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“There’s a helicopter on its way to take him to the hospital,” she whispered, kneeling down beside me, holding me when I turned my attention back to him.
They would take him away. They would take him away, and I would never see him again. Why did they do that? Why did they take them away? How could you hold an empty space? How could you say good-bye?
My lip trembled. I bent down to his face, his beautiful face so pale, so still. My hair made a curtain between us and the room, and I listened for his breath, tried to feel it on my skin, feel its soft warmth. I wanted him to call me pigheaded again.
I wanted to hear him telling me he would keep everyone safe.
He had. He’d kept that promise.
Why hadn’t I made him promise to keep himself safe?
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Lucia.”
My sister said my name, but I ignored her.
“I should have made you promise,” I said, tears rolling from my face onto his. I smeared the blood with them, trying to clean him, remembering then that he had made one promise to me he hadn’t yet kept. “You have to wake up, Salvatore,” I stated, gaining some strength. He kept his promises. He wouldn’t not. “You promised me you’d give me what I wanted. The life I wanted. You promised. You have to wake up now.”
“Lucia,” Isabella said again.
“Go away,” I told her, still cleaning his face with my tears.
“Ma’am.”
Other hands were on me, another voice was talking to me.
“Lucia, they’re here. They’re going to take him to the hospital. You have to let them see Salvatore.”
I kept one hand on Salvatore’s chest, trying not to think about the fact it was still. I looked up at the men, at the room around me, and I leaned away, letting them look at Salvatore. Letting them start their work.
Two other men lifted Franco Benedetti onto a stretcher. Roman looked at all of us, his face one of shock, blood splatters marring it and ruining his perfect suit.
“Ma’am, we need to take them now.”
“Which hospital?” Isabella asked.
“Bellevue.”
“Come on,” Isabella said, dragging me to my feet.
“He’s not dead?” I asked, confused.
The paramedic gave me a cautious look. “We’ll do what we can for him.”
“Let’s go,” Isabella said again. “We need to get to the hospital. They’ll be much faster with the chopper.”
“What’s happened?” Natalie asked from the doorway, her face crumpling when she saw Salvatore unconscious on the stretcher.
I looked around the room, searching for him, for Dominic. “Where is he?” I asked my sister. “Where is he?” Anger gave me strength, but my sister held fast to me.
“Salvatore got in the way between Dominic and his father,” Isabella said to Natalie.
“Where the hell is Dominic?” I screamed to anyone who would answer.
“Let’s go,” Isabella said. “Salvatore needs you now.”
That got my attention. I turned to her and nodded. I followed her to the front door, cursing the crutches and my damn ankle.
“He’s so fucking stupid,” I said to her as she drove too fast off the grounds.
“He wanted to save everyone,” she modified.
“Why did they take Franco?”
“Heart attack.”
A fresh onslaught of tears came, and I sucked in a loud breath. “He did it for nothing. He tried to save that horrible man for nothing.”
Isabella took my hand and squeezed it, forcing me to look at her. “He’s not dead yet. He needs you to believe in him, understand? You can’t be weak now, not now, Lucia. He needs you.”
I looked at her face. She looked much older than her twenty-two years all of a sudden, and her eyes—they held lifetimes of sadness inside them.
“How’s Luke?” I asked, remembering.
She focused her attention back on the road. “No change.”
“Where’s Dominic?”
“He slipped out.” She shook her head. “I saw his face. He just kept looking at Salvatore, lying at his feet. For so long, it was what he wanted, but then, when it happened…”
“Where is he?”
“His face, Lucia. I’d never seen him look like that before. Not ever.”
But I didn’t care about Dominic or what he felt or what his face looked like. I would kill him with my bare hands when I saw him.
My sister was right, though. Salvatore needed me now, and I would focus all my energy on him. He was a survivor. He would survive. He had to.
When we arrived at the hospital, he was in surgery. They’d brought him to the same unit where Luke had been.
Déjà vu.
Only this time, the doctor wouldn’t talk to us. We weren’t family.
“Fuck! I just want to know if he’s alive!”
“Ma’am, you need to calm down,” the doctor said.
“Lucia.”
I heard a man’s voice behind me. I turned to find Roman walking into the waiting room, his face cleaned of blood, although his shirt still had splatters of it.
“They’re operating. There’s nothing for them to tell.” He turned to the doctor. “Add Lucia DeMarco to the list,” he said. “Keep her updated on Salvatore Benedetti’s condition.”
