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Bleu came forward. “Bartholomew—”
“Shoot this motherfucker.” I reached for Victor’s gun.
Bleu raised his hands. “He said he would kill Benton and his family if I didn’t cooperate.”
I stilled.
“I did what I thought you’d want.”
“Come on, help us,” Laura said.
Bleu took her place, and the guys carried me outside.
Leonardo’s men were outside, but no shots were fired, probably because they were aimless without their boss. This was his fight, not theirs. Someone could take his place now—and that was probably more important.
They got me into the back seat with Laura, and Bleu drove us to the hospital.
“Stay with me, okay?” Laura kept slapping my cheek to keep me awake.
“Sweetheart…I’m not going to make it.”
“Yes, you are.” She stripped off pieces of her own shirt and tied them around my body, stanching a wound that had already bled too much. “Stay with me.”
“Look at me.”
She continued to apply pressure, but her eyes locked on to mine.
“I love you.”
Her eyes started to water.
I wanted to say more, but then the world went black.
The first thing I noticed was the heat on my face.
Warmth of sunshine.
I moved my fingers and felt the softness of sheets.
Then I felt fingers that weren’t mine.
“Bartholomew?” Quiet. Desperate. Gentle.
My eyelids were heavy. It took two attempts to get them open. Then the world was blurry. It took several blinks to focus on the woman holding a vigil at my bedside. Once my eyes found hers, she squeezed my fingertips. “Sweetheart?” My voice was hoarse, like my vocal cords had been cut then regrown.
“Yes, I’m here.”
We sat like that for a while, and all the events that had led up to this moment slowly came back to me. “I survived.”
“Of course you did. You had internal bleeding from a few organs, but they were able to fix everything and give you a blood transfusion. You were in critical condition for a while, but then you eventually stabilized.”
I replayed the moment Leonardo went down. A bullet through the head. His brains all over my apartment floor. “I’m sorry about your father.”
Her expression didn’t change, and she didn’t say anything. It was silent, a complexity of emotions on her face. “I made the right choice.”
“It’s a choice you shouldn’t have had to make.”
She focused her gaze on our locked fingers.
