Chapter 44
I was in the zone. I made tourniquets and inserted IV lines.
I bandaged, sutured, and stapled. I followed after Doc, switching between assisting on emergency field surgeries and digging out bullets from superficial wounds.
It was energizing, just knowing I was making a difference, that their lives were in my hands.
Other than that intoxicating rush, everything else faded into the background.
The patients might not all have been dying, or in danger of it, but every step toward recovery was crucial, and I loved being a part of it.
I wondered if my parents felt this way whenever they stepped into an operating room.
Only three victims needed emergency surgery.
The others had grazes, limb wounds, or upper torso injuries, without damage to the heart or lungs.
Doc and I were halfway through our nine patients when someone tapped me on the shoulder.
I glanced back, needle holder in hand, in the middle of finishing a set of sutures, to find Renzo towering over me like an oversized bear.
“I’m a little busy right now. What do you need?” I turned back to tweeze the needle out of my unconscious patient for a new suture.
“Something’s come up. I can’t stay.”
“Well, I have to.”
“I know. This suits you.”
I tied off my latest suture, a coy smile playing on my lips. “Sounds like flattery.”
He bent over next to my ear and pulled my surgical mask down. “You deserve it.”
I shivered from the warmth of his proximity and the tickle of his breath against my cheek.
I peeked up from my task. Everyone who was conscious threw glances our way, except for Doc behind a surgical curtain—but he didn’t do distractions.
Their eyes bored into me, into us. A prickly rush swarmed my face.
“What are you doing?” I reprimanded, ducking my head back down.
“Making it known?”
“Making what known?”
His fingers were featherlight against my chin, yet I still felt their pull.
They skimmed over my skin, urging me to look up at him.
I couldn’t resist, and I didn’t want to.
His eyes sucked me in. They smoldered with thousands of unsaid words, despite all the ones we’d already shared.
They gleamed with seduction, faceted with all the emotions I’d been hoping he’d feel for me. Butterflies fluttered in my belly.
“Us.”
That one word echoed between us as his palms cupped my face and pulled me to him.
Our mouths met in the sweetest kiss that existed…
so soft, my heart stuttered with its touch.
So tender, my mind and soul fell even deeper into the abyss for him.
Our lips caressed and massaged, tasted and suckled each other.
The scruff of his mustache added a tinge of roughness.
The coarseness of his goatee made me all the more aware of the doting way his lips explored mine.
My body hummed for more. He was my contradiction: an outer shell as sharp and tough as a polished diamond, but a plush, gentle interior that swathed and comforted me, and only me.
I liked the juxtaposition of his edginess blended with compassion. I was greedy for it, but not here in front of everyone, not now with my hands bloodied and occupied. So I bit his lip, hard, and when his lip between my teeth tugged into a grin, I melted for him a little bit more.
“Renzo.” Tore’s warning was only background noise as the kiss ended and our foreheads met.
“What was that for?” I asked Renzo, air burning on its way in and out of my chest.
“I love you.”
My breath caught. I searched his gaze for the lie, the scheme, the manipulation. That was the Renzo I knew. Instead, I saw only devotion and passion, not an ounce of deceit, and everyone witnessed it.
“I do,” he continued. “I want them all to know it.”
I grinned brightly. “I love you too.”
There was a collective gasp around us. My gloved hands, occupied and grubby, hung awkwardly over my patient. He kissed my forehead, then pulled back.
“Wait for me,” he said, already a few feet away.
“I’ll be here.”
“Good girl.” Impossibly, my cheeks flamed brighter. “Stay here. Stay safe.”
Like I had any intention of going anywhere else. “You too.”
“Keep an eye on her,” he instructed Natale, who was inspecting the bandage I’d taped over the stitches near his hip.
Tore scowled at me, pointing his index and middle fingers at me, then back at his eyes, before slapping his arm around his cousin and tugging him away.
“What the hell was that?” he asked.
When Renzo swatted Tore’s arm off, I snickered.
“Later,” Renzo replied gruffly.
Who would have thought I’d be smiling like a kid with candy as I went back to suturing? Still, the burn of dozens of eyes pressed between my shoulder blades.
“I suggest you all find something better to do than gawk before I find another use for my scalpel,” I exclaimed at the nosy assembly of injured and healthy Iannelli men.
“You’re good for him.” Natale’s rasped declaration broke the uncomfortable prickle of unwanted attention since Renzo’s departure.
Natale sat on the edge of a grouping of two tables, tugging a clean tank over his head.
The bullet graze near his hip bone was just one more scar among the multitude of them on his body. “Men like us need women like you.”
I eyed him suspiciously. We’d never spoken much.
As the hardened capo managing the Iannellis' security business side, Natale was the type who never tried to stand out, yet somehow always seemed to be there. Before his cheeks were scarred and he lost his eye, he’d probably been handsome and carefree.
“Not sure how I’m supposed to take that.”
“As a compliment, Burch. Strength in vulnerability, it’s a good thing.”
Seeing the looks Massimo and Alfie threw me from their huddle of macho men, I doubted they felt the same. They probably preferred their women meek and quiet.
Unsure how to reply, I forced a smile and took my instruments to the wash bins set on booth cushions along the wall. As they soaked in a cleaning solution, I picked up a new, sanitized set.
One moment, there was a droning stream of soft background conversations and the gentle clink of instruments over the bitter scent of anesthetics and the last cauterization Doc made.
The next, a loud boom roared through the entire building.
The floor quaked. The windows imploded. Tables and people fell over as dust and bits of ceiling shook down.
Anyone awake scrambled to their feet and closed ranks. Ammo was clicked and slammed into guns.
The storefront was still intact, despite the broken glass. Considering the force, the explosion must have happened in the attached deli or apothecary.
Then came the gunfire. A rapid pow pow pow that beat over everything else, from one room over and closing.
There were yells and screams. Men poured in through the door adjoining the restaurant and the yoga studio.
There was only one assailant I recognized, the last to come in, sheltered behind a wall of his own men—Ilias Dimakos.
“Ainsley!” Natale’s yell was muted against the noise as I pulled Jac, still unconscious, off a set of tables and down to the floor, away from the incoming bullets. I checked his pulse. Still alive.
I had no gun, nothing to defend myself or anyone with. I sifted through the medical instruments laid out on the nearest booth—scalpel handles, scalpel blade packages, epinephrine, bandages, syringes, anesthetic vials, and more. I slipped anything useful into my pockets and waistband.
“Come on.” Natale tugged me around.
“I can’t leave him.”
“You can, and you will. Get to the panic room. Now.”
Hunched over, he dragged me through the wreckage of dried blood, glass, and drywall that turned the floor into a maze of snares.
I watched helplessly as one of the men I’d just helped treat crumbled to the floor, riddled with bullets.
Natale held his gun at the ready, firing twice behind us, but not stopping to check if he’d gotten them.
I stumbled over a dead enforcer, a trickle of blood rolling from the hole in his head, and picked up his gun.
Massimo and Alfie manned the kitchen door entrance, both covering our approach. “Come on, come on,” Massimo urged.
“Through there.” Natale shoved me through the doorway. “On your left. Scan your hand and the door’ll open. He’d want you in there.”
There wasn’t time to argue. I landed on my knees, breaking my fall with the gun. It clacked against the kitchen tile. By the time I turned around, Natale was back in the fray.
I didn’t run for the panic room. I wasn’t some damsel in distress in need of protection. Instead, I lay on my belly between Massimo and Alfie and took aim. Shot after shot, the gun recoiled in my hands. I didn’t think of the people I killed. I thought of the ones I saved.
Ilias Dimakos went down, but that didn’t stop the men he came with. Too soon, my gun clicked empty. I threw it aside. Another dead man’s gun lay four feet away, so I crawled forward.
“Now. Time to move,” Massimo yelled behind me. A hand grabbed my waistband and yanked me back.
Caught off guard, I reacted too slowly. By the time I realized what was happening, there was nothing for my fingers to grasp onto.
“Let me go.”
A set of hands flattened me to the ground. The bright screen of a phone flared in front of my face, a picture of Lou on the display. Her mouth was taped, her eyes shut, her head leaning to the side, unconscious. A seatbelt wrapped over her shoulder.
“Come with us now, or she dies.”
Pop after pop continued going off with bangs, cracks, and thwacks as bullets hit metal, plaster, and booth cushions. It was all background noise compared to that photo.
“Why?” I asked, though I could guess the answer. My hands and legs shook with the need to help her.
Alfie muscled me to my knees, tugging my arms behind my back as far as they could go. I winced.
“Make this easy or hard,” Massimo threatened. “It’s your choice.”
The fight was still ongoing. Any sound I made, any distraction I caused, might put the rest of the fighting Iannelli men at a disadvantage.
“Is she alive?”
“For now. You’ll see her soon.”
That was good enough. “Okay. I’ll go.”
I didn’t argue as they walked me through the service doors and outside.
I didn’t protest as they wrapped duct tape around my crossed arms in front of my chest, taped my legs together, and taped my mouth.
I sat as directed in the back seat of Massimo’s car and waited.
Once the car began moving, I slowly sliced away at the tape with one of the scalpel blades in my pockets.