“How bad is it?” Tommy asks Rossi.
Rossi doesn’t look up. “He’ll live.” Rossi pulls the needle through and I breathe slowly out through my nose. “He needs 48 hours of rest and no exertion.”
Tommy chuckles as he pulls a chair from the corner of the room and sits down. “Good luck.”
Matti crosses his arms over his chest. “Vin.”
“Tell me,” I say.
He tells me.
They didn’t just bomb Aurelio’s funeral. They took out three buildings in the city. Two safe houses on the east side were both obliterated. Both were empty when the devices went off, which means whoever did it either had bad intel on our movements or didn’t care whether anyone was inside.
The Edge took damage to the parking structure above it; the underground level held, which is why we built it underground.
Dragovari Tower, Matti’s building, was hit too, but its blast protections functioned exactly as designed. Heavy cleaning, structural assessment, and it’ll be back online within the week.
I listen to all of it blandly. Rossi pulls another fragment free and sets it on the tray.
“Anyone killed?” I ask.
“Two of ours from the estate perimeter. Three wounded, none critical.” Matti’s voice is flat and controlled. “Fourteen of the funeral guests are in the hospital. Twelve are in critical condition; two are dead, both politicians.”
“It would have been worse if the pillars we put in hadn’t buffered part of the blast,” Tommy says.
“Sophie’s parents?”
“We got them back home and posted guards around their house.”
“Good.”
Rossi keeps digging into me and dropping little shards of metal on the tray with a clink.
“It was the Irish, wasn’t it,” I say.
Matti and Tommy exchange a look.
“Pretty sure, yeah,” Matti says.
I stare at the wall across from me, at a hairline crack in the plaster that has been there since I was a kid.
“Well,” I say, “it wasn’t fucking Aurelio.”
“The war has started,” Matti says.
“Either Ashlyn told them that you ended the engagement,” Tommy adds. “Or they inferred it from watching you with Sophie. And they didn’t love that information.”
Matti shakes his head. “There wouldn’t have been enough time to mobilize those devices between Sophie’s arrival and when the blasts took place. They prepared for this in advance.”
I grip the blanket as Rossi digs particularly deep into the back of my shoulder and think back to seeing Ashlyn in the receiving line.
I didn’t tell them. Please don’t say anything.
Was she working with her brothers against me? Trying to put meat ease to make the hit easier? Fuck. I was distracted by Sophie. But now that I’ve got Sophie home with me where she belongs, she won’t be a distraction anymore.
“Fucking Ashlyn,” I say,
“She told you she hadn’t said anything.” Tommy’s not disagreeing, just being a goodconsigliere.
