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The waiter bleeds out at my feet. A screech of tires has me stopping at the stone railing, and I fire several shots into the back window of the silver sedan while it peels away, plowing into a couple of pedestrians as it goes. The driver doesn’t stop as screams of horror tear through the hot air.
I spin around and drop to my knees. Everyone is on the ground. Nonna is the first person I reach. She’s trembling and mumbling incoherent words but seems unharmed, otherwise. My aunt bends over Sofia, trying to calm her down.
Hysterical cries erupt behind me, where Evie curls over the prone figure of my mother. Blood makes a pathway down my sister’s face, and I clutch her shoulders, fear gripping me so tightly that the air constricts.
“You’re shot—” The words push past numb lips. With a tremble, Evie reaches up and touches her face. She stares at her blood-soaked fingers, shock widening her blue eyes.
“I’m okay…I think it’s just…” Her voice trails away as her focus shifts, and she keens, a low, animal sound. Both of us look down at our mother.
Shivers break out across my flesh as I reach across Evie and take in my mother’s open hand, her pale fingers dipped in wine.
No, not wine.
Blood.
Lifeless.
I drop the gun and push Evie aside to pull her into my lap. There’s so much fucking blood.
“No, no, no…” I freeze as I stare down at the large wound that’s torn through flesh and bone. Blood oozes out of it. The cotton fabric of my mother’s blue shirt soaks up an alarming amount of blood. Splatters of the sticky red substance coat her neck and face, and dread snaps me out of my frozen state as I look into my mother’s dying eyes.
“No, no,” I repeat as if I can take this away. Like my words can wield some power that doesn’t exist in this realm.
“Madre,” I plead.
She swallows. Her blue lips rattle as her limp hand tries to rise.
Her mouth opens and closes, and I lean closer to her. “Save your strength.”
My frantic gaze skates around me, taking in the stunned crowd that has gathered to view all the carnage that surrounds us. “Call an ambulance!” I scream at the top of my lungs.
Evie scrambles off the ground, her footsteps unsure as she rises to her feet. Her gaze darts across the destruction on the table. I can only assume she’s looking for a discarded phone.
My attention returns to my mother.
My light.She’s always been my light.
“Don’t speak. Just stay with me. Help is coming.” I force a smile before looking up. “Where the fuck is the ambulance?”
The restaurant staff runs around like headless chickens. One male server places the phone back onto the receiver along the tiled wall. “They are on their way.”
I turn to my mother. “They’re coming. You just have to hold on.”
“Damon.” My name burbles from her paling lips. Blood oozes, a sluggish river, from the corner of her mouth, and I shake my head.
“Stop speaking.” My voice breaks into rusty nothingness, scraped as thin as my soul.
“Valachi.” Her final word ends in a gurgle as blood pours from her mouth, and her dead eyes stare up into the cloudless blue of the Sicilian sky.
I shake her. “Madre. Madre—”
Cries unleash around me as the knowledge that my mother has passed reaches my aunt and grandmother.
Pain leeches onto my flesh and sucks the light right out of me, leaving nothing but darkness, agony, and a hunger for revenge.
Valachi.
She must have known they were responsible—why else say their name?
