by Toby Neal
Back at the desk, he pulled out the top drawer. Nando had told him copies of their wills were in there, along with the passcodes to their bank accounts.
All of Avital’s assets needed to be converted to cash, and that cash converted to gold—if the banks were even operating today. Gold was the only currency Dolf knew would hold value in the cataclysm breaking over them, but Avital would never take time away from the hospital to deal with any of this.
Avital’s work was her purpose and her anesthesia—and he was sure she had no intention of what had happened last night ever happening again. That making love to her had happened at all was a bizarre and terrible miracle. He wondered again what had prompted her to reach out to him—holding her hand had been enough, and too much—until he’d woken up naked, with her in his arms. How it had gotten started, he had no idea. Perhaps they’d been asleep.
Dolf forced his mind back to the job at hand.
He shuffled through loose items in the drawer and found Nando’s will, printed on plain white computer paper, two sheets stapled at the top on his firm’s letterhead.
He skimmed down. All was mutually inherited until he came to a clause added separately on the back, and notarized.
“In case of my untimely death, I leave my half of the house on Beacher Street to my brother Adolfo Luciano, in hopes that he will find a home in it.”
In hopes he would find a home in it?
Avital couldn’t have known about this.
Dolf checked the date: only a month ago. Dolf wasn’t the only Luciano besides JT to have a touch of the Sight.
Nando knew how Dolf felt about Avital though they’d never spoken of it. In the way of twins, he just knew. And now he’d made his wishes clear:
Dolf was to find a home in his house. With his wife.
Dolf sagged abruptly into the cheap office chair. Crumpling the will in his hands, bending his head to crush the stiff paper to his face, he finally wept for his brother.
Chapter Four
Avital
“Clear!” Avital yelled. The nurses and attending physician, Dr. Thomas Keller, stepped back. She laid the paddles on the woman’s bare chest. Pale skin, large brown nipples, and a soft belly with a cesarean scar on it were all exposed to the harsh light of the emergency room.
The patient looked like a corpse already, blue around the lips with dark circles under closed eyes. She’d stopped coughing and her heart had ceased beating. This husk was empty, but Avital couldn’t give up. Not yet.
Electricity zinged through the metal and the patient’s body arched off the gurney before slamming back onto it. The buzzing green line on the screen stayed flat—no peaks or valleys, no sign of life.
Avital heard a whimper behind her, and turned to see the woman’s teenage daughter peeking through the curtain. “Get her out of here!” she barked.
One of the two nurses helping her, José, used his body to block the young girl’s view as he moved her away.
“Again!” Avital yelled.
“No, that’s enough,” Dr. Keller said. “Give her some peace.”
Avital turned on him, sizzling rage bubbling up from her stomach, acidic and burning in her throat. “I’m not giving up. We’ve lost too many.” Her voice didn’t crack, but Dr. Keller looked at her like it had.
“Enough, Dr. Luciano. Call it.” His voice brokered no argument.
She looked up at the dirty white clock on the wall. “12:59 a.m. August seventh.” She returned the paddles to the crash cart, leaning against it and allowing the metal structure to support her for just a second before taking a deep breath and turning to the nurse that remained. “Is there anyone with her daughter?”
Oona Jones was a black woman in her early fifties, strong and tough, but even she looked beaten down by the day they’d had. “Grandparents, I think.”
Every life lost under Avital’s care was her responsibility. She had to honor them, speak with their families, mourn with them and shoulder some of their grief as best she could.
Oona unfolded a sheet and draped it over the patient, hiding her body from the glare of the fluorescent lights. Avital forced memories of Nando’s white-wrapped corpse from her mind.
She started toward the curtain and Dr. Keller touched her arm. “I’ll tell them.”
“She was my patient. I’ll do it.”
“You need to get yourself together, Avital.” Dr. Keller hardly ever used her first name. They had known each other for years, and he’d worked under her father when Dr. Seiden was head surgeon at Pennsylvania Hospital. “I want you to go take a nap. Lie down for 30 minutes.”
Dr. Keller, balding and only slightly taller than she was, deserved respect. She nodded, giving in to his request. She could listen when someone was telling her the truth. It was something she prided herself on…and something that she and Nando had always disagreed about.
“You’re the most stubborn woman I’ve ever met. I think Dolf’s the only other person I know with a head just as hard.” He’d said it smiling. Nando had loved that trait. He always said it made the challenge of charming a stubborn person into doing what he wanted that much more satisfying.
Avital made her way to the “crash room” that the doctors used for resting while on or between shifts. Her hours had become more regular and less arduous since completing residency, so she hadn’t spent much time there lately. But of course, all that had changed with the arrival of “Scorch Flu.” Her shift had officially ended six hours earlier and she was still here, and not a single cell in her body wanted to leave.
Avital opened the door and clicked on the lights. They flickered and buzzed, casting a pale yellow illumination over the small room, barely larger than a closet. It held two cots, both with rumpled sheets. She closed the door behind her and turned off the light, bringing welcome darkness.
Looking at those rumpled beds hurt her, reminding her of what she’d done.
Avital settled onto the cot and closed her eyes, flooded with memories. She’d loved this room once, because it reminded her of Nando’s tiny bedroom in his first apartment, one he and Dolf had shared right after they graduated from high school and were both taking classes at Pennsylvania University. The two of them had rented a dingy little place near campus and shared a one-bedroom, their twin beds separated by less than ten feet.
Avital and Nando had slept together for the first time there, when she was seventeen and he was nineteen. They’d been going together for a year and had waited—they both knew what they were doing was serious, that the relationship was, too.
Neither were virgins. Nando told her about past dalliances—getting head under the lab desk during chemistry class was one of the most shocking stories. Avital had shared with him about losing her virginity to an ex in his basement, on a carpet that left rug burn on her back.
Avital had always believed she and Nando had fallen in love at first sight, but the emotion between them had deepened because of their long talks. When they decided to sleep together, it was no different: they talked about it a lot, and planned the day and time so that Dolf would be in class and her parents wouldn’t miss her.
Nando had made her pasta, one of his first successes with his father’s gravy recipe. She would come to love that sauce, and think of it as her own family recipe in time.
After dinner Nando washed the dishes and poured her a glass of wine. They’d kissed at the table, the taste of wine and tomato sauce in their mouths. Then he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom—so romantic, she’d gushed to her girlfriends later.
Avital put the condom on with her teeth and felt incredibly sexy and adult doing it.
Their first time making love was gentle and sweet and halting, filled with giggles and acceptance. Their bodies were so new, their sensations so unexplored—they had been so young.
Afterward, they lay on his little bed with Avital curled up into Nando’s side, and talked more about their dreams and their plans. Nando knew he was going into law. His father’s murder at the
hands of organized crime while working undercover had fueled his passion for justice. Avital’s father was a doctor. His ability to heal others made him seem like a wizard in her youth, and he became her idol as she grew up. Avital wanted to follow in his footsteps, and Nando had resoundingly approved.
When Dolf came home and they heard him in the kitchen, Avital tucked her head into Nando’s side and laughed against his chest, her cheeks flushed, knowing that Nando must’ve told Dolf the plan, and that he’d tell him the details later. The two shared everything—then and now.
Now they’d shared her.
Avital turned her face into the pillow and bit her lip, holding back a wall of tears.
Her first time with Nando was so different than her single time with Dolf had been. Nando and she had planned it; they’d discussed it and made the decision to be together. She and Dolf had somehow ended up in each other’s arms in a freakish episode of grief-stricken passion.
But it had felt so good, so right.
How would she resist if he tried to touch her again? How could she stay away, even if he didn’t reach out?
Avital closed her eyes. The darkness gave her imagination free rein, remembering Dolf’s hands, so much rougher than Nando’s, on her breasts, between her legs, at the back of her knee. His kisses were not like Nando’s either—they were harder, rougher, less forgiving, asking more of her.
Not asking—taking. Demanding.
She felt a rush of heat, remembering how good that had felt. Nando had never taken anything from Avital. He’d accepted everything she offered, he’d accepted her completely and perfectly—but never pushed her.
Dolf wanted things from her, and was capable of taking them.
She’d had no idea how vulnerable she was to Dolf, how much she craved him, how his dominance had brought out her own passion—until she woke up with him between her thighs. She’d let go of all inhibitions, released all earthly thoughts, and dove into it with him. The memory of his groan of satisfaction meeting her high-pitched cry of pleasure, melding in the silent house and filling it with noise, made her curl restlessly from side to side on the cot.
She’d loved how Dolf grabbed her wrists, holding them above her head while he took her mouth, pounding into her, overwhelming her. Her climax had broken over her like a rogue wave after a fierce storm—it spun her around so that she didn’t know which way was up or down. She couldn’t breathe or hear or see, only feel—it was the obliteration she’d sought and needed.
He’d found his release seconds later, pulsing deep and falling over her, hot and slick but still inside, still filling her.
When he’d let go of her wrists, Avital’s arms were numb above her head and she couldn’t move them. She didn’t want to. She wanted to stay there in that moment, utterly satiated, exquisitely tender, feeling his love around her like a cocoon.
Because that was what it felt like. Love. But not the gentle love she’d known with Nando.
Finally, Dolf had rolled them both to the side, leaving an ache at her core, an emptiness. But his hand stayed on her, stroking her side. Up and down. Back and forth, back and forth, sensation following like bubbles in a wake.
The ache and emptiness he left was a promise that he would be back. No one would own her but him—and for the first time in Avital’s life, she wanted to be owned.
The door opened and light from the hall spilled in. Avital sat up, feeling like she’d been caught.
“Sorry.” It was another doctor, someone she vaguely recognized from another floor. “I just need some z’s. This flu is insane.”
He shut the door and darkness engulfed Avital again. She heard the other cot creak, his shoes hit the ground. Minutes later, snoring filled the room with a soft buzz. Avital closed her eyes, called on all of her discipline, and willed herself to sleep.
In her dream Nando was alive. He was standing over her as she lay in his single bed in that dingy, wonderful first apartment. He was glaring at her, his hands on his hips, his eyes intense with emotion. She opened her mouth to tell him that she was sorry, but nothing came out.
“You can’t save them all but you can save him,” Nando said. “Save him.”
Avital woke up, blinking in the darkness of the small resting quarters.
The other doctor was still snoring. She stood. It was time to get back to work.
Her dream didn’t mean anything. She couldn’t save Nando, and of course she couldn’t save everyone. Today had proved that over and over again.
But she was going to try. That’s what she and Nando did—they made plans and they tried to do good. Even if they failed, it didn’t mean that it wasn’t worth the effort. They still gave their all, until they couldn’t any more.
Chapter Five
Dolf
The phones still weren’t working, so Dolf walked the few blocks from Avital’s to Mama’s house to check on her and Lucy, and to see if JT and Elizabeth needed any help getting on the road.
They did.
Frankie, an old friend from the neighborhood, had already broken the news to them that the roads were impassable and they’d have to go to DC on foot.
“How’s Avital holding up?” JT was the tallest of the Luciano boys, at a little over six foot three, edging out third brother Cash by half an inch. Sweat gleamed on JT’s brow as he sorted the contents of the Range Rover he and Elizabeth had arrived in. His black mop of crazy chin-length curls, grown while living alone in Idaho at his compound, shone in the hot morning sun.
“It’s rough,” Dolf took the food cans piled in the back of the Rover and put them into a box. “But she’s back at the hospital. It’s where she wants to be.”
“Work’s probably helping her cope. What about you?” JT grasped Dolf’s shoulder.
Dolf felt his eyes prickle and he wiped them on the back of his arm. Damn. He’d finally cried, and now it seemed he might not be able to stop. “I’m hanging in there. Listen. I’m coming out to the Haven for sure, but I won’t go without Avital. I made a promise to Nando I’d look after her.”
“Yeah, I don’t think any of us are surprised by that. Avi’s family, and you’re right to help her. But do what you can to get Mama and Lucy ready while I’m gone, okay? I’m taking Elizabeth to the CDC headquarters, then turning around and coming right back. I am planning to drag them with me by the hair, if I have to. Even with the boys guarding our neighborhood, things are just gonna keep getting worse here in Philly.” Dolf recognized the certainty of the Sight in JT’s eyes.
“Preaching to the choir,” Dolf said. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell JT about his holdings in North Fork, but what if something happened and he couldn’t make it out there? Better to tell him in person at the actual location, when he saw what he had left.
Making empty promises never paid off. Dolf had amassed his wealth by quietly hedging his bets and taking big leaps when he was sure something would work.
“I’m going to fortify the house. Bring in some weapons for Mama and Lucy. And I don’t want them leaving the house anymore,” Dolf said.
“Good luck with that.” JT rolled his eyes. “You think you can tell those two anything?”
“It’s for their own good, for their protection,” Dolf muttered. “Where are they, anyway?”
“Gone already, delivering casseroles to the sick and bereaved. And there are a lot of sick and bereaved.”
“I hope you told Mama she should be saving her food. We don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to buy anything.”
“I tried. But you know Mama. She’s going to do what she’s going to do.” JT shook his head.
Dolf helped him repack essentials into backpacks for the trek to DC, since they’d have to walk along the railroad tracks. Elizabeth Johnson hurried down the stoop of the row house with a bundle of bedding. The pretty, slim blonde seemed to have something going with JT that hadn’t been there before. Her cheeks were pink and she evaded JT’s gaze, while his brother’s hazel eyes tracked her every movement.
Well, it was nice that JT might have someone—he’d lost his wife and baby over a decade ago, and certainly deserved some happiness.
The memory of being in Avital’s arms rolled through Dolf, taking him by surprise. It was just as thrilling and devastating as it had been this morning, when he woke in an empty bed smelling of their lovemaking.
How was he going to keep his hands to himself? Now that he knew what she felt like, all he wanted to do was take her again, and again.
Keep busy.
That was the answer.
Get her the hell out of this city and worry about their relationship later.
He drove JT and Elizabeth to the tracks and saw them off, watching from the top of an embankment as they joined other refugees traveling along the rail lines until they’d disappeared. JT would be back—and a prickling of the Sight told him that Elizabeth would too, despite her plans to stay in DC.
He returned to Avital’s house and retrieved the satellite phone he’d bought a month ago. He dialed a preprogrammed number. “Joey?”
“Been waiting to hear from you.” Joey was an ex-Marine with extensive combat skills from the neighborhood, a friend since they were boys running around. They’d made an arrangement some time ago. “Heard about your brother. It’s a damn shame.”
“Yeah. Nando was the best.”
“Best of the two of you, that’s for sure.” Joey gave a harsh chuckle. “No offense.”
“None taken. God knows it’s true.” Dolf ran a hand through his short hair and shut down the memory of Avital in his arms. “Did you find some extra muscle? I want two of you for this operation.”
“Got someone lined up, yeah.”
“Going to be ready to execute the plan in the next day or two. When can we meet to go over details?”
After setting a time, Dolf approached Frankie, sitting on the stoop of his row house, shotgun across his knees.
Frankie quirked a caterpillar-like brow at Dolf. He was only a couple of years older, but he was prematurely balding and thick through the body, the build of a weightlifter going to fat. “Hey, if it isn’t Mr. Lexus Luciano from New York City. What can I do for you?”
