They got killed.
I did knock my father out of the way. Landing on him was softer than the damned marble floors I always hated. A second later, and I’d have been too late.
Or maybe I already was.
Lucia screamed again, dropping to her knees, her hands bloodied, her face splattered with it. Her crutches clanked to the floor near my head as she grabbed my face, looking over her shoulder, shoving someone away. Her tears kept dropping on my face, and she kept wiping them away again and again, talking, I think. Her mouth moved, but no sound came. No sound. Only pain. Only fire in my side.
When I put my hand to the place, it felt warm and wet, and when I reached to touch her pretty, pretty face, I covered it in red, smearing it down over her jaw, her neck, down until she faded from view. The last thing I felt was her hair tickling my face, her body pressing against mine, the movements desperate.
22
LUCIA
“Salvatore, no!”
I held his face with one hand and pressed my other hand to the place on his side that wouldn’t stop bleeding. I kissed him. Kissed him and kissed him. When I tried to push the hair back from his forehead, I left blood in its place. His blood. God, there was so much of it. Too much.
“Don’t die.”
He hadn’t promised me that. He’d made me three promises, but he’d never promised me he wouldn’t die.
I’d never asked him to promise that. I’d never…
“Don’t die,” I whispered just to him.
He was too still, and when my sister touched my shoulder, and I looked up at her through the blur the haze of my tears caused, I sucked in a trembling breath. Her face, the look in her eyes, telling me it was bad.
“There’s a helicopter on its way to take him to the hospital,” she whispered, kneeling down beside me, holding me when I turned my attention back to him.
They would take him away. They would take him away, and I would never see him again. Why did they do that? Why didthey take them away? How could you hold an empty space? How could you say good-bye?
My lip trembled. I bent down to his face, his beautiful face so pale, so still. My hair made a curtain between us and the room, and I listened for his breath, tried to feel it on my skin, feel its soft warmth. I wanted him to call me pigheaded again.
I wanted to hear him telling me he would keep everyone safe.
He had. He’d kept that promise.
Why hadn’t I made him promise to keep himself safe?
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Lucia.”
My sister said my name, but I ignored her.
“I should have made you promise,” I said, tears rolling from my face onto his. I smeared the blood with them, trying to clean him, remembering then that he had made one promise to me he hadn’t yet kept. “You have to wake up, Salvatore,” I stated, gaining some strength. He kept his promises. He wouldn’t not. “You promised me you’d give me what I wanted. The life I wanted. You promised. You have to wake up now.”
“Lucia,” Isabella said again.
“Go away,” I told her, still cleaning his face with my tears.
“Ma’am.”
Other hands were on me, another voice was talking to me.
“Lucia, they’re here. They’re going to take him to the hospital. You have to let them see Salvatore.”
I kept one hand on Salvatore’s chest, trying not to think about the fact it was still. I looked up at the men, at the room around me, and I leaned away, letting them look at Salvatore. Letting them start their work.
