My mom comes to the hospital with Anthony, and since they found out what happened, my brother is in a rage and they’re huddling around me, super protective.
“Saturday night?” Michael whispers.
We’ve crossed the line back to relationship from the planet Splitsville.
“Saturday night,” I say before he slips away and my eyes close because I feel like Dante’s punching bag.
The newspapers pick up the story of course, and instead of my dad’s face on the front of the Daily News, it’s mine, because what’s bigger news than a kidnapping attempt on the don’s daughter who happens to go to one of Manhattan’s snootiest private schools?
I get into bed that night and turn on the eleven o’clock news and after it’s over the phone rings.
“Did you see the news?” Michael asks.
“Ha, I’m famous.”
“Christ,” he says.
“Thanks for coming.”
“Yeah, well…”
“If I wasn’t feeling so crappy now…”
“Yeah, if only…Saturday?” he says.
“Saturday.”
Then the Percocet kicks in and I yawn.
“Go to sleep, Gia,” he says softly.
“I love you, Michael,” I blurt out. Did I really say that?
“Gia…” he says, exhaling hard.
Say something back, Michael. Please.
“Good night, baby,” he says finally. Then the line goes dead.
I’m in school the next day, now with a friend of Anthony’s, Angelo, as my new driver and bodyguard even though I don’t know how Anthony’s paying him. And when Clive gets all the details about why I didn’t return his fifty calls or texts or emails he looks shaken and upset and keeps saying, “oh my God, Gia, oh my God, if I had known…”
“But I’m fine, Clive—”
“I know, but—”
“Really, I’m fine.”
“But I was inside, right inside, taking the damn test, if I had known…”
He finally calms down after I tell him a hundred more times that I’m fine and how another cop saved my life and that “everything’s different now.”
“So now do you want to know what I found out?”
“About?”
“About him, about Michael Cross,” Clive says impatiently. “The report. I’ve got the whole thing now…assuming I’m not dragged off to prison for hacking into—”
“Yes, yes, tell me.”