Chapter 5

After my shift that night, I got a call from the hospital.

My mother had a second cardiac event. They needed payment before they could continue treatment. Thirty minutes. That was all the time they'd give me.

I was on my motorbike and moving before they finished the sentence.

Then a black SUV came tearing out of a side street and hit me straight on.

I went over the handlebars, landed on my back with my skull catching the curb. Everything went white. Blood on the asphalt.

My phone landed a couple feet away, teetering at the edge of a drainage ditch.

I got my arm under me and tried to push toward it. I knew my mother was waiting.

Then a pair of heels stopped in front of my face. Red-soled.

I tilted my head back.

Camille.

She crouched down and met my eyes.

Then she stretched out one foot and nudged my phone into the ditch with the toe of her shoe.

Then she raised that same shoe and stepped down on the hand I'd just reached out, slow and deliberate.

Bones shifted. The sound was small.

I pulled the noise back into my throat.

She smelled like Dante's cologne, his custom blend, the only bottle of its kind in the world. And now it was on her.

“This road is dangerous at night, Mia. You really shouldn't be riding alone.”

“Dante's leaving with me for Europe in a few days to sign our engagement papers. Women like you were never supposed to be part of his life.”

“Whatever he felt for you, that was a rich boy playing at something real. A little thrill from the other side of the tracks. When it was over, he was always going to come back and sit at the table next to mine.”

She stood up and walked back to the driver's seat.

“Don't worry. I already called Dante. He's on his way.”

She settled behind the wheel and leaned her forehead against it, just enough to smear her makeup.

The darkness at the edges of my vision kept pulsing in.

The blood from the back of my head was seeping down my neck, warm, then cooler.

My mother was all I could think about. Her repaired heart couldn't survive this. If she found out her daughter had been left here—

“...Camille.”

She looked up from the steering wheel. “What?”

“Please. My mother is in critical condition. I can't go down here.”

She blinked at me, then smiled, slowly. “Mia Rossi, are you actually begging me?”

I closed my eyes.

“...Please.”

Her laughter was the only answer.

Dante arrived before the ambulance. By then I could barely speak.

His car stopped. He went straight for Camille.

He didn't look at me.

“Camille!”

“Dante — I didn't see her, I swear I didn't see her—”

“Don't talk, don't talk.” He opened the door and helped her out. “Where does it hurt? Your head? Neck?”

“I feel dizzy—”

“I'm taking you home. The doctor's already there.”

He passed by me and paused for just a moment, keeping his voice down.

“Camille's one of us. She can't be seen here. I need to get her out. The ambulance is coming. Call me if anything changes.”

Then he was gone. I could just barely hear him, voice going soft, talking her through it.

“It's okay. I've got this. Don't worry.”

That last “baby” was for Camille.

They left.

My mind was strangely clear. I watched his taillights shrink, turn, and disappear.

He hadn't looked at me once, not from the moment he stepped out of that car to the moment it drove away.

If I still cared about him, I probably would have cried.

But watching those red lights vanish, I felt the cold concrete beneath me go somehow less cold.

I told myself: hold on. Don't you dare pass out. Mom is waiting.

But my thoughts were going foggy.

The wail of the ambulance was already fading by the time it reached me.

My last coherent thought was: [Dante. I'm done. There's nothing left.]