels announced her arrival, but August was already standing to gather her things as the woman entered the room.

“Where are you going?”

“Don’t you want to sit with him alone?” August asked.

Cara smiled from the doorway. “I would love to sit with him and you, if that’s what you would like, too.”

“Yeah, sure, I would love that.”

With everyone else, it felt like August had to constantly be strong. Not that they made her feel any other way, and they surely didn’t say anything of the sort, either. Cara was different, though. Something about Beni’s mother seemed … well, motherly.

“Sit,” Cara said, gesturing at the one chair, “and I’ll just use this one over here. How about that?”

“That’s good.”

It wasn’t.

Nothing would be good until Beni woke up.

August went back to doing what she could, for the moment. Which wasn’t much, but holding Beni’s hand, and resting her forehead against his warm arm while she listened to the rhythmic beep-beep-beep of the machine on the other side of his bed grounded her. It kept her from floating away again where it seemed like she was watching herself from above, and not there.

She would much rather be there.

With him.

A hard, but dry grunt left Beni’s lips as the doctor peeled back the bandage on his chest, and with a gloved hand, pressed around the now-exposed wound. “This is not where I was before I passed out.”

He knew that for certain.

This room … he recognized it. Familiar tapestries, and a large, four-poster bed with sheer curtains one could pull around it for a false sense of privacy. The artwork on the walls, he had stared at before in his lifetime. He remembered thinking the paintings were terribly big when he was a child and didn’t understand at all why someone would want that, instead of bright colors like on cartoons.

It was a bedroom.

In his aunt and uncle’s mansion.

“You would be correct,” the doctor said, “now hold still so I can get a good look at this wound, and clean it again, if need be.”

“When—”

“That includes talking, Mr. Guzzi.”

“Your bedside manners are shit.”

The doctor chuckled. “Your uncle doesn’t keep me on call because of my bedside manners—he does so because I am one of the best trauma surgeons in this city.”

He knew he wasn’t supposed to talk. Even breathing made his chest feel like it was going to tear open all over again. That didn’t stop his curiosity, and he had never been known for following the rules set out for him, even if it meant it would hurt like hell.

“Is that the only reason?” he asked, ignoring the silent reprimand for talking in the doctor’s gaze that turned on him. “I’m just saying … because being good at what you do doesn’t explain why you jump at the demand of a mob boss, that’s all.”