“Where are we?” he asks me. His eyes are closed.
“At your apartment, I figured you would be happier here.” I take his boots off and toss them to the side, and get to work on taking off the rest of his clothing. I ignore my own injuries; they’re no where near as serious as his.
“What are you doing?” he asks me, looking confused and dazed.
“I need to get your pants off so I can check out the wound,” I tell him.
He hums in response and his head tilts back against the couch. I pull his pants off, dried and crusted blood pulling off with them. The bullet wound could be worse, it’s fairly shallow and it looks like he’s not actively bleeding anymore. The second I take it out, though, he will be.
“You have a first aid kit in here, right?” I ask him.
“Mhmm,” Tommy mumbles.
I sigh, knowing I’m not going to get much out of him. I start looking all around the apartment, starting with the kitchen, and then the bathroom. There I find a makeshift first aid kit in a tool box under the sink. It has everything I need to patch him up, thank God.
“This is going to hurt,” I warn him as I pull the gauze out and prepare to soak up some blood.
I dig my fingers in the wound and grab hold of the bullet, pulling it out in one quick movement. Tommy’s breath catches in his throat and he groans in pain.
I put the gauze over the wound and hold it there tightly for a few seconds before I start preparing the needle. It’s not exactly an ideal situation. I’m not a nurse or a doctor, but generally I try to avoid going to the hospital when I can… The memories it brings up… Not ones I want to revisit.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to you fast enough,” I say as I start to suture the wound.
Tommy lifts his head up to look at me for just a second. “What are you talkin’ about?” he asks.
“At your estate. I didn’t get to you in time…they took you. I could have stopped them,” I say, my voice rough. “Ishouldhave stopped them.”
Tommy hisses as the needle goes through his flesh, and it seems to wake him up more.
“You couldn’t have known,” he tells me. His words remind me of him saying the same thing about my wife. I chuckle softly.
“I feel like I should have known they were going to try something,” I insist. “The Carvels, the Bianchis… all of them. I knew they were going to do something, but I didn’t expect them to kidnap you.”
“Me neither,” Tommy admits. “Carmine maybe, but me? They had all the chance in the world to kidnap my brother but they chose me…”
“What did they say to you?” I ask him as I tie off one of the stitches.
“They gave me a proposition,” he answers, his eyelids look heavy.
I look up into his face and see all of the cuts along his cheeks, jawline, neck… they make me wish I’d gotten to cause even more damage to the Bianchis than I did. That I had been able to torture one of them for a few hours.
I reach up with one of my hands and brush my fingers along his chest. I feel the blood-soaked fabric under my hand.
“What was it?” I ask.
“Join them or die,” Tommy reveals.
My jaw tightens. “Of course. They didn’t want you just to torture you or kill you, they wanted you to turn against your family. Against me.”
“They don’t know who I am,” Tommy smirks. His hand comes up and over mine on his chest. His fingers curl into mine. “Family is everything.”
“If we hadn’t gotten there when we did, you would be dead,” I mumble. “Wouldn’t you?”
His eyes soften slightly. “Yes.”
I growl under my breath. “Those sons of bitches… If I hadn’t already killed Stephan Bianchi, I would do it again.”
“You did kill him, though,” Tommy reminds me. “He’s dead. You killed him…for her.”
