Two other men lifted Franco Benedetti onto a stretcher. Roman looked at all of us, his face one of shock, blood splatters marring it and ruining his perfect suit.
“Ma’am, we need to take them now.”
“Which hospital?” Isabella asked.
“Bellevue.”
“Come on,” Isabella said, dragging me to my feet.
“He’s not dead?” I asked, confused.
The paramedic gave me a cautious look. “We’ll do what we can for him.”
“Let’s go,” Isabella said again. “We need to get to the hospital. They’ll be much faster with the chopper.”
“What’s happened?” Natalie asked from the doorway, her face crumpling when she saw Salvatore unconscious on the stretcher.
I looked around the room, searching for him, for Dominic. “Where is he?” I asked my sister. “Where is he?” Anger gave me strength, but my sister held fast to me.
“Salvatore got in the way between Dominic and his father,” Isabella said to Natalie.
“Where the hell is Dominic?” I screamed to anyone who would answer.
“Let’s go,” Isabella said. “Salvatore needs you now.”
That got my attention. I turned to her and nodded. I followed her to the front door, cursing the crutches and my damn ankle.
“He’s so fucking stupid,” I said to her as she drove too fast off the grounds.
“He wanted to save everyone,” she modified.
“Why did they take Franco?”
“Heart attack.”
A fresh onslaught of tears came, and I sucked in a loud breath. “He did it for nothing. He tried to save that horrible man for nothing.”
Isabella took my hand and squeezed it, forcing me to look at her. “He’s not dead yet. He needs you to believe in him, understand? You can’t be weak now, not now, Lucia. He needs you.”
I looked at her face. She looked much older than her twenty-two years all of a sudden, and her eyes—they held lifetimes of sadness inside them.
“How’s Luke?” I asked, remembering.
She focused her attention back on the road. “No change.”
“Where’s Dominic?”
“He slipped out.” She shook her head. “I saw his face. He just kept looking at Salvatore, lying at his feet. For so long, it was what he wanted, but then, when it happened…”
“Where is he?”
“His face, Lucia. I’d never seen him look like that before. Not ever.”
But I didn’t care about Dominic or what he felt or what his face looked like. I would kill him with my bare hands when I saw him.
My sister was right, though. Salvatore needed me now, and I would focus all my energy on him. He was a survivor. He would survive. He had to.
When we arrived at the hospital, he was in surgery. They’d brought him to the same unit where Luke had been.
