Kristen Ashley - The Promise

When I needed to understand how someone would recover from a gunshot wound, I asked my cousin (and a nurse), Laura Foster Giannini.

She gave it all to me, from the nitty-gritty to the good stuff, like when someone could again have sex…in her words the “gentle, non-violent Rock Chick” kind.

Since I’m acknowledging Laura’s help, I’ll just sally forth and dedicate this book to her.

Not as an afterthought. Oh no.

Because Laura is, was, and always will be one of the single coolest people I know. She’s funny. She’s generous. She’s crazy. She’s loyal. She’s beautiful. She’s classy.

She’s everything I wanted to be growing up, even knowing if I managed it I’d always be a poor imitation.

So this book is for you, Laura. As is my love.

Always.

As ever, I have my grand schemes when writing a series.

But sometimes, my characters have different plans.

In my head, the way Benny and Frankie’s story would go after saying good-bye to them in At Peace was much different than what they gave me. In my head, it worked within the flow of the series.

In reality, Benny and Frankie had their own story to tell. Try as I might to bend them to my will, they simply wouldn’t let me.

And they were right, seeing as I got to do a whole bunch of fun stuff I wouldn’t have been able to if I’d made their story what I wanted it to be.

So I hope it is no spoiler to share that this is somewhat of a rewind. I won’t mention more.

But there are bonuses to that rewind.

I just hope you agree.

“You ready?”

“Yep.”

“Called a taxi?”

“Yep.”

“Let’s go.”

With effort, I heaved myself off the hospital bed, twisted and aimed my ass at the wheelchair Cindy was holding still for me. I could feel my mouth get tight at the pain, but other than that, I didn’t let it show (I hoped).

I settled in, but the pain didn’t entirely subside. Luckily, Cindy handed me my bag that I put on my lap, then she gave me a big envelope filled with some papers. I had to concentrate on taking hold of all that so I didn’t get to concentrate on the pain.

The pain, incidentally, was the result of a gunshot wound.

It was surprising that a gunshot wound only bought me a week and a half in the hospital. Apparently, according to Cindy and the other nurses, I was a fast healer.

I didn’t feel like a fast healer.

I felt like shit.

But I wanted to get out of that fucking hospital. The bed wasn’t comfortable. The place was freaking noisy so I wasn’t sleeping well. And it didn’t help that the shot I took was to the middle so I had to sleep on my back.

I never slept on my back. I snored when I slept on my back. Women didn’t snore. I knew this wasn’t a reality; women snored. But for me, as a woman, I was not going to be a woman who snored. So, although I used to sleep on my back all the time, I trained myself to sleep on my stomach or side so I wouldn’t snore.

Yes, I did this, even though I hadn’t had a man in my bed in seven years.

Seven.

Still, I didn’t snore. Even in my own company.

The final, most important reason to get out of that fucking hospital was because I had more company in that hospital than I’d had to my apartment for the last seven years. Sal. Sal’s boys. Sal’s wife, Gina.

And worst of all, the Bianchis. The freaking Bianchis wouldn’t leave me alone. Vinnie Senior, Theresa, even fucking Manny.

Then, of course, there was Benny.

If I was honest, Benny was the real reason I was happy to escape that hospital.

I’d been avoiding the Bianchis for a week and a half by pretending I was asleep and that was even more exhausting than not sleeping. My door would open and it didn’t matter what I was doing. Watching TV. Reading a book. Flipping through a magazine. Talking on the phone. I’d instantly feign sleep, even disconnecting a phone call to do it.

Of course, I’d stop doing this if it was Sal, one of his guys, his wife, or one of my friends.

I wouldn’t if it was a Bianchi.

But yesterday, Benny got fed up with this.

He had, on more than one occasion the last week and a half, said right in my ear, his lips so close to my skin I could nearly feel them, “Babe, open your eyes. I know you’re fakin’.”

Usually, he would do this and wait. But not for long.

I knew Benito Bianchi. I knew all the Bianchis. They were not patient by nature. And Benny was a male Bianchi so his span of patience was akin to the attention of a gnat. Therefore, I could wait him out, no sweat.

And I did. Successfully. For a week and a half.

Yesterday, though, I knew Benny was done. This was because he didn’t whisper in my ear that he knew I was faking.

Oh no.

Instead, he scooched my ass right over and stretched out in bed beside me, shoving an arm under me, wrapping it around and tucking me close. He then grabbed the remote from my hospital table and turned on a fucking baseball game.

I lay next to him biting my tongue (figuratively, seeing as if I let my mouth move, I could no longer fake sleeping), wanting to remind him of the fact that I’d been shot and perhaps he shouldn’t scrunch in my hospital bed with me.

Admittedly, this didn’t feel awful. He’d been gentle about it and it sucked to discover that Ben could be gentle physically. I didn’t need to know that about him, as in I really didn’t need to know that about him seeing as he was my dead boyfriend’s brother, he was Italian American, and last, he was hot in the sense that Death Valley was hot. He so topped the scale on hotness, he reinvented the scale. I was already perving on him, and he was my dead boyfriend’s brother, so this made it wrong to perv on him, as in wrong.

So I didn’t need to know he was gentle.

But he was. Which sucked.

And made him even hotter.

In the end, he was so gentle and so warm and so hard—in that good way men’s bodies could be hard (or, that other good way)—and all that was so comfortable to feel tucked up close, I genuinely fell asleep.

I had a feeling I snored.

That was the bad news.

The good news was, he was gone when I woke up.

The other good news was, I hoped the snoring turned him off. No one liked someone who snored.

You might put up with it if you loved them, but Benny didn’t love me and I was going to make sure that remained the case.

Now I was getting the hell out of there. Not because it was my choice, but I sure as hell wasn’t saying no.

Cindy started wheeling me to the door and she did this speaking.

“There are some scripts in that envelope. You get home, you got someone to go to the pharmacy for you?”

Yes. I did. I could call on anyone in the Bianchi family (primarily Ben) and they’d go to the pharmacy for me. They’d also take me home, tuck me into bed, clean my house, fill my fridge, and then stay a while, cooking for me and keeping me company.

They had a breach to heal. I took a bullet for one of their own. They considered me family once, and when a Bianchi considers you family and a rift forms and they want to patch it, they’ll go all out to do it. Hence the Bianchi visits I’d faked sleeping through.

But I took their shit for years. I did it because I loved them. I did it because I loved Vinnie Junior. I did it because they lost a son and a brother and they had to pile their pain on somebody, and seeing as I loved them, I let that be me.

Then I took a bullet for them.

Enough.

I also had Sal. Sal would do anything for me. His business killed my man; he owed me and he was the kind of man who felt markers like that never went fulfilled.

He was also a Mafia crime boss. So, as much as I loved him, I didn’t want to go there.

I also had friends. I used to have more—prior to my dead boyfriend deciding on a career path that meant he became a made man in the mob—but I still had a few.

I wasn’t going to go there either. I didn’t pretend to sleep when they stopped by, but even before I had the spectacular idea to stick my nose in a situation that got me shot, I was making moves to get on with my life. I’d been treading water in Chicago for too long: seven years after Vinnie died. It was time to be done with it. Start over. I was thirty-four years old. I’d wasted seven years. I shouldn’t waste any more.

Who I could not call was any of my own flesh and blood. I loved them. I really did. But the drama they brought with them wasn’t worth it. I’d been shot. People lived their whole lives not only never getting shot, but also not getting shot at.

My family still could out-drama a gunshot wound. This would be no challenge to them.

So I didn’t need that either.

“Sure,” I answered Cindy as she wheeled me down the hall.

“You got painkiller scripts in there,” she told me, heading toward the elevators. “Now, you know I saw what happened to you on the TV. You went all out, bein’ a hero, helpin’ to save that woman from that psycho guy. You use those pills when you need them, stop when you don’t. Be a shame you went from hero to junkie.”

Cindy spoke truth.

Cindy was also an African American nurse who worked in that suburban hospital just outside Chicago, but she used to work at a hospital deep in the city. Over the last week and a half, I’d learned that Cindy had seen a lot and most of it was not good.

I’d also learned that Cindy didn’t beat around the bush.

“I’ll do my best not to become a junkie,” I assured her as she hit the elevator button.

“Follow the doctor’s orders. Read ’em good,” she ordered. “Get your booty out of bed and get around. But don’t overdo it. You hear?” she finished as the elevator binged.

“I hear,” I muttered.

She wheeled me in the elevator and expertly wheeled me around to face forward.

“This has not been real fun,” I told the doors but did it speaking to Cindy. “But I’m gonna miss you and the girls.”

Weirdly, this was true. It was likely I’d never forget getting shot or the ensuing weeks where I had to battle the pain, struggle to recover, and do this with a Bianchi onslaught in full swing. But the nurses in that hospital were the best. I couldn’t say this with any authority. I’d never had a hospital stay before. But they were so good, I couldn’t imagine better.

“Yeah, we’re gonna miss you too,” she replied. “Mostly we’ll miss tryin’ to figure out what is up with you doin’ the Sleepin’ Beauty act when that boy comes callin’.”

Apparently they were also attentive. And to more than just my health.

I pressed my lips together.

“What is up with that?” Cindy prompted.

“Uh…” I non-responded as the elevator doors binged again and started to open.

“That boy came every day to see me,” she started as she began to push me out of the elevators, “I’d be on the phone with my stylist like a shot. I’d have my hair done. My nails done. My toenails done. And I’d be in a negligee.”

I tamped down visions of me in a negligee reclining in a hospital bed, which were too ridiculous to fathom, even for me (and there was very little too ridiculous to fathom about me), and I thought about Gina.

Gina had brought me some new nightgowns and a robe to wear during my hospital stay. They were pretty in a cute way that was very Gina and so not me.

I was about flash and impact all the time. I could put on the glitz just going down to the lobby to get my mail.

But when it came to bed wear, the less material the better. And if there was material, I liked it to leave as little to the imagination as possible (yes, even if I was sleeping just with me).

As cute as the ones Gina brought were, they were also appropriate for a hospital stay, thus no flash, no impact, and lots of material.

I’d opted to wear hospital gowns.

They were ugly, shapeless, and no one could get ideas about a woman in a hospital gown.