"I'm just telling you what the doctor said." My voice comes out sharper than I intended. "Believe me, I'd love nothing more than to have him gone. But if you move him now and he dies, that's on you."
More voices in the background. Sophia's muffled response to someone. Then she's back.
"We can't let you get involved in this."
I laugh. It sounds wrong. Hollow.
"Sophia. He bled on my floor. I held towels against his gunshot wound. I let a mafia doctor operate in my bedroom." I close my eyes. "I'm already involved."
"That's not—" She stops. Starts again. "This isn't your world. It shouldn't be your problem."
I want to be angry.
I try to find it. That hot, righteous fury that used to come so easily. The anger that kept me going through physical therapy. Through the nightmares. Through the long months of rebuilding myself into someone who could function.
But it won't come.
Because she's right. This isn't my world. It shouldn't be my problem.
And none of this is Sophia's fault.
She didn't choose to be born into this life. Didn't choose to fall in love with Lorenzo Sartori. Didn't choose any of the violence and blood and darkness that came with it.
Well. Maybe she chose Lorenzo. But by then, she was already in too deep.
And I knew. I knew some of it, even before everything happened. I knew her family had connections. Knew there were things she didn't talk about. Knew the expensive gifts and the bodyguards and the way people looked at her sometimes meant something.
I knew, and I stayed her friend anyway.
Because she was Sophia. My Sophia. The girl who braided my hair at sleepovers and cried with me when my first boyfriend dumped me and held my hand at my grandmother's funeral.
The girl who called me every day when I was in the hospital. Who sent flowers and books and stupid stuffed animals. She's still that girl.
She's also Lorenzo Sartori's wife. Part of a world I can't understand and don't want to.
But she's still my best friend.
"Sophia." I keep my voice steady. "It's fine."
"It's not fine. None of this is fine."
"No. It's not." I push off the wall. Walk to my kitchen. Look at the row of medical supplies on my counter. "But it's what's happening. And I can either fall apart about it, or I can deal with it."
"You shouldn't have to deal with it."
"Maybe not." I pick up one of the pill bottles. Read the label without really seeing it. "But there's a man in my bedroom who needs care. And I'm the only one here to give it."
"Marina—"
"That's what people do, Sophia." I set the bottle down. "They take care of each other. Even when it's hard. Even when they don't want to. Even when the person who needs help is someone who?—"
I stop.
Someone who what?
I don't know how to finish that sentence.
"I'll be fine," I say instead. "Forty-eight hours. Then you can send whoever you want to pick him up."
