The room tilts, and I have to close my eyes for half a second.
When I open them, she is leaning over me, panic already rising.
“Don’t move,” she orders. “Please don’t move.”
I want to ask why she was outside.
I want to ask if she was hit.
I want to ask where Vito and Nico are, Andrew, my people, Nick’s security, the children, Lucia, Teresa, Erica.
My mouth forms the first word badly.
“Safe?”
Her eyes fill again.
“Yes,” she says immediately. “Everyone in the safe room is safe. The children are safe. Lucia, Nick, Vito, Teresa, Nico, Erica. Everyone who was in the room is safe.”
I stare at her to keep going. I know she understands, but she’s hesitant.
Her hesitation scares me.
“Andrew is alive,” she says. “In surgery for a while, then ICU, but alive. Mara is alive. She has a shoulder wound and a concussion. Two of your people died.”
Her voice breaks on that.
My eyes close.
Two.
Names. I need names.
I cannot ask.
Not yet.
Her thumb strokes over my knuckles. “I’m sorry.”
That is not her apology to give.
I turn my hand enough to press my fingers weakly against hers.
She sees it.
Her mouth trembles.
“Nick lost one of his team, too,” she says. “Another is stable. The rest are injured, but alive. After Nico got the jammer down, Papà got there with reinforcements, though it was mostly over by then. The police came after. It was… chaos.”
I can only imagine.
Luca Conti and the police.
Dead attackers on Caterina’s property, in her house.
A new set of problems forms in the back of my mind, but it is foggy, distant.
I hate these damn drugs.
