Dead Man's Hand (Vegas Underground 7)

“Hey, guys,” I say when I push the door open.

Both my grandparents and Aunt Lori are awake, sitting around the dining room table, looking like someone just died. My aunt’s eyes are red-rimmed and my nonna’s mouth is pinched into a tight line, defeat written all over her crumpled face.

“What’s going on?” I ask when they just look at me. “What happened?”

“This hospital called this afternoon.” My aunt sniffs. “Since we don’t have insurance, they refused the surgery for Mia. They said the only way they’re going to go through with it as scheduled is if we show up by close of business tomorrow with a check for thirty thousand dollars.”

“What?” Thirty thousand dollars. That’s the going rate for a hip surgery these days. Insane. “Well, that’s bullsh… crap.”

Aunt Lori tears up again. Her daughter, my eight-year-old cousin, fell on the playground a few months ago and somehow fractured her hip. They did surgery at the time, but the poor kid is still in constant pain and her new surgeon says the screws have come out and are poking her and the whole joint needs to be reconstructed. Again. It’s freaking tragic for an eight-year-old to have to go through this shit.

“I know. And I just don’t even know what I’m going to tell Mia. We’ve been trying to get her out of pain for so long.”

Now I tear up. It’s not right for a kid to be in constant pain. To not be able to play with her friends, or even walk around her school. All because our health care system in this country is so broken.

Working at Caffè Milano, my aunt and I both make too much to qualify for Medicaid but we can’t afford health insurance. At least my grandparents can get Medicare.

I sink into a chair and kick off my shoes. “We’ll figure this out,” I promise.

I don’t know how or when I became the person this family looks to for answers, but at some point, I did. My mom abandoned me as a kid, so this is my nuclear family: my elderly grandparents, my aunt—who, like my mom, got pregnant young and out of wedlock—her daughter Mia and me. We stick together and look after one another. We’re family, and we figure things out.

“How?” Aunt Lori wails. “How are we going to come up with thirty thousand dollars by tomorrow?”

Sometimes it just takes the right phrasing of a question to discover the answer.

It suddenly becomes clear as day. Inevitable, even.

The Tacones have cash. Stacks of it. All there for the asking.

All I have to do is sell my soul.

Fuck.

I don’t say anything in front of my grandparents because I know it would kill them.

“Tomorrow I’ll see if I can get a loan. I’m sure the bank will give us something with the cafe as collateral.”

Aunt Lori’s too distraught to notice my lie. Too desperate to grasp on to any answer. “You think so?”

“Definitely. I’ll get it figured out tomorrow. I promise.”

Mia needs help. Time to put on my big girl panties and do what has to be done.

Gio

I wake to the sound of my own shout, the, No! echoing off my bedroom walls, Marissa’s horror-stricken face burnt into my retinas, those bluish green-colored eyes bright with tears.

Fuck.

I throw the sheet off my sweat-drenched body and get up, my side pulling with a dull ache. The scar tissue is getting stiffer every day.

Desiree—Junior’s bride, the nurse who saved my life— says I need to get the fascia worked out. She wants me to see a physical therapist or some other shit, but that bullet hole is evidence to the crime Junior committed, killing those bratva bastards who shot me. So yeah, not happening. I stick to my morning run and lifting weights in my home gym.

I stand shirtless in the window of my apartment and look out at Lake Michigan. Sailboats cut through the water, picturesque as a fucking painting. Maybe I should learn to sail.

The thought falls like a brick, like all thoughts for my life. For my future.

Meh.

I’m living the goddamn dream here. Penthouse apartment right on Lake Shore Drive, lavish furnishings, the black Mercedes G-wagon in the garage.

I was already pimping it before got a second chance at life. So why am I the least grateful fuck in Chicago? I should be waking up every day thanking my lucky stars for all I have to live for.

Except that’s just it.

There’s nothing to live for.

Not even the glory of business anymore.

I’m not saying I miss it. The violence, the danger. The intrigue. But there was a certain adrenaline rush that came with every interaction. The thrill of taking care of business. Watching money multiply. Loaning it. Collecting it.

Junior shut down a lot of the business after I got shot. Although that may be more about becoming a husband and daddy again than about almost losing me. Not that I think he didn’t suffer over what happened. I know he did. Does.