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“Why’d you kill Ugo?” Sylvester turned and looked back at me.
“For her,” I said as I brushed the wet hair from her cheek.
“Well, thank you, regardless,” Sylvester said with a pinched smile.
“Don’t do such stupid shit next time, old man,” I said. I didn’t want or need his gratitude. I didn’t do it for him. I snaked my hand around the back of Gia’s neck and drew her closer to me. “Why, Gia?” I whispered into her ear as I pulled her into me.
“Because you’d do it for me,” she said as she dropped her head back.
“Can you go a little faster?” I said to Ro. She was fading. I knew she would the moment the adrenaline wore off, and I couldn’t lose her. I refused to let her go.
We pulled into the driveway, and I got out of the car before Ro brought the car to a complete stop. I banged on the door. It felt like the night with Atheist, when I had knocked on the same door with someone else I loved bleeding in the backseat.
The doc opened the door, his white hair exploding in all directions from his head. He looked like he had been electrified. We’d probably woken him up.
“Holy shit, what happened to you?” he asked as his eyes moved down my body, hovering for much too long at my face.
“It doesn’t matter. I need help.”
“You gotta tell me more than that, Enzo,” he said as he shrugged a robe on by the door, as if he kept it there just for these occasions. He wrapped it around himself and tied it off.
“Gunshot to the right shoulder.” The words raced past my lips as he followed me out.
“Human or animal?” He tugged on gloves stashed in the robe pocket, probably also for these occasions.
“Human, and the most important one in the world to me.” Desperation furrowed my brows and twisted my features.
The doctor opened the car door and looked at Gia. His lips pursed. She was no longer conscious. Sylvester awkwardly leaned between the front and back seat, trying to keep pressure on her shoulder. He looked at me with a hatred I deserved. I slipped past him and scooped her up in my arms.
“Wait here,” I told Ro and Sylvester.
“I’m her father,” Sylvester said, raising his tone sharply.
“Doc doesn’t know you, so stay here. Let him work his magic,” I told them before carrying her inside. The doc followed me, looking around frantically, as out of control as his hair.
“She needs a real hospital, Enzo,” he said as he cleared his table with a brush of his arm, pushing everything to the floor. He tipped his head toward the table, and I laid her down. I kept my hand on her cheek as the doc checked her out. He lifted my shirt away from her wound, and the blood resumed its flow the moment it felt the air again. The doc put it back and lifted her to look at the back of her shoulder. “It’s through and through, so you got that going for you,” he said as he put her back down. She whimpered, and I rubbed her cheek.
The doc disappeared, coming back with sticks that looked like matches. “What’s that?” I asked.
“Silver Nitrate. I need to cauterize so I can stitch her up.” His voice lowered to a whisper as he talked to himself, working through his game plan. I didn’t care what he did, I just needed him to fix her. “She’s not going to survive without a blood transfusion,” he said as he felt the pulse in her wrist.
“Can you do one here?”
The doc looked around frantically. He gathered supplies, laying them down on the table. “I can work with this. What’s your blood type?” he asked me.
I raced through my memories of incidents that caused me to need blood of my own. “O negative.”
“You sure? How sure are you?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Hopefully you’re right,” he said, “because if you’re wrong, you’ll kill her.”
ChapterTwenty-Eight
Gia
Islipped my dry tongue between my lips, but everything felt like cotton. The lids of my eyes were too heavy to open. I felt weightless and heavy at the same time, and I just wanted to go back to sleep. When I moved my shoulder, pain zapped my body like electricity.Fuck, what happened?At first, I thought I had died in the shootout, but I wouldn’t expect to feel so fucking horrible in death. There was also a distinct lack of heat, which I would have felt if I’d died. Sent right to hell, no doubt. I groaned, which called the touch of a warm hand to my cheek.
