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“Okay,” I say following him in. I suspect he’s not in the right space to rationally discuss this so I let it go. “So where are you taking me for dinner tonight?”
He leans back against the island and rubs his eyes as if stressed. “I hadn’t really thought about it.” He looks at me. “What are you in the mood for? Italian, Mexican, Asian?”
“Italian, how about Cordellos? I haven’t been there in ages.”
Sebastian is staring out into nothingness and makes no reply.
I walk over to him. “Babe,” I say, rubbing his arms. “Are you okay? I’m sure it will be fine. He’s going to calm down and you’ll get it all sorted out.”
“I just don’t want him to do anything stupid. He’s saying he’s going to take his case to my uncle, see what he says about dropping out of college and going straight into the business.”
“And you’re worried he’ll support Nick’s position?”
He shrugs. “It’s hard to say. I can’t think about this right now, I’ve got enough on my mind. Let’s just go eat.”
“Bash, if you’d rather not go out, we can just order in and watch a movie or something.”
He looks over at me seeking sympathy. “Would you mind? I’m just not in the right head space right now.”
I take his face in my hands. “Babe, I don’t care how we spend the evening, as long as we spend it together. Okay?”
He nods. “Thanks, love.”
And we do just that. Order some Italian via Doordash. We find a good movie, one of my favorites, The Last of the Mohicans. We lay the spread out over the coffee table and sit on the couch across from the 60” flat screen tv on the wall.
We eat to our hearts content, downing a few bottles of beer for good measure. After the movie, we watch a few mindless funny videos before we start nodding. We climbed the stairs to the loft. We crawled into bed, made gentle, missionary-style love and fell asleep in each other’s arms.
How was I to know that this would be the very last day of life as I knew it?
I’m dreaming about performing a procedure where I’m the chief surgeon leading the team toward a successful heart transplant. One of the nurses has left her phone on, we can’t find it but it keeps ringing and ringing.
Finally, it stops, and I hear Sebastian’s voice. “Hello?”
It really is Bash. I open my eyes and turn over to see him on his cell phone, the light making his face glow like an apparition.
“Wait, what happened? Nicky!” he leaps out of bed. He starts yelling hysterically in Russian.
“Bash, what is it? What’s happened to Nick?”
Sebastian runs to the closet rummages around all the while screaming in Russian. He returns and tosses my clothes at me.
“Get dressed we have to go!”
I glance at the clock, it’s 2:43am.
“What? Where are we going?”
“Get dressed, Madison, please hurry!”
The terror in his voice frightens me. I quickly begin to dress hoping that will encourage him to explain what the hell is going on.
“Babe, come on, we have to go.” He urges me, taking me by the arm and grabbing up my shoes. “Put them on in the car.” We haul ass down the stairs and out the door.
Once we’re inside the car and flying down the road. I demand an explanation.
“Nicky’s been shot.”
“Oh my God, is he alright? What hospital have they taken him to?”
