One paramedic reaches for me. “Miss, we need space?—”
“I’m not moving,” I say, and it comes out like a growl.
I’m kneeling in blood. My tights are ruined. My hands are red to the wrists. I don’t care.
Val’s still on the floor, Bee clutched to her like she’s afraid someone will pry her away.
Emiliano’s head snaps toward her arm, and he goes colder than a January night. “She’s hit.”
“It’s a graze,” Val says, voice shaking. “I’m fine. Bianca, please?—”
“We’re transporting both,” another paramedic says, taking in the blood, the guns, the room that looks like the end of a war. “Now.”
They try to argue logistics until Emiliano looks at them. That ends it.
“Take them,” he says, and it isn’t a request.
Lucio’s already got a hand on the gurney, jaw locked, glare daring anyone to tell him he’s not climbing into the ambulance.
Romiro presses a wad of sterile gauze into my hands. “Hold this on her shoulder. Hard.”
“I am,” I say, and my voice is suddenly very small.
We move in a blur. The stretcher lifts, Ma’s body seeming too light for what it holds. The oxygen mask fogs with each shallow breath. Someone says something about pressure, about stabilizing, about minutes.
“Lucio,” Val says, voice threadbare.
She’s crying and telling Bee it’s okay in the same breath. There’s blood down her arm and she doesn’t notice.
“I’ve got you,” he says.
And he does. He helps her toward the door, and she doesn’t let go of the baby.
I stand there for half a second, swaying, and realize I’m shaking so hard my teeth hurt. Emiliano touches my shoulder—just once, quick, like he’s counting us.
“You’re with me,” he says, and I nod because I have to or I’ll fall.
The hallway smells like gunpowder and tomato sauce. The front door hangs crooked on its hinges. Our history bleeds down the threshold and into the street.
I don’t look back at the bodies cooling on the floor. I don’t look at the shattered mirror or the bullet holes punched intothe family portraits. There are some things you can’t stand to catalogue while they’re still smoking.
Outside, the night is wet and loud with light. The ambulance doors gape like a mouth. They load Ma first. Emiliano climbs in, face like carved stone, hands still red. Valentina and Bee are pushed into the second ambulance. Lucio vaults in after them, daring the paramedic to say no. No one does.
A medic tries to steer me toward the curb. “Miss?—”
“I’m with them,” I say.
And I am. Always.
Romiro’s phone rings. He steps away to answer, his voice going harder, colder, as he barks something I can’t make out. When he turns back, his gaze scans the street, the roofs, the angles.
“We’ll find whoever sent them,” he says, like a vow.
I climb into the ambulance with Ma and Emiliano. The doors slam. The sirens pitch up. The city pulls away in streaks of red and blue.
Inside, it’s too bright. Too clean. A paramedic calls out numbers. Another squeezes a bag. Ma’s eyelashes flutter against her cheek. Emiliano’s hand is on her wrist like he can hold her here by force.
I tuck my bloody hands under my thighs so I don’t touch anything else and stare at my mother’s face until my eyes blur. And for the first time since I was six, I pray. I pray harder than I prayed the night I asked God to save Nonna. Hoping for a miracle, an exchange.
