Page 28 of The Mobster’s Nurse

He smirks. “I like it bloody. Go figure.”

“What about your childhood?” I ask. “I don’t want to be the only one who’s gone all story time.”

“Don’t you dare feel guilty for sharing with me.”

“Hey …” I touch his hand. “I was kidding. Sometimes, making light is the best way to deal with the dark. Take it from someone who knows.”

He bares his teeth, not quite a smile this time. “You’re talking to a man who usually just wallows in his darkness.” After a bite of steak, he goes on. “My childhood was normal, Ellie. The best schools. More fights than I can count, always knowing that one day, I’d go into the family business and make a name for myself. My mother, God bless her, passed almost ten years ago from heart problems. My dad has been alone ever since.”

“I’m so sorry,” I tell him.

He nods. “She was a good woman. Before she passed, she begged me to find a woman, to settle down. To be happy. One of my biggest regrets is that I wasn’t able to promise her. I wish she’d lived long enough to meet you.”

Warmth whelms in my chest, reaches its hands out and cradles my heart. “I would’ve liked that.”

We eat in comfortable quiet for a few minutes. I enjoy how easy this feels. There isn’t this looming need to speak, to fill every moment with words. We can just … be. It’s nice.

Then the door at the back crashes open, and Vito comes tumbling in. It’s such a shock; it takes me a second to figure out what’s going on. Vito stumbles to the floor, leaps to his feet, and then somebody shoots him.

He grunts as the bullet hits him in the chest. Slumps to the floor. Vito springs back up. A vest? Of course! Luca doesn't have one. I would've seen it under his jacket.

“Fuck! Daryl must've sent word—No!” He leaps to his feet. “They were already watching,” mumbling to himself, and then roars at me. “Hide! Now, Ellie— Now!”

Luca spins and takes a pistol from under his jacket. My heart hammers in my ears as more gunshots fill the room. Glass shatters, one of the lights goes out.

I rush across the room, up the stairs to the second-floor seating area, lie on my stomach and peer over the edge of a balcony at the restaurant below. Vito is returning fire, on one knee, focused and controlled. Luca joins him, crouching behind an upturned table.

Suddenly, there’s a pause in the gunfire. A man’s voice punches into the room. It has a faint Irish accent. “We just want the girl!”

My blood goes cold.

“The rat girl!” the man roars. “The fucking bitch who sold out our man! There are rules to this game, Italian. Are you going to protect a rat? Are you going to fuck a rat? That’d make you a rat!”

Luca gestures to Vito. It must mean, Keep him talking. Because Vito yells back, “What if I told you we don’t know what you’re talking about, motherfucker?”

Luca sneaks toward the front door, gun at his side. For such a huge man, he can move with grace. I anxiously chew the inside of my cheek, ears ringing from the gunfire. Vito has a bulletproof vest on, but I know Luca doesn’t.

“You’re not doing yourself any favors,” the Irish man roars.

“Put down your gun and come in here like a man,” Vito snarls back. “I’ll give you a favor then, you bastard. A bloody favor.”

Luca gets right to the edge of the doorway.

“Is that Casanova?” the Irish man roars. “You're playing with fire here, lover boy! The Irish are goin’ to own this town. We've got Cormac Lynch — the Lynchpin — on our side, motherfucker⁠—"

Luca suddenly reaches around the corner and drags somebody inside. The man raises his gun. I gasp as Luca violently snaps his wrist. A moment later, another Irishman springs out, aiming his gun at Vito. Vito fires back, hitting him in the leg, causing the man to fall to the floor and cry out. My hands cover my ears but cannot shut out the screams, the gunshots, the violence.

Vito rushes him, kicking his gun away and planting his knee in the man’s ribs.

My gaze swivels to Luca, who is breaking the man’s other wrist. He tosses the man against the wall.

“What did you call my woman?” Luca roars, his voice dark and filled with violence.

“Puh-please,” the man whimpers.

“A rat?” Luca growls, raising his gun. “A bitch?”

I scream when Luca shoots the man in the head. Point-blank range. I knew he was a killer. I’m not naïve. But knowing and seeing are two different things. The sound the body makes when it hits the floor is nothing like the movies. Everything goes very quiet. My ears still ring, but underneath — nothing. Luca doesn't look at the body. He's already scanning the room. No one talks. No one sobs. No one screams.