The silence is suffocating. Every tick of the clock on the wall sounds like a gunshot.
"Where's Lily?"
Nora's voice cuts through the quiet about an hour in, soft and careful.
"With my mom." My own voice sounds foreign. Hollow.
She nods and doesn't ask anything else.
"Are you working?"
I blink, pulling myself back to the present. Sophia sits beside me now, her honey-brown eyes soft with concern. I hadn't even noticed her move.
"What?"
"A job," she clarifies gently. "Did you find something?"
Right. Normal conversation. Like my chest isn't being crushed by invisible hands.
The door swings open.
Every head in the room snaps toward the surgeon like we're puppets on the same string. The doctor looks at us all.
"He's out of surgery," He announces, his voice professionally neutral.
The room exhales collectively, but he holds up a hand before anyone can speak.
"Things are not clear right now. He lost a significant amount of blood." The doctor removes his surgical cap. "The best thing working in his favor was that whoever found him didn't move him at all. The bullet was lodged in a precarious position near the pericardium—the sac surrounding the heart. Extracting it without causing additional damage was... complicated."
Near his heart. The words echo in my skull. Near his heart.
"Is he going to live?" Pietro's voice cuts through like a blade. No pleasantries. No dancing around the question.
He hesitates. Just a fraction of a second, but I catch it.
"I can't be certain at this time. The next twenty-four hours will be critical. We're monitoring for internal bleeding and cardiac complications. His body has been through significant trauma, and?—"
"For your own good, Doctor." Bruno's wheelchair rolls forward, the soft squeak of rubber on linoleum somehow menacing. "Be certain."
I expect the surgeon to flinch. To show some sign of intimidation at the implied threat from a man in a wheelchair who still radiates violence like heat from a furnace.
He doesn't.
He meets Bruno's gaze with the weary patience of someone who's had this exact conversation before. Probably multiple times. With multiple Sartoris.
"I understand your concern." His tone doesn't waver. "I've treated your family for fifteen years, Mr. Sartori. I will do everything in my power to ensure your brother survives. But I won't make promises medicine can't keep."
Bruno's hands grip the armrests of his wheelchair hard enough to turn his knuckles white.
"Can we see him?" Vittoria's voice is barely a whisper, cracked and raw.
"One at a time. He's not conscious, and he needs rest, but..." The doctor's expression softens slightly. "Yes. Family can see him."
Family.
The word hits me like a fist to the sternum. I'm not family. I'm the woman who walked out. The woman who told him she hated him. The woman who?—
"Kristen goes first."
