Page 16 of Rise
“Maybe Mauro hired them.”
“No. No!” she shouts, her tone abrasive, her eyes unwavering as they glare up at me. “Mauro could never do something so… so…it’s not possible. Don’t ever say that again. Do you understand me, Antonio? It was not Mauro!”
As I try to think of how best to suggest that ruling out Mauro is a bad idea, I realize the room is a lot louder now than when I first walked in. The noises that sounded like steady, even beeping sounds before have become more erratic. One alarm coming from Vinny’s bedside is so shrill and highpitched that if it becomes any louder, the only way to listen to it at all would be with my hands covering my ear.
“Something’s not right,” I mutter.
Nonna looks over at Vinny for a moment. As the two of us step closer to his bed, Vinny’s thin, weak hands move up shakily from his side and grip the ventilator hose and mouthpiece.
“Vinny?” I say his name in disbelief. He’s beenin a coma for so long. He’s never moved an inch before today.
“He’s waking up,” Nonna says. “Go find a nurse. Or a doctor. Now, Antonio. Go!”
I pivot toward the door in a panic and burst into the hallway past my men waiting outside. “Somebody help!” I shout toward the ward’s nurse’s station down the hall, then turn to look the other way for anyone else around. “We need help rightnow!”
Vinny’s in distress. The medical staff here have to stabilize him fast. If Nonna Romano is right and he’s waking up, it couldn’t happen at a better time.
He’s the last person to see Natalia.
The last man alive.
Vinny can’t die. Not now.
I need my friend back, and we have to know what he knows.
That’s why he has to be okay.
