Why’s he…why’s Danny looking at my wife like that?
“Don’t…don’t look at her,” I try to say, but the words come out wrong, garbled and slurred. “M’wife…Danny, don’t…”
“Boss, I’m not,” Danny starts, but I’m gone again, consciousness slipping away like water through my fingers.
The next time I surface, Gigi’s face is right above mine, her tears falling on my cheeks. “Luca, please, I’m—” What she says is incoherent and I have to strain to understand her. “Do you hear me?” she asks, but it sounds like she’s underwater. “We’re having a?—”
Again, I can’t hear the end of her sentence, which is starting to piss me off. I really can’t hear her through the fog. She really needs to speak up.
“You have to stay,” she concludes, her voice high with fear. “PleaseLuca!”
We’re having awhat? A party? A dog? What the fuck is she talking about?
But I’m sinking again, the darkness so heavy and soinviting. And I’m so, so tired…
“Stay with me!” Her voice follows me down. “Luca, please!”
I force my eyes open one more time, just to see her face. Beautiful. Even crying, even terrified, she’s so fucking beautiful.
“Love you,” I manage to whisper, the words thick and wrong in my mouth. “Forever.”
I’m not sure if she hears me. Or if the words even made it out.
The darkness takes me completely.
28
GIULIANA
I fucking hate hospitals.
I’m sitting in a wheelchair someone forced me into, staring at the double doors Luca disappeared through twenty minutes ago. They wheeled him away so fast—a blur of scrubs and urgent voices and the steady beep of monitors that didn’t sound right, that sounded wrong in a way that made my chest constrict with panic.
“Ma’am, we need to examine you.” A nurse is hovering beside me, her face kind but firm. She’s young, maybe my age, with dark hair pulled back in a neat bun. Her badge says her name is Julie. “You’ve been shot. You need treatment.”
I move away from her. “I’ve already been treated,” I say in a hollow voice, still staring toward the double doors where Luca had once been. “There was a doctor. He stitched me up.”
Julie is already reaching for my wheelchair again. “We need to verify the work was done correctly,” she says, pushing me away from the doors. “We need to check for infection. You’ve lost a significant amount of blood.” I’m being wheeled toward anotherroom, and I want to fight her. I want to stay right here where I can see those doors, where I’ll know the moment Luca?—
“Is he going to die?” The question bursts out of me.
Julie’s expression softens, her brown eyes sympathetic. “The doctors are doing everything they can,” she says gently. “Your husband is strong. He made it this far.”
Her words are supposed to comfort me, but they don’t. That’s not an answer. That’s the kind of thing people say when they don’t want to tell you the truth.
The examination room is too bright, too sterile, too far from where Luca is fighting for his life. Another doctor appears—older, gray-haired, with tired eyes that have clearly been on rounds for too long. He introduces himself as Dr. Clark, and he speaks in a calm, measured tone that I’m sure is meant to be reassuring but just makes me want to scream. Don’t these people realize I’m fine?
“Let’s take a look at that wound,” he says, and I let them cut away the bandages. Dr. Clark examines the stitching Romano’s doctor did in that warehouse.
“Surprisingly good work,” Dr. Clark murmurs, probing gently. I wince, biting back a gasp. “Clean stitches, no signs of infection yet. You’re lucky.”
Again with that word. First the doctor in the warehouse and now this doctor.I don’t feel lucky, I want to scream.I feel like I’m drowning!
“We’ll need to do an ultrasound,” he continues, making notes on a tablet. “Given the trauma and blood loss, we need to check on the fetus.”
My hand flies to my stomach. The baby. God, with everything happening to Luca, I almost forgot?—
No. That’s not true. I haven’t forgotten. I told it to the intake nurse the moment we got to the hospital. Every breath I take reminds me of the tiny life growing inside me, the child I hope Luca knows about before he went unconscious. I hate myself for not being able to get the words out before he?—
