The boy took the stairs two at a time and came back with a medical kit that looked far too professional for a family apartment.
I peeled the jacket off, and torn skin pulled in ways that made my teeth clench. The shirt came away slower, stuck to dried blood. Fresh red welled up where I'd disrupted the clotting.
Manush snapped on a pair of gloves. "Kitchen chair. Now." He grabbed a bottle of grappa from the counter and shoved it at my chest hard enough to hurt. "Drink."
I tipped the bottle back, and fire burned down my throat. Manush grabbed supplies while Stevo appeared at his elbow with thread and antiseptic.
"You have any candy? Sugar helps with shock."
Stevo vanished into the kitchen and came back with wrapped caramels. I shoved three in my mouth at once.
Manush cleaned the wound, and cold antiseptic bit into raw flesh. "This is going to hurt."
The first stitch punched through skin before anything went numb, and I focused on something other than the fact that Manush was sewing me back together like a seamstress on a deadline. I thought instead of Rafael's hands, the taste of his lips, the want radiating from him even as he slid the knife into my side.
The memory turned pain into background noise.
My phone buzzed, and I typed one-handed while Manush kept stitching.
Need extraction. Rome to Rio. Fast and clean. Can meet you in Paris.
Diego's response came back immediately.
Diego
Mierda, tiny assassin! What did you do now? Charles de Gaulle private terminal. Eight tomorrow night. Bring cash.
I stared at "tiny assassin" and my eye twitched. Diego was never going to let me live down being five foot seven", but at least he'd agreed to help me flee across continents.
"Almost finished." Manush placed the final stitch. "This isn't my best work, but it'll hold together longer than most relationships." He slapped gauze over the wound site, and the pressure made me wince. "Sit up. Slowly."
I pushed myself upright, and the room spun. Manush steadied me until the world stopped trying to throw me off.
"No acrobatics for forty-eight hours." He pressed a bottle of pills into my palm, and he closed my fingers around them. "Antibiotics. All of them, even if you feel better. I don't want your corpse on my conscience."
Stevo handed me a worn t-shirt from a laundry pile, and I shrugged it on.
I pulled out two ferryman's coins and pressed them into his hand while yanking the shirt down. "Thank you."
He examined the coins briefly, then pocketed them with a nod. "Back exit. Service tunnel to the metro. And good luck, Lorenzo. You're going to need it."
The service tunnel smelled like wet concrete and garbage. I ran through the darkness, following Manush's directions while my side screamed with each step. The maintenance shafts led up to Trastevere station, and I emerged among late-night commuters who barely glanced at one more shadow from Rome's underground.
But I wasn't alone at the station. A woman stood by the ticket machines, tracking movement instead of trains. A maintenance worker made his third pass over the same floor. Two armed men in leather jackets flanked the exit.
Bounty hunters.
I bought my ticket and moved toward the platform. The woman followed at a careful distance. The maintenance worker abandoned his mop, and the leather jackets fell into formation.
There were forty-five seconds until the train arrived, but I still had two minutes until my time was completely up.
The leather jackets closed in, and one muttered in Italian, "Fuck the rules. Penny's worth the risk."
They lunged.
Two sharp cracks split the air, and both men dropped with neat holes in their foreheads. I glanced up toward the sound and caught a black Stetson disappearing from a high window overlooking the platform.
The Pantheon didn't tolerate rule violations. Not even for a ferryman's coin.
