Mine.
I don't know if it's his voice or mine.
Then nothing.
20
LUCA
Idon't lose consciousness.
I refuse.
The bullet goes in clean. Side, above the hip. Through and through.
Pain is there. White-hot. Insistent.
Pain is information.
And the only information that matters is that Serafina is gone.
I am still on the floor of this gallery. Every second I stay down is a second she gets further away.
I get up.
The room tilts. I make it stop.
"Sir—" Caruso, beside me, hand on my shoulder, voice controlled in the way of a man who is terrified and knows better than to show it.
"Wrap it." I'm already scanning the room. The two guards I put down, still breathing. Giovanni in the center of the gallery like a man watching his own verdict. No Serafina. No fixer. Door at the far end still moving. "Now, Caruso. We're moving."
"You need?—"
"I need Serafina." I look at him. Just once. "Wrap it or get out of my way."
He pulls a field kit from inside his jacket.
I let him have forty-five seconds. Forty-five seconds of gauze and medical tape, and Caruso's hands moving fast while I stand there and do not think about the way she looked when the cloth hit her face. The way her knees buckled. The way I was three feet away — three fucking feet — and couldn't reach her in time because I was on the ground bleeding like an amateur who got caught at his own operation.
Forty-five seconds.
Then I'm moving.
I am going to find her.
Not a plan. Not an intention. A fact that exists independent of circumstance. The bullet is irrelevant. The blood soaking through the gauze is irrelevant. Every obstacle between Serafina Virelli and me is irrelevant because I have already decided how this ends.
It ends with her breathing, unhurt, and furious at me.
Anything that tries to stand between me and that outcome is going to regret it in ways that aren't reversible.
Niko is pulling the feeds when I reach the corridor.
"Van," he says in my earpiece. "East exit. 11:52 p.m. Heading toward Meatpacking."
"Plate."
"Working on it?—"
