“General Hospital, this is Megan, how can I help you?”
“Hi, Megan? Nick Ferrari, San Francisco Giants here.”
God, I hated myself already. But I had to keep going.
“My girlfriend just got taken to the hospital after suffering some trauma, and I just need to know if she’s OK.”
“Your girlfriend?”
Shit.
“Um, yes, my girlfriend. Izzy Saunders?”
I wasn’t even focused on the fact that it was probably a bit presumptive to call her my girlfriend. Rather, I knew Megan wasn’t asking me this question because she wanted to make sure she heard me right.
“I’m sorry, sir, but if she is not family, then we cannot allow any visitors to any potential patients.”
Sir. I didn’t even get the benefit of having my famous name acknowledged. I knew Megan wasn’t being passive-aggressive, but I was nevertheless getting more and more flustered.
“You don’t understand; she got beat up by her ex and put on death’s door. I have to know if she’s OK.”
“Sir, I understand, but hospital protocol is such that we can only allow family to visit patients right now.”
She let the words hang. I wasn’t going to get anything else. This was a fucking waste of time. Everything that didn’t bring me closer to Izzy or see that Malcolm would suffer accordingly was a waste of time.
“Understood, thanks,” I said, hanging up before Megan had a chance to reply.
OK, so I wasn’t going to see Izzy for at least a day. That fucking sucked. That really fucking sucked, especially since it was my fault. So what could I do?
Malcolm.
I could fucking find Malcolm and kill him myself.
I could find him, punch his teeth out, choke him to death, kick him…
OK, I was getting a little out of control, I admit. I didn’t want to go to jail, and even if Izzy and I weren’t serious, I had my life to think about. I could see that that asshole would suffer without me ever meeting him, even if it was far less satisfying than I would have wanted.
But it wasn’t really about satisfaction or what I wanted. It was about delivering justice.
The court system wasn’t enough. I think Izzy had said something about how he had gone to jail before, but clearly, that had not served to stop him from doing the heinous things he had now. And even if so, the courts were slow and had to follow things like “due process”—great for a country, not so great when it came to wanting to inflict Wild West type of justice on some asshole.
But…
How?
I knew the answer, or what I thought was the answer. I was just deliberately trying to consider all other possibilities that didn’t involve jokes about my family’s background being involved with stereotypical associations. But no, there were none, because if there was anything else, it would have sprung to mind the instant I saw Izzy’s shattered beauty. A sight like that wasn’t the kind of thing that allowed you to sit in an empty room and ponder all possibilities.
My body literally shaking with rage, I picked up my phone. Again, Scott tried to call.
“God fucking damnit!” I roared as I hit ignore. Did he not understand that I truly did not give a shit about money right now?
I called my Uncle Nick out in Las Vegas.
“Nick, buddy,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“Hey, Nick, I need to get right to the point,” I said. “I know you have connections of some kind to some shady people. I know the Ferrari family as a whole almost certainly does. I don’t care about specifics, but I have an ask. My girlfriend just got beat up by her ex. I have no idea where her ex is, but I want him found, and I want him taken care of. Can you take care of that? Make sure he doesn’t make the same mistake again?”
My uncle laughed.
“Buddy, I don’t know what you think we are, but we’re a winery, not—”
“Nick,” I said, taking a breath. “You can drop the bullshit with me, OK? I don’t need to know details, but we all heard your call with Layla. We know what’s up.”
A very long silence came at the other end of the line. I was fine waiting for Nick to take three minutes to find his words if that’s what it took. I was fine waiting a fucking hour, really. I wasn’t going anywhere until I knew that justice would be coming.
“Nick,” my uncle finally said. “You need to think very carefully about what you are asking about. You think you’re asking for a job, but things like that are rarely a job gets done, client gets paid type of deal. Once you go there…”
He let the words hang, having heavily emphasized “there.”
“You can never turn back. You need to make absolutely certain that this is what you want to do—”
“Of course it fucking is, I—”
“Nick!”
I bit my lip.
“Take five minutes and think about it. If you still want to do this, call me back—and don’t call me before five minutes have passed, or I won’t help you. If you don’t want help, then don’t call me again today. But I am warning you. You go there, you create a world of chaos. And I don’t just mean for yourself. I mean for all the Ferraris.”
Uncle Nick hung up before I could say another word. Still seated in the Tesla, still driven almost entirely by rage and anger, I wanted nothing more than to call him back
