She took a deep breath and nodded, blinking the tears from her eyes.
He gave a quick nod and released her, turning the door knob to walk into the house. Beatrice couldn’t see anything in the living room but the television playing a game show her grandmother hated.
“This way,” he said, pointing down the hallway to the kitchen. Beatrice followed behind him.
“Grandma?”
She gave a strangled cry when she saw Isadora lying on the floor in a crumbled heap, but Giovanni pushed her back and went to examine the old woman.
There were vicious bite marks on her neck and others on her wrist. A small pool of blood appeared to have dripped from a wound on her forehead, but the bleeding had stopped.
“Please, please no,” she cried and knelt down across from Giovanni, holding her grandmother’s limp hand. “Not you too, no…”
Giovanni did a quick physical examination of the old woman, finally looking up to meet her eyes.
“She’s going to be fine, it’s not as serious as it looks.”
Beatrice was still sniffing and holding Isadora’s hand, rocking herself back and forth on the kitchen floor smeared with her grandmother’s blood.
“Beatrice,” his commanding voice broke through her growing panic, “you need to calm down now so you can help me.”
Though her eyes welled with tears, she nodded and tried to get herself under control.
“What do I need to do? Should I call 911?”
He shook his head. “They drank from her, and made no effort to heal the bite marks. I could heal her outer wounds, but we’d still have to explain the blood loss to the paramedics. Do you have your phone?”
She nodded and pulled the mobile phone from her pocket.
“Good, dial this number.” He slowly dictated the number and waited as it dialed. “Put it on speaker for me.”
After a few rings, a male voice picked up.
“Hello?”
“Lucas, it’s Giovanni Vecchio. I need you to come to my house now.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Caspar, is there?”
“No, I have a human suffering from blood loss.” He looked at Beatrice. “Do you know her blood type?”
Beatrice shook her head. “No, she’s always been really healthy.”
“I’ll bring universal,” the voice on the phone replied brusquely. “Do you need transport?”
“No, I’ll take her to my home. If you get there before me, do not tell Caspar anything, do you understand? He’ll be angry, but just ignore him and tell him I sent you.”
Beatrice could only imagine how Caspar was going to take the news that his boss’s enemies made a meal out of his girlfriend.
“I’ll see you in fifteen minutes. Goodbye.” The phone went silent, and she looked down at her grandmother’s pale face again.
“I’m going to lift her. I don’t think anything is broken, so we’ll put her in the back of my car. I’ll hold her in the back so I can monitor her breathing and heart rate. Can you drive a manual transmission?”
She nodded. “Yeah, no problem. Just take care of her, okay?”
He grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “She’s going to be fine, Beatrice. And as soon as she’s able, we’ll get her out of town.”
“And I won’t argue. I’ll stay with you until you kill Lorenzo.”
“Beatrice-”
“Because you are going to kill him, right?”
Giovanni bent to lift Isadora, cradling her tiny body as if she was a child. Nodding toward the door, he finally said, “Let’s focus on taking care of your grandmother before we start plotting murder, shall we?”
When Beatrice pulled up to the house, she could see an unfamiliar blue sedan parked by the garage and Caspar pacing in the courtyard. As she stopped the car, he pulled the back door open.
“Oh no, please no-”
“She’s going to be fine,” Giovanni interrupted. “Calm down and help me.”
Beatrice parked the car and got out, watching the two men fuss over her grandmother, who was still unconscious. She would have been insane with worry if Giovanni hadn’t have been monitoring Isadora’s heart rate aloud in the car the whole way over. She had seen him bite his finger and rub a bit of the oozing blood over her grandmother’s neck and wrists in the backseat. The wounds, though red and angry, were already closed.
“Here,” Caspar held out his arms, “let me take her. I thought-Lucas showed up and asked for a downstairs bedroom for a patient. I thought something had happened to Beatrice.” Caspar glanced at her before he took Isadora’s small body in his arms and walked toward the house. Giovanni raced over and opened the door for him before rushing back to her.
“You’re doing very well,” he whispered when he pulled her into his arms. “You drove her here safely and now Lucas will take care of her. He’s Caspar’s personal physician, and he’s the best in the city. I trust him.”
She nodded and relaxed, letting his arms hold her up. “I was afraid I was going to crash on the way over here.”
“Nerves of steel, tesoro.” He brushed a kiss across her temple as he walked her into the house with an arm around her shoulders. “You’ve handled yourself extremely well.”
“Does this happen a lot?”
“No.”
“You really need to kill Lorenzo.”
She heard him give a small snort. “You’re quite bloodthirsty for a little girl.”
“I’m serious,” she said, pausing in the door between the kitchen and living room to look up at him. “I want him dead. If I could do it myself, I would.”
He stared at her for a moment before nudging her toward the hallway. “Let’s take care of Isadora first, then we’ll talk.”
When they entered the bedroom, the doctor had an IV set up and, within an hour, Isadora’s coloring had improved. A half an hour later, her eyes fluttered open and she looked around in confusion.
“What am I…where am I?”
Beatrice rushed to her side. “You’re going to be fine, Grandma. They just-I mean, you had an accident. But we’re at Gio’s house, and Caspar’s here, and there’s a doctor…”
Isadora’s eyes searched the room, finally settling on Giovanni. She nodded, closed her eyes, and sighed.
“This has something to do with Stephen, doesn’t it?”
Beatrice had never been more furious in her life.
“I cannot believe you didn’t tell me!”
“He told me not to.”
“You didn’t think I had a right to know? Do you have any idea how messed up I was after all that shit he did to my brain?”
She paced the room, tugging at her hair as Isadora tried to calm her down.
“I didn’t know about all that. Stephen told me he had tried to talk to you, and you couldn’t handle it. He said you wouldn’t remember. He told me not to tell you when you were older because we wouldn’t see him again.”
“But the depression-”
“Your grandfather and I never made the connection, Beatrice. Why would we? I was the only one who knew what was going on with your father, and you didn’t tell me any of this about seeing him, or the dreams. You confided in your grandfather. This is the first I’ve heard of you having any memories of him after his change. I thought I was the only one who knew.”
“Grandpa said it would just upset you if I told you I’d seen him.”
Isadora snorted and looked around the empty room. “You damn De Novos-so arrogant! You, your father, your grandfather…you all thought I was so fragile. Your father’s the only one who figured it out, and he’s dead.”
“But he’s not dead!”
“Yes, Beatrice, he is. He told me we would never see him again. He told me,” her voice cracked, “he told me it was too dangerous. That he had to run away.” Isadora shook her head. “I was so furious. I told him we could handle it as a family, but he just ran. He was determined to disappear.”