Page 40 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet
“You think it is poison,” Tore surmised grimly from where he stood at the head of the couch hovering over Dante like he could protect him from invisible enemies.
The doctor grunted. “Most likely cyanide. Easy to get your hands on and fairly difficult to detect.”
“Treatable?” the same beautiful Italianate woman who’d worried about him before asked.
I peered at her, something ugly churning in my gut at the sight of her sitting on the back of the couch to be closer to the capo.
They looked ill-suited, I decided. The woman was too blond, northern Italian for sure, with the olive skin and flaxen hair of the border regions near Switzerland and Germany.
Dante wouldn’t look good with a blonde.
The doctor, too, didn’t seem to like the woman because he ignored her again as he pulled a jar of black tablets from his endless Mary Poppins-like bag and then a full IV bag. He glanced over his shoulder, catching eyes with me.
Wordlessly, I extended my hand to hold up the IV bag for him. He nodded curtly as he handed it off then efficiently inserted the needle into one of the thick veins on the back of Dante’s hand before taping it down.
“He will be fine,” Dr. Crown asserted as if he had a direct line to Death.
I knew about cyanide poisoning because one of my first cases as an associate at Fields, Harding & Griffith had been defending a woman who poisoned her abusive husband over the course of a few months until he died. We’d plead guilty for a reduced sentence of five years with the possibility for parole at three.
I knew cyanide was deadly, especially in large doses.
My mouth was dry, and my palms were sweating. I swiped them on the silken dress Dante had bought me. A dress worth thousands of dollars. A dress I’d only ever found in my dreams.
Acid rushed up to eat at the walls of my chest.
I was shocked by it, but I truly didn’t want this man to die.
“He’ll be fine,” I asserted, an echo of Dr. Crown.
Dante’s associates, the only ones left in the messy and shockingly empty apartment, turned their black eyes to me. There were varying levels of curiosity and concern in those gazes, but I ignored them, tilting my chin up stubbornly to reaffirm my words.
“Si, Dante va bene,” Tore said with a tight smile aimed my way. “Now, what did Dante eat or drink that no one else did?”
I knew.
Of course, I did.
I’d known before that jerk, Jacopo, had yelled it in my face.
“The tiramisu,” I whispered, my tongue rasping against the dry roof of my mouth. “I brought it from my mama’s stall on Mulberry Street. But you have to know, she would never do anything to harm Dante. She was just telling me how much she liked him.”
Instantly, one of their men, surprisingly not an Italian but someone who appeared to be Japanese, moved toward the door. I had a cold flash of memory, a mafioso shaking Mama so hard as he interrogated her about Seamus’s whereabouts that she broke a tooth.
“Please, don’t hurt her,” I said, stepping forward then stopping helplessly.
“No one is hurting Caprice,” Tore promised darkly, casting a look at the Asian man who hesitated then nodded and returned to his vigil around Dante on the couch. “This is too simple, yes? Of course, the feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy is visited by thousands. Even vigilant, there is a possibility her stall was compromised, and we have many enemies.”
His mouth was a grim flatline as he considered, eyes pinned on something in the distance. I noticed with shock that Amadeo Salvatore had the same peculiar and striking shade of gold in his eyes as my twin siblings.
“Did you see anyone when you visited?” he asked me suddenly, stepping forward to grasp and squeeze my biceps. “Think,cervellona.”
I pursed my lips as I ran my mind back over the afternoon and remembered the thin limbs of the man who had bumped into me near the stall.
“A man bumped into me in the street.” I shrugged a little helplessly. “He wasn’t doing anything strange, though.”
“What did he look like?”
“He had auburn hair, close-cropped, and he wasn’t very tall, maybe an inch or two shorter than my five foot ten,” I described, uncomfortable with all the eyes on me. “He had a scar at the corner of his jaw, just here.”
