Page 35 of Made in Love and Blood

“No, I’m serious. You’re just caught up in how you feel like you’re constantly on the outside. You don’t realize you’re the bubble they’re all walking around, wishing they were inside.”

Picking at her nails, she asked, “You think?”

“I know. Every single one of them. I’m telling you. They don’t know what to make of you because they only hear things, and they make of it what they want. You’re not filling in the blanks. They feel better making you feel worse for a moment. You’re not an outsider to them in the way it makes you feel. You come from people that they know they will never be. No matter how much money they have. They still couldn’t be like us.”

“You mean because of the mafia. I don’t even understand all that.”

“You don’t understand? It doesn’t matter, Frankie. They know enough for it to matter to them. Don’t you get it? People like us, we weren’t meant to fit in with people like them. We have our own kind of people. It’s taking you a while to find yours, that’s all. And on top of it, you’re fucking beautiful, and they see it.”

Her cheeks heated at the flippant comment.

“You make them look like shit every time you walk onto the soccer field. You don’t even try, you’re just focusing in. I bet you barely show up to class and pass, huh?”

She bit the edge of her lip. “You want me to brag?”

He shook his head. “No need. I could tell. They can tell, too. Stop letting people you could destroy if you cried to the right people make you feel bad about yourself. They don’t matter. They’re not supposed to be your friends. That’s the point. You’re so much better than they will ever be, anyway.”

“Snobby.”

Nico rolled his shoulders, unbothered. “Because it’s true? Who cares? People don’t like the truth. In twenty years, that won’t change. And neither will they. You, though? You’re still gonna be like a fucking legend to these people. Untouchable.”

I made you untouchable.

He had perspective, she realized.

Like Carina.

Frankie took it all in. Clearly, she needed some.

•••

Nearing one-thirty in the morning, Frankie had the ICU unit scouted to the thirty-minute rounds the three nurses in navy scrubs had to make until she found her dad.

Waiting until the rounding nurse left his room to make her move, Frankie bolted from behind a blanket warmer and sprinted under the number plaque on the door. She had at least thirty minutes before anyone would be back. The nurse doing the rounds only shone a red flashlight into her room, and Frankie bet how she left her pillows and extra blankets looked real enough.

They hadn’t come looking for her yet.

Salvatore, asleep, didn’t hear his daughter’s approach until she had walked around his bed to sit in the chair at the other side. His bandaged chest lifted higher, and then his voice made her realize she’d woken him up.

“You’re not supposed to be in here, baby.”

Frankie sniffled, absolutely refusing to look up. She couldn’t even sleep not knowing how he looked, if he could talk to her—would they lie to her for a while if he had died just to spare her a few hours of a grief she couldn’t survive?

“Does it hurt?” she asked, finally peering through wet lashes to survey the damage to her dad. All in all, she thought the bandages on his right hand and arm looked the worst. The cuts on his face had been cleaned well, but the bruise on his right temple was dark and bad. They hadn’t taken out his IV. “It looks like it hurts.”

“Drugs,” he rasped. “Really, really good drugs that I shouldn’t have accepted.”

That made her laugh.

He almost joined in, but the grimace replaced his grin, and he grunted with clenched eyes shut tight.

“Sorry,” Frankie whispered.

His brown eyes opened fast, nailing into hers. He told her once that she looked so much like her mother, it sometimes haunted him. But her eyes? All him.

“Don’t be sorry. You’re okay,” he told her, smiling again, “and that’s all I wanted.”

“Sir!” came a shout from down the hallway somewhere outside the room. “Visiting hours are over! Sir, you can’t go back—”