The Consequence

by Giana Darling

  Of course, because we hadn’t talked about what our living situation was going to look like now that we were together. Sinclair was without a home and I couldn’t very well live with Cosima. It would be incredibly unfair to make her choose sides, especially when she couldn’t actually speak for herself at the moment.

  It took me a moment to understand what he said but I blamed it on the lingering nausea.

  “Rooms?”

  Sin picked up his phone and nonchalantly scrolled through his inbox again. “Mmm.”

  “Why the plural?”

  “I need to give Richard a call before we get to the hospital, if you don’t mind.”

  “I do mind. Why did you book multiple rooms, Sin?”

  He sighed, tugging on a lock of his overlong hair. “I wasn’t sure if you would want to stay with me, given the current situation.”

  Maybe if he had voiced it differently, emphasized his own discomfort with the living situation, with the fact that there would never be a good time to come out to our family but that it most definitely was not now, I would have felt insecure about the comment. Instead, my heart melted a little inside my chest because I knew that it was Sinclair, my enigmatic, in-control Frenchmen, who was experiencing a moment of doubt.

  I got to my knees on the seat in order to take his face in my hands. His eyes were squinted defensively but their color was pure and velvety with sadness.

  “If it wasn’t completely callous of us, I would demand to move in with you this very second and take out an ad on page six of the Times so that everyone in the entire city would know it,” I said.

  Sinclair’s corresponding grin was so large that I could have counted every single one of his pearly white teeth. “I love you.”

  “I love you. And I’m going to miss you the second we get inside that God forsaken hospital,” I admitted.

  Sin ran his knuckles down my cheek and lifted the hair from my neck to swing it behind my shoulder. I tilted my head to give him access to my throat. The pads of his fingers pressed gently against my fluttering pulse while his other hand slid up my bare thigh, under my skirt, right to the edge of my panties. We both felt the increase in my heart rate.

  “Your body and soul, your very heartbeat are mine, Giselle. Remember that even when I’m across the room for you, pretending otherwise. I will still feel every hop and skip of this pulse, feel every emotion that plucks at this chest and I will remember every single one so that I can console you properly later.” He laughed at the flush of arousal that I could feel blooming under my skin. “Such a dirty girl, you know what I meant.”

  “I do,” I said before leaning over to nip his strong chin between my teeth. “I was just hoping you would also console me physically.”

  His chuckle was deep and smoky as he gripped my chin and brought his lips against mine. “That goes without saying.”

  The driver pulling in front of the hospital and knocking lightly at the partition interrupted our searing kiss. I clutched to Sinclair, my nails digging into the quilted muscles of his back, my lips sucking hard at his, for one desperate moment before I pulled away.

  “Let’s go see Cosima,” he said, reminding me gently why we were here in the first place.

  I was up and out of the car in less than a heartbeat.

  It was my first time in a hospital. Growing up, the hospital was almost as bad as the police station. No one went because it meant having to disclose why you were injured and in Napoli, home of the Camorra, death that steamed from tattling was worse than any other fate.

  The whir of equipment and the faint shush of Crocs shuffling across the laminate floor immediately disturbed me. I didn’t like the pressurized silence, the forced smiles the nurses gave me as I passed through the lobby, up the elevator and into the trauma ward. Everything was white or beige, sterile and chemically scented. The antithesis of Cosima.

  Sinclair wasn’t with me, opting to wait downstairs for a few minutes so that it wouldn’t seem suspicious that we had arrived together. I understood the need for duplicity but I wished fervently that he were beside me, his cool control like a balm to my flustered spirit.

  I rounded the corner of the nurse’s station, about to ask which room Cosima occupied, when I caught sight of a tall, dark and handsome man emerging from behind a drab curtain.

  “Sebastian,” I called out, too loudly, too desperate for the muted ambiance of the hospital ward.

  By the time he turned around, I was already barreling into his arms. He caught me in a death grip, squeezing so hard it was hard to breath. I relished the sensation.

  “Bambina, bambina,” he murmured over and over into my hair.

  It took me a moment to realize that he was trembling beneath my embrace, that under his spicy cologne he smelled like stale sweat and cigarettes. Things were bad whenever Seb picked up his smoking habit.

  “Let me look at you,” I said, gently extracting myself from his arms.

  He kept hold of my hands but allowed enough distance for me to observe his appearance. My heart tightened painfully as I noted his grimy, tousled hair and the deep purplish trenches beneath his glassy eyes. He looked incredibly ill, as if Death himself stalked his every move. He may as well have, I figured, because if Cosima didn’t pull through, I really couldn’t see Sebastian surviving without her.

  “You look like shit.”

  A glimmer of amusement flared in his gold eyes. “You look more beautiful than I have ever seen you.”

  I’m happy, I wanted to say but didn’t. Instead, I shrugged and tugged him by the hand closer to the room he had just left.

  “Tell me what happened. Mama only had time to tell me that Cosima was in some sort of accident and that she was in the ICU.”

  Seb scrubbed both hands over his face, absent-mindedly taking mine along for the ride as we were still clasping palms. He didn’t notice and I didn’t say anything.

  “She was having dinner in the Bronx at this tiny Italian deli she likes even though the prosciutto tastes like shoe leather. According to witnesses, she was eating alone but she seemed to be waiting for someone, she even bought an extra sandwich and a bottle of Chinotto Neri--”

  “She hates soda,” I interjected automatically.

  “I know, and I can’t think of a single damn person in her life that would drink that stuff.”

  “Only an Italian,” I said, because it was our version of Coca-Cola but bitter, the Neri brand quintessentially Italian too.

  “Obviously,” Seb agreed, his jaw taught with agitation. “I was fucking useless when the police questioned me. She is my twin sister and best friend in the world.” His voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “How can I have been oblivious to this?”

  I thought about the secrets our sister kept hidden close to her skin, closer even than her twin brother and best friend in the world could be.

  “Continue,” I urged, because I didn’t have anything comforting to say.

  “She had been waiting for about fifteen minutes when a black SUV pulled up in front of the shop and opened fire.”

  I gasped, the scene playing out in my mind like a film reel. My beautiful sister sits at a table near the window and waits patiently for some unknown man like a heroine in a tragic romance novel when the gunfire starts.

  I felt sure it was a man she was waiting for, not least of all, because Cosima didn’t particularly like woman and they didn’t particularly like her. It was clear to me too, that this wasn’t a random attack. Who would target a nearly empty Italian deli in the Bronx just for kicks?

  If I rephrased the question - who would target a nearly empty Italian deli just to take someone out? - I knew the answer. The Mafia.

  I swallowed hard and snuck a glance up at Sebastian who was absorbed in his own painful reverie. The face of Dante, the black-eyed mafia man who had appeared one day in Cosima’s apartment a few weeks ago flared to life in my memory. He had something to do with this. I knew it as surely as I knew that it had been wishful thinking by our family
to think that Cosima had fled the confines of Naples unshackled. After she had left, and Seamus, our family had been left remarkably untroubled by the local made men. Mama had put it down to God and her devout prayer, Sebastian to the departure of our gambling, addict father but I had always wondered, and I knew Elena did too, if Cosima hadn’t signed away her soul for our freedom.

  As we were standing in a hospital with her lying ten feet away, struggling for her life, I was desperately afraid I already knew the answer to that question as well.

  “She was just sitting there,” Seb said quietly, almost to himself.

  “Giselle?” Mama’s voice drifted out into the hall and my heart tripped over the familiar, tender notes.

  I spilled through the doorway and tumbled straight into the arms of my mother. She pressed me against her breast, hushing my suddenly laborious breaths and random whimpers of pain. Now that I was there, in the awful hospital that was such a contrast to my vibrant sister, the reality of her situation came crashing down around me. Before I could lose it completely, I pulled away from the faint citrus and semolina scent of my Mama and turned towards the hospital bed.

  Cosima under a thin white sheet, thin and pale as a cadaver used in medical school experiments. There was deeply purple bruises under her eyes and a brackish, yellow brown discoloration over the left side of her face. She had always been svelte but in the harsh light she seemed skeletal, impossibly dead.

  I gasped and then choked on a bulbous sob.

  Mama stroked my hair as I turned and throw up in a bin that Sebastian thrust under my chin.

  “Bambina, bambina,” she crooned.

  “What happened?” I whispered through the bile rising at the back of my throat.

  “She was shot three times in the torso.”

  I tilted my head to stare at Elena. She sat in an absurdly orange plastic chair beside the bed wearing a beautiful turtleneck dress. Her hair was still shiny and supple, curled around her beautiful face perfectly. Hatred rose with the bile to pool at the back of my tongue. How dare she look so composed with Cosima was practically dead beside her?

  Elena continued, even though my glare should have eviscerated her. “She hit her head on the way down and they have her in a medically induced coma until the swelling goes down.”

  I wrenched my gaze away from Elena and my unfair rage against her to look at Cosima again. Her skin was papery under my fingers when I reached over to brush my fingers against her cheek and her normally lustrous hair was brittle. Another sob rose in my throat but I swallowed it painfully. Crying would only prompt my family to do the same.

  “Cane, let me through!” A roughened voice demanded from down the hallway.

  “Get your act together,” another voice bit out, “or I won’t let you see her.”

  A moment later, Sinclair led a disgruntled Dante into the room. I gasped at the sight of the Italian man, his inky hair completely disheveled and his black eyes wild with grief. He immediately tumbled into the room and sat on Cosima’s bed, his hands shaking as they gently skimmed over her face.

  “Mia bella ragazza,” he murmured over and over again, as he stared at her.

  I was deeply surprised and even strangely moved when tears began to roll down his cheeks.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Sebastian demanded after the moment of shock passed.

  Dante ignored him. Instead, he pressed his forehead against Cosima’s and continued to mutter in Italian under his breath.

  Sebastian took a menacing step forward but stopped with Dante let out a choked sob. His hand shook as he stroked it down Cosima’s brittle mane of hair.

  “What happened to you?” he whispered in anguish.

  Sebastian stilled vibrated beside me but I knew he wouldn’t rip the mafia man away without asking questions first.

  I opened my mouth to do just that, but Elena interrupted me.

  “What are you doing here, Daniel?”

  It took me a moment to process what she was doing. When I whirled to face her and saw the sincerity in her expression, I was furious for a different reason.

  “Elena,” I snapped, before I could temper my response.

  Sinclair held up a hand and stepped forward. “Elena, this isn’t the time.”

  Mama looked between the three of us with sharp eyes that saw too much. “What is going on, ragazzi?”

  “Daniel and I are,” Elena paused delicately, “going through a trial separation.”

  Sinclair frowned but didn’t correct her. I wanted him to so badly that my muscles twitched but I tried to understand why he remained silent.

  Mama barely bated an eyelash. “I agree. This is not the time, Elena.”

  “No, it is the time for this cafone to tell us what he got Cosi into,” Sebastian growled as he moved forward to plant a heavy hand on Dante’s shoulder.

  The made man stilled, his lack of movement filled with threat.

  “I didn’t get her into anything,” he said quietly.

  “Stronzo, do not lie to me about my sister.”

  “I would never do anything to harm her,” Dante whispered again.

  Was it absurd that I believed him? He was looking at Cosima with a tenderness that echoed in my chest.

  “Tell me the truth,” Sebastian roared, yanking him back by the shoulder.

  Dante was on his feet in a flash, his forearm across Seb’s throat as he held him against the wall. My brother was tall, over six feet, but Dante was practically a giant, closer to seven feet than six, with muscles defined and bulging like coils of rope beneath his skin.

  Dante leaned close to Sebastian’s face and calmly repeated, “I didn’t get her into anything. I saved her, patatino.”

  He knew his family nickname.

  Who was this guy?

  Dante stepped back with a snort of disgust and turned to face Cosima again, his face soft with anguish again. He took her hand but spoke to Sebastian, “I understand your anger but know that I have lived with it for much longer than you, this rage against the people who dare to touch this woman.” His fingers tenderly brushed her hair away from her face. “She kept you in the dark because you weren’t strong enough to deal with her demons.”

  Sebastian growled but I stepped forward to press a hand to his arm.

  “She never gave us the chance,” I said softly. “Maybe you can?”

  Dante looked over at me, his eyes large and wet with tears. For a moment, I could sense his desire to connect with us. There was no doubt in my mind that he loved Cosima and the outsider in him longed to be accepted by her and by association, her family.

  But the expression flicked and died a quick death when Elena snorted at my comment and Sebastian bared his teeth.

  The family that couldn’t even accept their own would never accept him and by the look in his eye, he knew it.

  “It is not my story to tell, not really,” he finally said.

  “Cut the bullshit,” Sebastian said. “I want to know what happened to my sister.”

  Dante shrugged as if he didn’t care but his eyes were tight. “I can’t know for sure. She knows more than one dangerous person, myself included, that could have swept her up into the middle of a feud. She always was too curious for her own good. Too defiant.”

  “So, you had nothing to do with this?” I clarified, because I was pretty sure Sebastian needed to be reminded.

  He had the wet black look of murder in his suddenly dark eyes.

  “No, but I will find out what happened to her,” he vowed, more to Cosima than to anyone else. He leaned closer to her until their noses were almost touching. “And I promise to rip them apart with my teeth, tesoro.”

  Chapter Twelve.

  There was no way to prepare for something like this. Of course, there wasn’t a handbook that offered advice to adulterers on how to calmly confront the wronged party about their infidelity. How did a person condense their sinful actions, endless excuses and genuine apologies into one carefully constructed monologue? Even if you accompli
shed such a thing, there was no way in hell the person was just going to sit there and listen to you.

  “This is impossible,” I murmured, my hands clutched around my cold cup of coffee.

  Sinclair was cleaning up in the kitchenette after our quick breakfast of croissants, baguette and fresh plum jam. Or at least, Sinclair’s quick breakfast. As soon as I had touched a piece of toast to my mouth, I had run to the washroom to throw up. I was still feeling physically ill from the trauma of Cosima’s accident and now from the stress of confronting Elena, it was impossible to keep anything down.

  There was a smudge of purple jelly left on the right side of Sin’s mouth that I fixated on as he competently moved around our suite at the St. Regis. I loved to watch the economy of his actions, the contained grace with which he carried his lean build. It didn’t disturb me anymore to know that I could spend hours watching him.

  Who needed Netflix when you had a hot Frenchmen to stare at?

  Normally, he was enough to distract me, but this morning I was going to coffee with Elena. To call it a coffee date was misleading and wrong, but I didn’t know how else to phrase it except to say that it was a date made to ruin her life and it didn’t have the same ring to it.

  We had only been State side for three days, all of which were filled with extended hospital visits to a still-comatose Cosima. It felt wrong to tell the family about our relationship during a time like this but it felt like more of a betrayal to hide it from them during a time like this so I was meeting with her that morning.

  “Elle, we have spoken about this. If you don’t want to be the one to tell her, I am more than prepared to do it myself.”

  I blinked up at him where he leaned over the other side of the island, his gaze direct and strong. I had no doubt he was prepared to do the hard part for me, in fact, I was sure he would have preferred it.

  I shook my head. “No. I’m her sister. We may not get along very well, but I owe it to our family bond to tell her about us to her face. I just don’t know how to go about it gently, you know?”

  “I do know. I know that something like this, it cannot be done gently.”