Lucy calmed down as we tidied the room and fell into a restless, sullen silence. I was worried about her, but there wasn’t much I could do but be by her side. We hung out in the room for most of the day, watching TV and reading. I chewed on my nails, a bad habit, and worried about everything my desperate mind could get its mitts on.
When would I have to see Renato again? What the hell would the hospital think about my sudden absence? What about Detectives Whitely and Vane? They would suspect that something weird was going on. Maybe they’d just think me and Lucy were dead. That would certainly be more in keeping with the De Sanctis code of business. How was I going to keep my head on straight when Renato touched me?
I took a shower and was just drying off when a knock sounded at the door.
Elio stood outside. “Come with me, Renato needs you.” He turned away.
“Wait!” I gestured to my towel. “I have to get dressed.”
“Be quick,” Elio said.
I closed the door and grabbed my clothes, changing quickly.
Despite taking only a few minutes, Elio looked impatiently at his watch when I emerged again.
We set off at a brisk pace. I had to nearly jog to stay at his side. He took me down to the lowest level. I balked at the top of the stairs.
“I don’t want to move down here,” I called to Elio’s departing back. Crap. Here I was, pushing Renato and talking back to him like I had any power in our relationship, blithely forgetting what he could do to me if I pissed him off too much.
“Just come,” Elio called back.
I had no choice, really. He’d just come back and get me. I ventured down into the darkness.
Below, the air was dank and muggy, I followed the De Sanctis enforcer through the gloom toward the room at the end, where lights blazed. It was the same one I’d been in before. The makeshift medical room. I should have been relieved to step into the bright lights after the gloom of the corridor, but the sight that met my eyes didn’t allow for that. Men filled the room. Dangerous, tattooed men sporting suits and grim expressions. I’d never seen so many De Sanctis men in one place. It was overwhelming.
Even more attention-grabbing was the sight of blood. Crimson all over the floor, like an overenthusiastic art student had gone to town on a concrete canvas. A man sat in the middle, partially covered with a blanket. Every single pair of eyes landed on me as I entered after Elio, but they all fell away when Renato’s eyes met mine.
He was right there, a king amongst his merry band of hardened criminals, and he stared right at me.
The touch of his dark, magnetic eyes was like a caress. His gaze gripped me and locked me in place as effectively as a large hand wrapped around my throat.
“Charlotte, we’ve been waiting for you,” Renato said, his deep voice doing something to loosen my sudden paralysis.
It was like becoming absorbed in watching a savagely beautiful panther sitting behind safety glass. His voice, low and intimate, felt like that glass had suddenly shattered all around you, or worse, you were in the cage with the predator. There was an edge to him now. He shot a look at Elio, and I read it easily. We’d taken too long to come. He was tense, worried about his wounded solider, maybe. Odd that there would be a side to Renato, the merciless kingpin, who cared about the health of a random henchman. Maybe I didn’t know him as well as I feared.
I stepped forward, moving like a windup doll, jerking back to life.
“What happened here?”
“My man is hurt,” Renato replied smoothly, rising to his intimidating height and stalking toward me. “I need you to help him.”
“How did he get hurt?” I asked.
“He was in a car accident. Help him.”
There was no room to argue with his commanding tone, and besides, since my first sight of the bleeding man, the caregiver in me had been distracted, itching to get close and triage the situation.
“Why didn’t you call an ambulance?”
“You were closer, little nurse.”
“Right, like I’m the same as a hospital,” I muttered, pulling the metal supply cart toward me and surveying the contents. I reached for the disinfectant and doused my hands liberally before snapping on gloves. It was hot in the room with all the brooding and intimidating bodies packed in.
“When did this happen?”
“Not long ago. It was only a few minutes’ drive from here, and he was brought here immediately.”
I nodded and focused on the job at hand.
“Do you need something?” Renato asked, standing just behind my shoulder, watching me closely.
“Some space would be good,” I snapped, and shifted into nurse mode. It was easier to pretend that this was just another patient with well-meaning family hovering nearby.
Renato didn’t say a word, and apparently a look was enough to communicate his desires to his men, as they filed out, talking in low tones. Elio remained, lounging on the edge of a crate pushed against the wall and lighting a cigarette.
“Seriously?” I asked him over my shoulder.
He shrugged and spoke to Renato in what I guessed was Italian. I couldn’t make out much, but my high school Spanish gave me the gist of the situation. A turf fight with a rival family.
The bleeding man groaned, and I focused on him, shuffling forward on the dirty floor and spreading my jacket out beneath me, keeping my hands as clean as possible.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“P-Paolo… I’m Paolo,” the man muttered.
Up close, I could tell he was around my age, late twenties. He had blue eyes, clouded with pain, and as I got closer, they latched on to me.
“I-I don’t want to die. Please,” he muttered quietly.
“I know. It’s okay… I’m going to look and see what we have here,” I soothed, falling back on tried-and-tested phrases to calm and yet not make promises. Promises always bit you in the ass.
His head bled copiously. I was shocked that he could speak at all. I checked around the back of his head, hiding my grimace. The man had suffered head trauma, of that there was no doubt, and it always presented differently. I couldn’t know the outcome of that right at this second, so I moved on to his middle.
Shifting the blanket, I fought a gasp at the sight of this battered torso. I had no idea how this man was still conscious.
“This man needs to go to the hospital – now!” I called over my shoulder. “He’s minutes away from losing too much blood. He has blunt force trauma to the chest and internal bleeding. It’s a miracle it hasn’t killed him already. He needs surgery and blood, and honestly, a miracle.”
Paolo panted and gripped my arm. “I don’t want to die there…I can’t.”
“But I can’t save you here,” I protested, panic pressing down on me. Truthfully, no one could save him. His body was wrecked. I had no idea how many organs were bleeding and ripped beyond repair. He was already dead. It was a sobering realization.
“Please, no…” Paolo shook his head, his eyes losing focus.
I twisted around and stared at Renato, who watched the scene without emotion.
“Can he be saved?” Renato murmured.
No. It’s too late. Dread slid through me. Honestly, even if an ambulance had arrived immediately at the scene of the accident and taken him straight to the hospital, it wouldn’t have changed anything. There were too many broken parts, and not enough time to fix them. It was a cruel twist of fate that he was awake and coherent enough to understand what was happening to him.
This man was going to die, and I was the only person here who could have done a damn thing about it, and I was powerless. People died all the time in the hospital, but it didn’t feel like this. I was never alone with them. I was never the only one whose shoulders it rested on. There, it was clinical and professional. Here, in the stuffy dark, with Paolo’s fear filling up the room, there was an intimacy to his demise that hit me hard in the gut.
Renato must have seen the truth in my expression because he merely nodded and then took off his suit jacket. He rolled his sleeves up. He had ink on his arms, but I couldn’t make out what it was.
He nodded to Elio and approached. I knelt in the pool of the dying man’s blood, knowing there was nothing I could do about it.
“Breathe, Charlotte,” Renato said, crouching next to me.
A warm feeling surrounded me. It was Renato’s jacket, thrown around my shoulders.
“Breathe now,” he ordered and took my chin in a firm grip, breaking me from my reverie.
I hadn’t realized I’d been shivering until the heat of Renato’s coat surrounded me. I dragged a rough breath into my lungs and then another, my eyes snapping to his.
“Good girl.” He leaned down and forced my hazy gaze to meet his. “It’s not your fault.”
Renato’s deep voice warmed my chilled skin. Hands closed on my shoulders, and then I was standing. I stared at the man who planned to marry me. He stood in a pool of blood, his dark eyes fixed on me.
“You tried your best, bambina. It’s not your fault,” he repeated.
Elio turned me away from Paolo and Renato and led me to the crate he’d been sitting on. He smelled like tobacco, and the scent mixed with the harsh metallic tang of Paolo’s lifeblood coating the floor.
I sat on the crate, and Elio stood against my side, a wordless wall of support to keep me upright.
Renato now sat beside his dying man. Red smeared his white shirt and his skin. He sat in the puddle of blood unflinchingly and laid a hand on Paolo’s shoulder, leaning down to make sure he could see him. Paolo seemed to wake up from his delirium a little as he realized who held his hand.
“Elisia and the baby…” he muttered. His face was paling more and more by the second. It wouldn’t be long now.
“Are family. They will have everything they need and want, as long as they both shall live. They will want for nothing, fratello mio.”
Paolo nodded, a touch of a smile brushing his bloodless lips, then he shuddered. “It’s so cold here – I miss the sun. The sun on our skin, like when we used to swim in Capri.” He broke off and shuddered again.
Renato patted his shoulder and put his forehead to Paolo’s. “That’s where we are now, isn’t it? I can feel it on my skin; I can smell the oranges from the grove by Torre Saracena.”
Paolo’s eyes closed, and that slight smile settled on his lips. It was the last expression he would ever make.
After he was gone, Renato sat for a long moment, his head still pressed to the dead man’s. I couldn’t tear my eyes from the scene. The bloodstained kingpin mourning the loss of one of his men.
When Renato rose, he carefully laid Paolo down, and Elio went to help, closing the eyes of the deceased.
I stood forlornly, clutching the edges of Renato’s jacket in my bloody hands. I went to slip it off. He crossed to me, his shirt a Pollockian nightmare of bloodstains.
“Keep it.” He glanced meaningfully at my dripping-wet hair. “Don’t get sick.”
“So, I’m supposed to think you’re worried about my health now?” The words burst from me before I could stop them. I was shaken from what had just happened and blurting out desperate things. I couldn’t reconcile the man I’d just seen comforting a dying solider with the same one who would take two women hostage and force one to marry him.
His gaze ran over my face, his dark eyes seeming to drink me in. I couldn’t take his intense inspection. He used up all the air in the room.
“You promised to look after his family. Will you really?” I heard myself ask, my brain searching for some way to break the tension between us.
“Something you will come to learn about me, little nurse, is I always keep my word. Always.”
He leaned in, bringing his lips only inches from mine, so close his breath gently caressed my top lip. He held that pose as I wondered wildly if he was going to kiss me again. Was this one of those kisses that gangsters gave you before killing you? I had to binge some mob movies. I had no fucking clue what to expect from this man, and my heart might give out worrying about it.
“My word is my bond, and yours will be, too…Don’t forget your promise to me, Charlotte. I never said you had to be a happy bride, just that you have to keep your word.”
Then he pulled away, and I sagged, unsure whether I was relieved or disappointed. Just the fact that disappointment even flashed through my mind was evidence that I was losing my grip on my sanity.
“Elio will take you upstairs.”
I followed Elio wordlessly from the room, leaving Renato in the shadows behind us. The men outside crossed themselves morbidly as I passed, feeling like an angel of death in my bloodstained T-shirt. Then they headed back into the room with Paolo.
“What are they doing?”
“Giving Paolo a proper send-off, and then the boss will go and let the widow know the news. She just had a baby a few months ago,” Elio continued quietly.
I swallowed a sudden, intense urge to cry. “That’s horrible.”
Elio simply nodded as we reached the stairs and started upward. “That’s life.”
