Page 82 of The Masked King

At some point, I convinced a taxi driver to give me a ride and gave him the address for Gio’s apartment. Must’ve made sense to me in my befuddled state; or maybe I needed some love, and Megan was the only person I could think of.

“Sorry, Enzo, I’m trying not to hurt you.” Megan bites her bottom lip and studies the hole in my shoulder. “Please let me take you to the Emergency Room. Or at least let me call Gio. He can get you to one of your hospitals.”

One of our hospitals; she means somewhere with enough mafia influence they won’t ask questions when they patch me up.

“No, there’s no time.”

It’s what I told her when I practically fell out of the elevator and swayed across the foyer like I was steaming drunk. Before she met my brother, Megan had never seen a bullet wound outside of the movies. But when I rocked up today, bloody and with glazed eyes, she swept the kids out of the living room and along the hallway to the nursery with their nanny, her voice never faltering, and fixed me a brandy, neat. Amber is at school, but I’m conscious that I need to get fixed up and get out of here before normal family life resumes.

Now, she’s trying to pull the bullet out of the wound with sterilized tweezers, and panic is setting in. Her fingers tremble. Her chin quivers as if she’s about to cry.

“Hey,” I say gently, “you can do this, Meggie.” I inspect what’s left of the brandy in the bottom of my glass—it will pass as an anesthetic if I drink enough of it—and hand it to her. “Drink this. It will help.”

“It might help me, but it won’t be great for you if I’m drunk in charge of tweezers.” She hasn’t lost her sense of humor.

“Stop overthinking it. Get the bullet out, and I’ll do the rest.”

She swallows the brandy and grimaces as it goes down. Then she refills the glass and gives it back to me. “Don’t look.”

“I’ll keep my eyes shut. I trust you.” I down the brandy in one go and scrunch them shut.

“I just want you to know that I never signed up for this when I married your brother.”

“You should’ve read the small print before you signed the marriage certificate. You know, love, cherish, and fix up bullet wounds. Standard wording for a mafia⁠—”

The feel of metal scraping flesh as the tweezers dig deep for the bullet stifles my train of thought and replaces it with white-hot flames licking their way up and down my spine. I clench my jaw and grind my teeth together, my fist squeezing around the brandy glass.

“Enzo?” Megan murmurs. “Are you alright?”

“Yes, don’t stop.”

I feel the exact moment metal finds metal and pant through the pain as she maneuvers the blunt edges of the tweezer arms around the bullet and tugs it out.

She gasps when it comes free and drops it into the basin in their ensuite bathroom. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I just did that.”

I aim a tight-lipped smile her way. “You almost died on a mountain with explosives strapped to your chest and you think this was bad. Did you ever see Wayne’s World?”

“Nikki made me watch it once.”

Nikki is her childhood friend and the reason Megan and Gio met at my brother’s film studio in LA where Nikki landed a small role in the first ever movie his company produced. She also nearly died at the hands of the Fish, but it didn’t change her mind about acting.

Both women are braver and stronger than either of them gives themselves credit for.

“So, you’ll understand when I say I’m not worthy.” My words are starting to slur.

“It’s the pain talking.” Megan refills my glass, the neck of the decanter shaking against the lip of the glass. “Drink up. I can’t leave you with a gaping hole in your shoulder. You’ll bleed all over our rugs.”

“Glad to know your rugs are more important than my health.”

Megan chuckles. “It’s a coping mechanism. I used to make Amber laugh when things were bad before our mom died, so she would remember smiles instead of tears.”

She washes her hands with antibacterial soap, washes them again, and goes back to the medical kit where she has already prepared a needle and sterile thread to stitch the wound back up.

“I’ll do it.” I can’t feel my tongue when I speak.

“If you think I’m going to stand back and watch you practice your cross-stitch on your own skin, you don’t know me at all, Enzo Sabatelli.” She’s firm, and my numb lips manage to crack a smile.

“Are you always this bossy?”