Chapter 6 Rocco #2
This is different. He’s holding my hand like it’s something worth saving. His thumbs press into the base of my thumb. I feel the muscle jump—a small twitch that has nothing to do with pain. His fingers are steady and gentle. It’s a foreign language my body doesn't know how to speak.
"The repair is holding. No sign of infection yet. I’ll re-wrap it."
He reaches for a fresh roll of gauze. His left sleeve rides up as he stretches across my body to grab the roll from his bag.
I see it.
A scar. A thin, white line running horizontally across the inside of his left wrist. It’s old.
It’s precise. This wasn't an accident with a kitchen knife or a jagged piece of glass.
This was a deliberate, surgical cut, placed with a surgeon's intimate knowledge of exactly where the radial artery lives.
He had a good aim. Someone must have found him and stopped him, because the scar is too clean, too neat. It was stitched by someone who knew what they were doing.
He catches me looking. He sees my eyes fixed on his wrist. His sleeve drops immediately.
His jaw tightens, the muscle leaping under the skin.
A micro-fracture appears in that perfect clinical wall.
He doesn't say a word. He wraps my hand in fresh gauze, his long fingers much stiffer than they were seconds ago.
The doctor has his own damage. My scars were put on my body by other people. His was his own work. A quiet scream recorded forever in white scar tissue.
I file it away. I don't open that door. I’ve got enough of my own ghosts to deal with.
He tapes the new dressing and sets my bandaged hand back on my knee. "Done. I’ll check it again in four hours."
A sound.
An engine. The low, heavy growl of a V-8 pushing its way up the gravel road outside. Headlights sweep across the wool blanket over the window, two bright beams of white light cutting through the dawn and hitting the trees.
I’m off the cot before my brain can protest. The room spins, a nauseating, violent tilt. I grab the doorframe to stay upright, my vision swimming. Adrian is on his feet in an instant, his medical bag clutched to his chest like a shield.
"Where’s the gun?" I bark.
"Other room. On the floor where you dropped it."
I push past him into the main area. The light is a grey, watery haze. Garrett is standing by Killian’s makeshift table, his hand on his sidearm. Killian is a still, pale ghost under the sheets.
I find the Makarov on the floor. I pick it up. My left hand is a useless, throbbing weight at my side. I rack the slide with my right hand and move to the window.
The blanket is thin. Through the fabric, I can see a black Audi. It’s armored—I can tell by the extra weight in the way it sits on its suspension. It stops next to my battered truck. The lights die. The engine idles, the low frequency vibrating through the floorboards.
I press my back to the wall beside the front door. The gun is heavy in my right hand. Garrett covers the back exit. Adrian stands frozen in the bedroom doorway, his eyes wide.
The Audi door opens. One man steps out. Tall. Lean.
He moves with a precision I’d know anywhere. The measured, confident stride. The suit jacket that doesn't have a single crease even after a night like this.
I lower the gun.
Alessandro walks up the rickety wooden steps. His two-thousand-dollar Italian leather shoes are caked in mud. His dark tie is loose. His black hair is a mess. He looks like a man who has spent the entire night burning his own life down to the ground.
He opens the door. He sees me first. I’m shirtless, swaying, covered in blood and fresh bandages. He looks at the gun in my hand.
I see the flicker of pain in his eyes. For one fleeting heartbeat, he isn't the Don. He’s my little brother. Seeing me like this hurts him. It’s an impact he can’t strategize his way around.
Then the mask is back in place. The Don returns.
"Status," he says, his voice flat.
"Killian’s alive. The doctor fixed him. Gut surgery." I look over at Adrian, who is still standing frozen in the doorway, clutching his bag. "Tell him."
Adrian’s voice is a cold, flat line, his tone a register of medical facts. "Jejunal perforation with mesenteric bleed. Primary anastomosis completed. He’s stable on broad-spectrum antibiotics. The prognosis is favorable if we can prevent sepsis."
Alessandro doesn't look at Adrian. He walks past me to the table made of a door. He stops and looks down at Killian. He looks at the waxy, pale skin and the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of the thin sheet.
He stands there for a long time. He doesn't touch him. He doesn't speak. But I see his right hand hanging at his side. His fingers are trembling. It’s the most honest, vulnerable thing he’s shown me in months.
I lean heavily against the wall. The gun weighs three pounds, but my arm feels like it’s made of lead. The dawn light turns the room a dusty, mottled gold. I watch my brother stand over his dying husband. I feel something crack in my chest that has nothing to do with my broken ribs.
Adrian is watching from the doorway. He is diagnosing the entire room. He is reading the invisible damage between us like it’s written on a medical chart.
His pale blue eyes meet mine across the small cabin. They hold.
I look away first.