29. Heaven
CHAPTER 29
HEAVEN
I didn’t tell him I loved him.
I didn’t tell him I loved him.
“Oh my God, Matteo, you fucking bastard. Don’t you die. Don’t you dare die.” I push the words out, tears blurring my vision. I fall to my knees next to him. A sob rises up in my chest and I let it come.
I love him. It’s so obvious now. I love him.
He’s in my arms, heavy. Lifeless. His eyes are closed, his chest barely rising and falling. I cringe when my eyes fall to a bloody, jagged mess of an exit wound below his left shoulder. I move my hand there, pressing hard, trying to control the blood loss. Through the shouts and sirens, someone won’t stop speaking and chanting and praying.
And I realize it’s me. I’m doing that. I try to stop, but I can’t.
People surround me. Someone’s grabbed my gun. The sirens are close now, and Aunt Maura is clutching at me, saying something.
I shake my head, unable to tear my eyes away from Matteo’s pale face. “I didn’t tell him,” I murmur over and over again.
“Heaven, you’re not safe here?—”
“I don’t care.” I glare up at her. Though my tears, I process the others standing over us.
His brothers. His brothers are here, too.
“We cleared the guns,” Sergio says, hand on Matteo’s wrist. He meets my gaze. “He’s hanging in.”
“Heaven! Dad’s been hit!”
I ignore Conor’s outburst. I can’t move. I can’t let Matteo go.
But Aunt Maura rushes to the pub and to Dad.
“I’m going after the shooter!” Conor tears past me, pulling open the door of his car and peels down the street in hot pursuit.
I don’t care. Matteo isn’t moving now. My heart’s in shreds. Blood pounds hard in my veins as sirens grow louder and louder, competing with the roaring in my ears.
He ran out into a hail of bullets.
For me.
“Please don’t die,” I say, “Damn you.”
What he said to me is still too big to process. The words that hit me when he collapsed to the ground…I…oh, God. He can’t die.
It feels like I’ve been sitting here for ages on this bright New York day, but it’s only been seconds. People are talking to me and the sirens are getting louder. But I fight off every single attempt to pull me free from my tormented thoughts.
“Your father’s been hit, but he’s alive,” says someone, I think it’s Sergio.
I nod, knowing I have to get it together, knowing they’ll be back. And I want them to come back. I want my gun and I want to shoot dead every single one of the bastards who did this. This is cold, heavy anger. Something that eats down into my marrow.
“Where is my aunt?” I ask.
“She’s with your dad. Your brother left.”
I nod again, my mind as numb as my heart. Matteo’s blood is warm and slick on my skin. It stains his T-shirt, a bloom that spreads over the fabric. I push against the wound, keeping the pressure on until someone pulls me away. People in uniforms appear and they put an oxygen mask on Matteo’s face.
I need him to open his eyes. I need those devastating blue eyes to look up. I need to see those lying, deceitful eyes, both cold and burning hot, on me.
I want to tell him how much I fucking hate and despise him, and just how I’m going to hurt him because of how he hurt me.
Fuck, he needs to be okay.
“Let go, Heaven,” Aunt Maura says. EMTs wrap his wound and take him from me.
Someone is screaming ‘no.’
It’s me.
Sergio helps me up and I pull all of the fractured and painful pieces of myself together.
I look down at myself, covered in Matteo’s blood. “Sergio, I need to go with him.”
“Heaven, we have to get you out?—”
I look into eyes so much like my husband’s. “Fucking make me. There are cops everywhere. Bystanders. EMTs. No one is fucking touching me.”
“Jesus, you’re a tough one.” His eyes narrow. “As bad as him.”
“Take me to Matteo,” I say.
Half the cops will be on our payroll. The guns are gone. Tales will be spun about this. No charges will stick; we have plenty of lawyers who will make sure that happens. I bark out orders now to his brothers and to two of the staff who are part of my family. “Get Patrick down here.”
And then I march to the ambulance when they finish loading Matteo.
All this has taken minutes.
Roman calls out to me as he and Sergio walk toward the Escalade they must have arrived in. “Tell him not to die, we’ll meet you there at the hospital.”
An EMT looks at me. Two more are already in the back of the ambulance. She takes one look at my face, motions for me to sit, and I strap in as she slams the door.
They’re hooking Matteo up to the monitors, calling things out to each other in words I don’t understand.
I want to hold him, but I can’t.
I sit and lurch in the seat as we careen through the streets, sirens blaring. NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital is our destination, and I keep whispering for him to be okay.
I want to shake him. I want to pray.
There’s such a fine line between love and hate.
I’m so angry at him and my father and Conor, so fed up with the deceit. But this is Matteo. I need to be strong for him. I can’t think about how I failed to save someone.
Again.
I love him.
So much.
But, my God, I’m furious at him. He betrayed me and my family. He lied. He crushed me, shredding my heart and soul in the process.
A chill slips down my back and fear and anger knot my gut.
No, what did my father say? It’s not my fault.
And this? I’m no good to Matteo if I beat myself up. He’s going to be okay. He has to be, because I’m going to punish that motherfucker. We’re married, and for whatever reasons it started, for whatever his lies are, he said he loves me.
He dove in front of a bullet, and he needs to make it all up to me for the rest of his life because he’s lifted me up and out of the darkness, given me real purpose.
He filled the holes in my heart and soul, showing me what my life could be if I opened up to the possibilities.
That’s what I cling to now as the ambulance speeds around the driveway in front of the Emergency Room.
The possibilities.
There are so many.
But only if he’s by my side.