All Chapters of HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS): Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

"THE BEST NEWS AND THE WORST TIMING TEND TO ARRIVE AT THE SAME MOMENT."DANTENico stands at the end of the corridor looking at both of us like he is mildly puzzled by the expressions on our faces. Like he has walked in on something he was not expecting and is taking a moment to assess it. His suit is rumpled in a way Nico's suits are never rumpled. There is a cut above his left eyebrow that has been cleaned but not properly treated. Other than that he looks — impossibly, inexplicably — fine.Just fine.Standing there at the end of a hospital corridor in New York at six in the morning like this is a completely normal place for him to be after disappearing without a trace from a safe house and causing me and his brother to fly to Moscow in the middle of the night while quietly holding the possibility that he might be dead somewhere.Just standing there.Looking at us.I open my mouth.I do not get a single word out.Because Luca moves.Luca who has been sitting in a hospital corridor f

"THE HEAVIEST SECRETS ARE THE ONES YOU CARRY ALONE TO PROTECT THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE."NICOLuca gets coffee from somewhere down the hall and brings it back and puts it in my hands without asking if I want it which is fine because I do want it and he knows that.We sit in the waiting area.Dante is on the phone dealing with something. Luca is beside me with his own coffee looking straight ahead with the particular quality he has when he is giving me space while simultaneously monitoring me with every peripheral faculty he has.I drink the coffee.And I think about Salvatore.About the deal I made.About the things I agreed to in that room that I have no intention of honoring but that I agreed to because agreeing was the only way out of the chair and the only way to understand what Salvatore actually knows and the only way to get close enough to dismantle whatever he is building from the inside rather than the outside.I lied to him.That is the simple version of it.I sat across from him

"SOME APOLOGIES ARRIVE TOO LATE TO MATTER AND SOME CHAOS ARRIVES TOO FAST TO MANAGE."DANTE"Get out," I say again.Vivian does not move.I look at her standing in this corridor, completely unbothered by the fact that she should not have been able to find this hospital, should not have been able to find this floor, should not have been able to do anything I explicitly told her not to do on the phone.And here she is."I told you to call back in a few days," I say. "You ignored that.""Yes," she says simply. "I did.""How did you find this location.""I have my ways.""That is not an answer.""It is the only one you're getting." She crosses her arms. "I told you on the phone I would find her one way or another. I meant it."I look at her.This is exactly the problem.A person who I explicitly tell something and who does the opposite anyway and stands here completely unconcerned about the consequences of that is not a person I am inclined to trust around someone I am protecting. The fac

"Family is the people you would burn the world down for, even on the days they drive you completely insane."LUCAOkay so let's recap because somebody needs to, and apparently I am the one elected to do the internal narration here since everyone else is too busy being mysterious and traumatized.Dante was dead. Then he wasn't. Then Marco turned out to be a snake who also got tortured and then kidnapped by some shadowy ninja person who may or may not also be a vigilante with morals, which honestly is a confusing character arc for a guy I just met. Salvatore is missing. My brother got abducted by said tortured snake's torturer, came back completely fine, and refuses to tell me a single thing about it. And now there's a woman in this hospital corridor who Nico apparently met in Spain, gave him a dance that broke his entire central nervous system, and who currently looks like she would end my life without blinking if I made one wrong joke.So basically a normal Tuesday.I lean against the

"The thing about blind spots is that you never see them until someone else points at them."DANTEThe corridor outside Sofia's room is not comfortable.There are chairs — the standard hospital variety, designed by someone who clearly never had to sit in one for longer than five minutes — and I have been in one of them for considerably longer than five minutes staring at a closed door and trying not to think about how long fifteen minutes has turned into.Vivian has been in there for thirty seven minutes, what could see even speaking about?I look at the closed door.I cannot hear anything through it which is probably good. Raised voices would mean stress and stress is the one thing Elena told me specifically to keep away from Sofia and so silence from that room should be reassuring.It is slightly less reassuring than it should be because I do not know what is happening in there and I do not know Vivian and I do not trust things I cannot see clearly.Which is most things, most of the