When he doesn’t answer, ice floods my veins.
“Fiero,” I force out, louder.
I bend my head, trying to wriggle free, and catch a glimpse of his face. He’s pale as a sheet.
A damp warmth seeps into my back and I smell something I encountered every day in the hospital.
Something rich, thick and metallic.
Blood.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Pfeiffer
Nineteen nights to go.
“Fiero!”I shout again, my pitch panicked.
I glance about the now-empty lounge, my heart in my throat. “Help! Someone help him!”
Footsteps enter the room, slowly, taking in the scene, then they quicken, thudding across the carpet.
A man halts beside us and carefully pulls Fiero off me, rolling him onto his back. I leap onto my hands and knees, then the room sways. There’s so much blood.
The man beside me shoves his mask up his forehead. For a second I’m completely disarmed.
He’s younger than I’d have expected, with those dark Bellucci eyes assessing his older brother with a cold silence.
A vague recollection of Hallie’s descriptions at Fallen Angels makes me think this is Brando. I’ve never seen his face before, and what shocks me the most is howfamiliarhe looks.
Hands tear apart Fiero’s shirt. I don’t know if they’re mine or his brother’s, but the sight beneath the cotton claws nausea up my throat. There’s a bullet wound on the right side of his upper abdomen and blood is flowing from it like a faucet.
Brando’s gaze meets mine, sharp. “You’re a nurse, right?”
I gulp.
“Can you fix him?”
“What?” I gasp. “No! He needs surgery. We need to get him to a hospital!”
Brando faces me square. “No. We can’t have the fucking authorities here. I’ll call our doc but he’s an hour away. You need to fix him, or?—”
My shoulders tremble. “Or what?”
He slowly draws something out of his pocket—a long, thin blade—and turns it over in his fingers. Our eyes meet again and his expression doesn’t soften an iota.
“Or I fucking kill you.”
A shattered sob tears from my throat, then a cool hand on my arm draws my gaze back to Fiero.
“Pfeiffer—”
His lips are dry, his voice broken.
“You’re bleeding,” is all I manage to whisper.
He doesn’t seem to hear me. “Are you okay?”
