Mom nods, smoothing her hands down the front of her overalls. I can almost hear the next bit before she speaks. At this point she’s just following a pattern. “I am sorry. Why don’t you sit down? Watch your show. I’ll get us some lemonade. My homemade batch. Won’t that be nice?”
Rolling my eyes, I slowly sit down again. I just need to grin and bear it a few more weeks and then this will all be over. Or hell, maybe I’ll ignore Alastair’s advice and go to Vinny’s tonight. “Sure, Mom. Just like always. Let’s have a drink and pretend it never happened.”
Mom nods, stepping closer again. I tense, but all she does is stroke my hair for a moment. “Right. It’ll be like it never even happened.”
She spins once, twice, then glares at me again. Instead of the face of the woman who raised me, I’m staring at Char. The blunt haircut, the unkind eyes, the maddening similarities to my mother…
It’s more than similarities though. This is the monster my mother chose to become. And this isn’t a dream or a memory. It’s a nightmare -
I scream, throwing myself to the side of the bed. There’s banging someplace nearby, and I feel myself free falling, fabric tangling around me.
Strong hands grip me, and my face is saved from the floor. Panting, I start to beat at the grip on my arms in a panic.
“Shh,” I instantly recognize my husband's voice. He drags me back up on the bed, the sheets twisted around my legs. “I’ve got you, darling.”
His arms wind around me, and I take gulping breaths to steady myself. There’s a sticky layer of sweat across my skin. I’mnot wearing a stitch of clothing but Vinny is, his shirt rubbing against my skin as I struggle to hug him back.
“In, out,” he reminds me, smoothing his opposite hand down my arm. “There, darling. Breathe with me.”
I drop my head to his shoulder and try to remind myself where I am. This is Emeric’s house, and my husband Vinny is holding me tight. It’s familiar, grounding. It reminds me of how hard he clung to me years before, when he was certain I would die in the ICU. After I woke up, he held me tighter than ever before,
Neither of us are in danger of dying though. Not anymore.
“I - I saw her,” I say, partially speaking to his shoulder. “My mom. In the dream.”
Vinny stiffens, but he keeps tracing his fingers across my skin. The palm against my back flexes but he doesn’t move it, and I’m glad for it. “Porscha.”
He keeps doing that. Saying her name like it distances me from my mother. “Yeah. I had this dream and she morphed into the way she looked when she pretended to be Char. Even my dreams can’t be tricked anymore.”
Vinny hums, resting the side of his face against mine. “What was the dream about?”
I snort, but it sounds like a sob. Like I’m sad, hurting, and I hate it. This isn’t how I want to wake up. “The last day we had together. When I thought Alastair was still the bad guy.”
His fingers stop moving, his grip getting a little tighter. “Jo…”
Blinking, I pull back from him. He lets me go, and I can feel the wetness in my eyes. “God, I should be finished crying about this.”
“You don’t have to be finished,” Vinny reasons, meeting my gaze. His expression doesn’t waver, but it’s severe. His mindis already made up about this. “Porscha being alive changes everything.”
“Like why Alastair is still on death row?” I huff, wiping at my eyes. “He can’t be at fault for everything. He shouldn’t be the only one responsible if she’s guilty too. What’s taking the FBI so long?”
Vinny purses his lips. “It’s only been a few days-”
“Five,” I correct, crossing my arms. I’ve managed to untangle myself from the sheets by now, and I stand up as we stare at each other. “Five since the cabin.”
“Since we were all four together,” he clarifies, and I nod in agreement. “He didn’t wake up until late the next day after surgery, according to Xeno. I don’t know if he was well enough to even talk to anyone, Jo. They have Porscha to pick apart if they want answers sooner.”
Scoffing, I shake my head. “It’s so nice that your brother just happens to know some of the nurses there.”
He gives me a tight smile. I never asked too many questions about Vinny’s involvement with Massimo’s people. He wasn’t interested in taking over the family legacy, and at the time when Massimo was up his ass there was a lot going on in Citrus Grove - like a killer and my mother acting stranger and stranger. He never really spoke about it. Even after all these years, he’s only ever disclosed so much about the Ajello Family.
I know they do a lot of illegal shit. Drug deals, moving guns, using the orange grove as a cover for the real business… over the years Vinny’s given me a cliff notes version and I never looked into how dark it really went. If Xeno is rising up to eventually take control from his father, I shouldn’t be that surprised that he has casual connections in a hospital in Tallahassee.
What does it do for him exactly? I have no real idea, but I imagine it comes in handy if the family gets into too much trouble.
“Xeno has good connections,” Vinny tells me after a moment, standing from the bed. “He’s careful to not burn bridges that Massimo might overlook. You never know who you might end up needing to know.”
“Well could he find someone willing to let us into the hospital room?” I grumble. “We haven’t seen Alastair since the cabin. I want to know he’s okay.”
