Chapter 17 Emilio #3
I open the door, and step out into the garage. Turn back because there's one more thing I need to say and I don't know why, but it feels important.
"I will keep an ear out. What’s her name?”
“Graziella Ferrera. Probably doesn’t go by that anymore, if she’s still alive, but if you come across anything… you have my number.”
I close the door and walk back toward the SUV. The garage is quiet. My footsteps echo and the SUV is thirty feet ahead and I'm already running through how I'm going to present this to Leone when I hear it.
Tires.
Not one vehicle. Two. Coming down the ramp from the upper level at a speed that parking structures aren't designed for, headlights cutting through the dim concrete, engines screaming off the walls.
I know before I see the men. Before the doors open and the guns come out and the first shots shatter Ferrara's rear window.
I know because this is the sound that precedes violence in every city in the world, the screech of tires and the acceleration of intent, and my body has been trained to respond to it since I was fifteen.
I pull the gun from my waistband and move.
Not toward the SUV. Toward the nearest concrete pillar, thick enough to stop rifle rounds, twenty feet to my right.
The next round of shots hit Ferrara's sedan, punching through the trunk and the rear quarter panel, and I hear Ferrara scream in Italian and the engine roar as he throws it into reverse.
Carmelo is out of the SUV before I reach the pillar.
I catch a glimpse of him, crouched behind the hood, gun up, already firing controlled three-round bursts at the vehicle on the right.
The man went from passenger seat to combat position in about two seconds.
He’s on point, finger pulling the trigger and brain three steps ahead.
Mine needs to catch up. I press my back against the pillar and take a breath, one, in and out, and then I lean around the left side and assess.
Two black SUVs, no plates or plates I can't see from this angle.
Four men that I can count, two behind each vehicle, all armed, all firing at Ferrara's sedan as it fishtails up the exit ramp with sparks flying off the undercarriage.
Two of them are focused on the sedan. Two have noticed Carmelo and are returning fire at the SUV, rounds pinging off the hood and punching through the windshield.
Ferrara's sedan disappears up the ramp and the shooters on the right redirect toward me.
I pull back behind the pillar as rounds hit the concrete, close enough that I feel the chips spray against my neck.
The sound is deafening in the enclosed space, every shot amplified and bounced off walls and ceiling until the whole garage is one continuous roar.
I lean out the other side. Fire twice at the vehicle on the left.
The first shot goes wide and sparks off the concrete floor.
The second catches one of the shooters in the shoulder and he drops behind the bumper, his weapon clattering.
His partner sees me, adjusts, and I pull back as a burst stitches across the pillar at chest height.
Carmelo moves. He crosses the gap between our SUV and the right-side vehicle in a low sprint, fires twice into the man who's been returning fire at him, and doesn't slow down when the man drops.
The second shooter behind that vehicle turns and Carmelo is already on him.
I don't see what happens. I hear it. A short, ugly sound, and then Carmelo is moving again, rounding the vehicle, heading for the left side where my two shooters are still dug in.
The wounded one is trying to get his weapon back. His good hand is reaching for the gun on the concrete, and I lean out and put a round into the floor six inches from his fingers. He pulls back.
His partner sees Carmelo coming and makes a decision. He breaks from cover and runs for the exit ramp, weapon abandoned, legs pumping, and I step out from behind the pillar to track him because a man who just tried to kill me doesn't get to leave the building without consequences.
That's when the fifth one shoots me.
I didn't count five. I counted four and I was wrong, and the fifth was in the stairwell, the one I didn't think to check, the one Carmelo didn't clear because we both made the same assumption and assumptions in a firefight are how people die.
The round hits my left arm just above the elbow.
The impact is a punch, not a sting, a hard, blunt force that spins me sideways and slams my good shoulder into the concrete wall.
My back slides down the rough surface and I hit the ground with my ass, and my gun is still in my right hand because dropping your weapon is dying.
That lesson was beaten into me before I could drive a car, and it stuck.
The arm is wrong. I can feel the heat spreading through my bicep, and my sleeve is already soaked.
Entry wound in the front, just above the crease of the elbow.
I can feel the exit in the back, ragged and bigger than the entry, which means the round tumbled on the way through.
The bone is intact. I know because I can still wiggle my fingers, and a shattered humerus would have me screaming instead of sitting here assessing the damage with the detached calm of a man whose training is the only thing keeping him from panicking.
Carmelo finishes the runner. I hear the sound. I don't look. Then he finds the fifth one in the stairwell and I hear that too, and it takes longer, his screams echoing as Carmelo bashes his head against the concrete with wet thuds.
He appears in front of me and crouches, takes a peek at my arm.
His face does nothing because it never does, but his hands are fast and sure.
He strips the belt from one of the dead men and wraps it around my arm above the wound, pulling it tight with a jerk that whites out my vision for a full second.
"Through and through," I say when I can talk.
"I know." He ties it off and checks the wound again, then looks at me with those dead-gray eyes. "I didn't clear the stairwell."
"I know."
"It won't happen again."
"I know that too."
He helps me up. The garage tilts hard to the left and I grab his shoulder and wait for the world to find its level.
It takes about five seconds and during those five seconds I think about the fact that I promised Savannah I'd come back in one piece and technically a bullet hole is still one piece, it's just one piece with a hole in it.
She's going to be furious about the technicality.
Carmelo walks me to the SUV and puts me in the passenger seat and gets behind the wheel. He drives fast. I lean my head back and hold the belt tight and watch the blood seep through the fabric and think about three things.
First: Billone is being positioned as a mediator between both families, which means someone is actively moving Aurelio's son into the space between the Bonaccorsos and the Castillos, and that someone has enough pull to give Marco Castillo direct orders.
Second: Ferrara is an ally now, a real one, burned by his own side and willing to share intelligence because the alternative is serving people who build schools to destroy children.
Third: Savannah is going to kill me.
My phone buzzes, it’s Leone. I answer with my good hand.
"Status."
"Alive. Bullet in the arm. Through and through. Carmelo's driving me back."
"The meeting?"
"Ferrara's information was good. The alliance was pulled by someone above Marco. And they've got a mediator coming in. Matteo Billone."
Silence. Long enough that I check the screen to make sure the call is still connected.
"Leone?"
"I heard you." His voice is the Don. "Aurelio's son is being positioned between both families."
"That's what Ferrara said. Placement. Not mediation."
Another silence, shorter this time before he talks again. "Get back to the compound. Get stitched. We'll debrief when you're not bleeding."
"Copy."
The line goes dead. Carmelo takes a corner hard enough to press me against the door and the pain in my arm spikes from the jolt before it settles back to the throb that's going to be my companion for the next several weeks.
My little vixen might claw me to pieces.
She's going to be livid. She's going to drag me to a room and curse at me in combinations of profanity that would make a sailor blush.
She's going to punch my good arm and then hold on to me until her hands stop shaking and her breathing evens out and the fear turns into the anger that lives on the other side of relief.
I'm looking forward to every second of it.
Because the woman who loses her shit when I get hurt is the woman who told me she loves me, and the woman who told me she loves me is the woman I'm going to marry.
My life is insane. I wouldn't trade a single piece of it.
Carmelo pulls into the compound. I get out and my legs hold and I walk through the door under my own power because I made a promise and the promise was one piece and I'm delivering on it, hole and all.
Her voice hits me before I see her face.
"What the FUCK happened to your arm?"