The heavy doors glide back silently revealing the long corridor at the hospital. Lucia and I are escorted by one of Dr. Reggiano’s nurses. As we walk past the multitude of doors, I see some are closed, and others are slightly open. Patients lie on beds with family members surrounding them.
A sickening feeling washes over me. Bruno has always been like a second father to me. He stepped up after my dad died. I can’t imagine losing him too.
Lucia grips my wrist so tight I feel like my hand is losing blood. I wiggle my fingers to try to get some feeling back.
The nurse takes us down a side hallway where a door at the end has a sign that reads:
Restricted: Authorized Staff Only
“You can wait in here. I’ll give you more updates when I can,” the nurse promises as she presses a button. The thick wooden doors part to reveal a private suite.
We step inside to see more members of our family. Salvatore is making himself coffee from the Keurig at the back table. Matteois seated in one of the many leather chairs. Two of our guards, Enzo and Luca, are getting some snacks from the vending machines. There is a large TV on the wall that’s silently playing the latest football game.
The men look up when we walk in. They come over to us and we hug.
“You shouldn’t have come here, you should be home resting,” Matteo advises.
“No way. I need to be here. Bruno has been like a father to me…to all of us.” I hug him tight.
“Honestly out of all the people in the family, he’s the last person I ever expected to wind up here,” Salvatore muses. He walks over to the large windows that give a panoramic view of the city. “They took him into surgery the second he arrived by ambulance. He’s lost a lot of blood.” Salvatore hangs his head.
Lucia drops into a nearby chair, looking very pale. “What the hell happened, Sal?”
Salvatore lifts his hands and makes a face. “Bruno, Luca, Enzo, and I went to the warehouse to assemble the chairs. We wanted to make sure the legs were working properly before we took them away. While we were taking inventory, Bruno got a call. He stepped outside to take it and he never returned. After about fifteen minutes, I went to check on him…” Salvatore takes a shaky breath and makes the sign of the cross. “We found him in the alley, face down, surrounded by blood.”
“Turns out someone shot him in the head with a silencer,” Enzo adds as Salvatore goes quiet.
I feel like the walls are closing in on me. Once again there is an attack on our soil.
“To make matters worse,” Luca adds, “All the outside cameras went black for three minutes before the attack. The only footage is from inside which shows Bruno leaving. It shows him onthe phone at the loading dock for about a minute or two then everything goes black. Then when it comes on again, he’s gone.”
Panic fills me. It wasn’t like someone could have shot Bruno from a nearby building. We own the whole industrial area. There is a gate with a keypad. Whoever got in had to know the code.
“Things have been mighty strange around here.” Enzo walks over and stands in front of the TV.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Well, first you end up in the hospital, and now Bruno is in the hospital…” Enzo’s voice trails off.
Lucia stands up. “I need coffee.” She storms off to the coffee station.
“Excuse me.” I take a step back and follow her.
I walk slowly to the back of the room where Lucia presses one of the French Vanilla Keurig pods into the compartment, then slams down the top. She presses the button with more force than necessary and the machine hums to life.
“Luci, what’s wrong?” I whisper as I stand close to her. “I told you at the hospital that I was going to hire Dominic.”
She snatches up one of the packs of sugar and rips it open. “I thought when you said that you were going to hire him, and then he would do his own thing. I didn’t expect to find you playing house with the enemy.”
“We weren’t playing house,” I hiss. “He has to come to my place in order to figure out who did this because I got shot in my own house.”
“How you can even talk to your ex is beyond me, especially after how he left, and what he represents.”
“He’s not with the FBI anymore, Luci.”
“And why is that? He’s much too young.”
I shrug.
