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As my vision starts to blacken, there’s a tap-tap-tapping in my head that's foreign and out of place.
I’m barely aware of the commotion.
Vito starts to curse. “What the fuck?”
The tapping stops.
“Who the hell are you?”
A soft thud.
Vito lurches to the side at the same time.
Ciaran! Did he come for me after all?
My vision is blurred, my body demanding oxygen, but I try to focus with my one, half-good eye, everything inside me wishing - hoping - for him.
A swathe of blood red comes into view, tightly sheathed around a svelte, athletic body.
Not Ciaran then, but… a woman?
There’s another soft thunk, and although the Viper’s body is already still, it jolts once more. The noise finally registers in my addled brain as a firearm with a silencer. But how anyone managed to get into the Cosa Nostra compound undetected, never mind to actually shoot Vito, is beyond me.
Vaguely, I wonder if he’s dead.
He’s still slumped halfway across me. In my current state, I’m not sure I can move him.
Should I try to get away?
Will I get the blame?
The tap-tap-tapping starts again, getting fainter and fainter, and it occurs to me it’s the woman’s stiletto heels on the solid wood floor.
I try to move, but the motion exacerbates every bruise and injury on my bedraggled body, causing my vision to swim as new shards of pain slice into me from far too many locations.
That’s the last thing I remember before the darkness takes me.
* * *
When I come to, I’m enshrouded in a cloud of white, and I wonder if I’ve gone to heaven.
Except I don’t think heaven will ever have the grizzly face of Don Salvatore Rossi himself in attendance.
There’s a man in a medical coat along with a nurse, but although the room is white and sterile, I’m pretty sure I’m not in a hospital.
Therese is there too, stroking my forehead like the mother I miss so much.
I try to move my arm to put my fingers on my bracelet before I realize it’s not there. I never got it back after I entrusted it to Ciaran. That I’ve lost it makes me want to cry more than anything else that’s occurred on this horrific day.
“Was it you, girl?” The blustering, angry voice of the head of the Cosa Nostra brings me back to reality. “Did you shoot my brother?”
“Really, father? She was out cold, beaten bloody, and pinned beneath him. Never mind that there was no gun at the scene. How do you imagine she killed Vito?”
I recognize Mika’s voice, but it’s his words that hit me.
Killed.
The Viper is dead!
