Page 128 of The Cost of Silence

Gunshot.

My brain stutters, trying to categorize everything at once: the spray of tiny glass flecks from the bottom edge of the window where it meets the door, the way the SUV jerks as Marco swears under his breath and corrects, the sudden heavy weight of Rossi’s arm as it comes across the back of his seat and shoves me down.

“Down!” he barks. “Isabella, get down, now—”

I’m already folding in on myself, curling forward as another sharp crack explodes against the metal. The sound is both distant and earsplitting, like the world has become a tunnel full of thunder.

The SUV’s armor holds; the glass above me spiders but doesn’t shatter fully. I can see, through the fractured mosaic, asliver of the street, a shape on the corner, someone in a dark hoodie turning away.

More noise—horns, shouting, a chorus of surprise from people who have no idea how quickly a Saturday can tilt.

“Go, go, go,” Rossi snaps. “Drive through, don’t stop.”

Marco hits the gas. The engine roars. My shoulder slams into the back of his seat and for a stupid second, I worry about leaving a crease, like that matters at all.

There’s a third impact, lower, a brutal punch against the door, and this one feels different, has a wrongness to it I don’t have words for until Rossi makes a sound I’ve never heard from him before, a short, sharp grunt that’s half-curse, half-something else.

I twist, still half-curled, trying to see. “Rossi?”

He grits his teeth. “Stay down.”

His right hand is braced against the dash. His hand is pressed against his side, just under his ribs. When he pulls it away for half a second to adjust his seat belt, there’s blood on his fingers.

For a moment, I don’t process it. The world has narrowed to the sway of the car, the distant wail of sirens, the haze of adrenaline making my vision too sharp at the edges and blurry in the middle.

Then it clicks.

The third hit wasn’t the door.

It was him.

Panic spikes, hot and bright. “You’re hit.”

“I noticed,” he mutters, breath coming shorter now. “Bullet came low, through the seal on the window. Ricochet, maybe. We’re lucky.”

“Lucky?” My voice is climbing. “You’re bleeding, Rossi.”

“We’re moving,” he says. “That’s all that matters right now. Marco, two more blocks, then left into the underground. We don’t lead them home.”

Blood is seeping between his fingers now, dark and too fast, staining the hem of his shirt. It’s soaking into the seat, creeping across the fabric in a spreading bloom that makes my stomach roll.

The part of my brain that took a basic first aid course in college kicks in, fighting through the fear. “Pull over,” I say.

“We’re not stopping until—”

“Pull over,” I say again, louder this time, throat raw. “He’s bleeding out, Marco. We need to stop the bleeding, now. We’re not doing a tour of Manhattan while he leaks all over your upholstery.”

There’s a heartbeat of hesitation.

Then Marco curses and yanks the wheel hard, swerving us into a narrow side street lined with loading docks. The car rocks to a halt beside a stack of recycling bins. “Stay low,” he orders, already reaching for the radio clipped to his jacket. “Calling it in.”

Rossi exhales through his nose, like this is mildly inconvenient, and then the tension bleeds out of his shoulders in a way that makes my skin crawl.

“Isabella,” he says. “Climb through the middle. Put pressure. High and hard.”

I scramble, adrenaline making my limbs clumsy. The seat belt fights me; I nearly trip on the floor mat; everything feels too slow, like my hands are moving through glue while my heart sprints.

I manage to slide through the middle, kneeling on the seat beside him. Up close, the damage looks worse. His shirt is soaked, the dark patch spreading sideways, down, already past his waistband. The smell hits me, metallic and thick.