Rooted (Pagano Family #3)(46)
Shit. Was she having an anxiety attack? She didn’t have anxiety attacks. But as she doubled over and clutched at her tight throat, she thought she might be dying. She tried to call out for her sister, but she couldn’t get enough air to make sound. Crumpling to the floor, she lay there and made herself focus until she could take steady breaths.
When she was calm again, she was pissed—at herself and at Theo. He put the idea of fear in her head, and now she’d had a damn anxiety attack. She was not afraid. She f*cking was not!
Being smart wasn’t being afraid. Being strong enough to bring heartbreak now instead of later wasn’t being afraid. Fuck him.
She got back up on her feet and started the shower. When it was hot enough, she stepped in. Then, with the sound of the spray and the wet of the water hiding her tears even from herself, she let herself cry.
oOo
The ride to Frankfurt was quiet and tense. Rosa tried a few times to start a conversation, but the second Carmen smelled Theo in her words, she shut it down. The absolute last thing she needed was her shallow little pink princess of a baby sister giving her f*cking relationship advice. Eli was the longest relationship she’d ever had, and they’d been together two months. Big f*cking whoop.
Two months was nothing. She’d been…hanging out…with Theo for two months. That was nothing. It was nothing. A fling.
She kept her eyes closed and pretended to be sleeping.
They got off the train in silence and rolled their bags through the station in silence. Carmen headed straight for the taxi rank, and Rosa trotted behind her in slightly more sensible shoes than usual.
They’d arrived in the late afternoon. The station was crowded, and the line for a taxi was long. Carmen just wanted to get to the hotel and be done with the day. She really wasn’t in any mood for sightseeing. She should probably get a handle on herself and be the tour guide she was supposed to be for Rosa.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. It had buzzed earlier, when they were getting ready to get off the train, and she’d forgotten to check. She pulled it out now—Sabina was on the line. For a second, she thought about declining it and calling back when they were in the hotel, but they had a long wait. Better to talk to Sabina than to ignore Rosa.
“Hey, Sabina. We just got to Frankfurt. What’s up?”
“Carmen, I’m so sorry.” Sabina’s voice was rough with stress. “It should be Carlo who called. Or Luca. But they…”
Carmen’s heart dropped. “Sabina, what is it? What happened?”
“Pop. He…collapsed this morning at work. His heart.”
“Oh God!” Tears were on her at once. Taking the phone from her ear for a second, she yanked Rosa out of the line and dropped her bag to the sidewalk so she could hold her sister and grip the phone in her other hand.
“Carmen, what?” Rosa was terrified immediately.
“It’s Pop. I don’t know.” She put the phone back up, and heard that Sabina calling for her.
“Is he…God, Sabina!”
“No, Carmen. No. They are taking him to surgery. It’s serious, but he is with us. You should come home. Quickly, if you can.”
She turned to Rosa, who was sobbing. “He’s alive. Heart attack. He’s in surgery.” Rosa nodded and sobbed harder.
Carmen’s heart skittered, but she found a sliver of calm in knowing that they hadn’t lost their father yet. “We’re turning around right now. We’ll take the TGV back and get the first flight out of Paris. We’ll be home as fast as we can.”
“Good. I think that is right.”
“How are the boys?”
Sabina’s only answer at first was silence, then sniffles. “He is so loved.”
Now Carmen’s tears came with sobs, too. “Yeah, he is. We’re coming home.”
oOo
The elevator dinged their floor, and Carmen grabbed Rosa’s hand.
When the doors opened, they walked together with John to the waiting room. They’d spent a lot of time in the hospital over the past couple of years. Joey had been shot almost exactly two years before. It had been less than a year since Luca and John had been beaten almost to death. Things were just falling the f*ck apart.
Over the course of the past twenty-four hours, Carmen and Rosa both had spoken to multiple family members—their brothers, Sabina, and Adele, their stepmother. John had come to the airport to pick them up, so they had current information about their father, and about the circumstances of the family since they’d been gone.
And it wasn’t good. They’d come home to a battlefield.
The Uncles were at war with some enemy Carmen didn’t have enough information about to understand, and it was bleeding all over her family. Carlo Sr. had worked his whole life to keep himself and his children separate from the Uncles’ business. Until recently, he’d been successful. But Luca and John had gotten hurt over the Uncles’ business. Carlo Sr.’s friend, Norm, had been killed over the Uncles’ business. Pagano & Sons Construction was losing business over it. The day before their father took sick, he and Luca had had to lay off a whole crew—something they hadn’t had to do even during the housing crash several years before.
The stress and loss had taken their father down.
He’d had a massive coronary—an acute myocardial infarction—and keeled over shortly after he’d arrived at the office the morning before. Luca had come in just behind him and found him unconscious on the floor, his coffee cup still in his hand.