21. Enzo
ENZO
I have vague recollections of getting here.
They dumped me in the city behind an abandoned warehouse on the riverbank. No warning. No parting gifts. No promise to be in touch when I’m willing to accept their generous proposition.
The mild concussion was doing a great job of keeping the pain in my shoulder at bay, so I took that as a win.
I hauled myself to my feet and stumbled back to the city, ignoring the stares of passersby, those who didn’t avert their eyes and give me a wide berth, and growling at anyone who approached me to help.
At some point, I convinced a taxi driver to give me a ride and gave him the address for Gio’s apartment. Must’ve made sense to me in my befuddled state; or maybe I needed some love, and Megan was the only person I could think of.
“Sorry, Enzo, I’m trying not to hurt you.” Megan bites her bottom lip and studies the hole in my shoulder. “Please let me take you to the Emergency Room. Or at least let me call Gio. He can get you to one of your hospitals.”
One of our hospitals; she means somewhere with enough mafia influence they won’t ask questions when they patch me up.
“No, there’s no time.”
It’s what I told her when I practically fell out of the elevator and swayed across the foyer like I was steaming drunk.
Before she met my brother, Megan had never seen a bullet wound outside of the movies.
But when I rocked up today, bloody and with glazed eyes, she swept the kids out of the living room and along the hallway to the nursery with their nanny, her voice never faltering, and fixed me a brandy, neat.
Amber is at school, but I’m conscious that I need to get fixed up and get out of here before normal family life resumes.
Now, she’s trying to pull the bullet out of the wound with sterilized tweezers, and panic is setting in. Her fingers tremble. Her chin quivers as if she’s about to cry.
“Hey,” I say gently, “you can do this, Meggie.” I inspect what’s left of the brandy in the bottom of my glass—it will pass as an anesthetic if I drink enough of it—and hand it to her. “Drink this. It will help.”
“It might help me, but it won’t be great for you if I’m drunk in charge of tweezers.” She hasn’t lost her sense of humor.
“Stop overthinking it. Get the bullet out, and I’ll do the rest.”
She swallows the brandy and grimaces as it goes down. Then she refills the glass and gives it back to me. “Don’t look.”
“I’ll keep my eyes shut. I trust you.” I down the brandy in one go and scrunch them shut.
“I just want you to know that I never signed up for this when I married your brother.”
“You should’ve read the small print before you signed the marriage certificate. You know, love, cherish, and fix up bullet wounds. Standard wording for a mafia—”
The feel of metal scraping flesh as the tweezers dig deep for the bullet stifles my train of thought and replaces it with white-hot flames licking their way up and down my spine. I clench my jaw and grind my teeth together, my fist squeezing around the brandy glass.
“Enzo?” Megan murmurs. “Are you alright?”
“Yes, don’t stop.”
I feel the exact moment metal finds metal and pant through the pain as she maneuvers the blunt edges of the tweezer arms around the bullet and tugs it out.
She gasps when it comes free and drops it into the basin in their ensuite bathroom. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I just did that.”
I aim a tight-lipped smile her way. “You almost died on a mountain with explosives strapped to your chest and you think this was bad. Did you ever see Wayne’s World?”
“Nikki made me watch it once.”
Nikki is her childhood friend and the reason Megan and Gio met at my brother’s film studio in LA where Nikki landed a small role in the first ever movie his company produced. She also nearly died at the hands of the Fish, but it didn’t change her mind about acting.
Both women are braver and stronger than either of them gives themselves credit for.
“So, you’ll understand when I say I’m not worthy.” My words are starting to slur.
“It’s the pain talking.” Megan refills my glass, the neck of the decanter shaking against the lip of the glass. “Drink up. I can’t leave you with a gaping hole in your shoulder. You’ll bleed all over our rugs.”
“Glad to know your rugs are more important than my health.”
Megan chuckles. “It’s a coping mechanism. I used to make Amber laugh when things were bad before our mom died, so she would remember smiles instead of tears.”
She washes her hands with antibacterial soap, washes them again, and goes back to the medical kit where she has already prepared a needle and sterile thread to stitch the wound back up.
“I’ll do it.” I can’t feel my tongue when I speak.
“If you think I’m going to stand back and watch you practice your cross-stitch on your own skin, you don’t know me at all, Enzo Sabatelli.” She’s firm, and my numb lips manage to crack a smile.
“Are you always this bossy?”
“Always.” She stands in my line of vision and cleans away the blood from around the wound. “The twins would get away with murder if it was down to Gio to discipline them.”
Her breath hitches when she realizes what she said, and her shoulders slump.
“You mean he’s a big softie with them,” I say.
Her smile is genuine, her eyes filled with love for her family as she pinches the flesh together across the bullet hole, narrows her eyes until she’s satisfied that the two flaps of skin are precisely where she wants them, and inserts the needle.
“You can cry if you want to, you know,” she murmurs, tugging the thread tight.
“I-I don’t think I can.” I feel like I’m on fire, the flames spreading through my body from the needle point at the top of my arm.
“I know you’re still in love with Demi.”
I know what she’s doing, she’s trying to distract me from the physical pain by dragging the emotional pain to the surface. It’s fucking working, because now all I can feel is the ache in my chest, wide open, my heart bared for everyone to trample on.
“I wish you would talk about how you feel, Enzo. We would never dismiss your feelings or try to tell you that it’s time to move on.”
I raise the glass to my lips, hitting my top teeth before I manage to down the amber liquid. “That’s not the Sabatelli way.”
“And getting yourself shot is?” She works quickly and methodically, paying close attention to every stitch like this is one of her cake creations.
“Different kind of pain.”
“I know.” She nods briefly. “I get it, but shutting down and cutting us off isn’t the answer.”
“Do you know what the answer is?” The liquor is taking effect, numbing the sharp edges just enough for me to follow the conversation.
“If I did, I could make a lot of money out of it.” She peers closely at the wound, her expression serious. “Almost done.”
I watch her secure the thread and snip the ends before she stands back to survey her handiwork.
“Gio is a lucky guy, Meggie.”
Her smile lights up her face as she covers the stitched wound with a sterile dressing. “I remind him of this every day.”
I tug my shirt over my shoulder and stand up, swaying against the basin for support. “I should go…”
She shakes her head as she packs away the medical supplies. “I’m feeding you first, and don’t even think about telling me you’re not hungry.”
“No, Meggie, you don’t understand.”
I’m clinging onto Malevsky’s proposition, keeping it firmly fixed in my head so that my rage doesn’t dwindle before I find the fucker and show him what happens when he messes with the Sabatellis.
Even though it all feels at odds with the tranquility of this apartment, this family, this happy bubble they’re cocooned inside.
“No, Enzo,” Meggie says softly, “you don’t understand. If you won’t talk to me, feeding you is the least I can do, so just give me that before you walk out of here and get yourself killed. Please…”
I smile and pull her into a hug. “When you put it like that, how can I refuse?”
“You can’t.”
She leads the way to the kitchen, makes me sit down before I collapse, and places a cup of black coffee in front of me. I drink it while she grills cheese and serves it with tiny, cream-cheese-stuffed peppers and aioli.
“Don’t ask,” she says, sitting across the breakfast bar from me so that she can watch me eat. “I’m obsessed with stuffed peppers. Gio caught me eating them straight out of the fridge this morning while I was preparing the kids’ breakfast.”
I chew grilled cheese and picture their morning routine.
Megan thinks eating stuffed peppers before breakfast is weird, but I find myself craving that kind of normality right now.
Because it might never be mine, I guess, and because my normal includes getting shot by a pakhan who probably never got hugged as a kid and getting stitched up by my sister-in-law the baker.
I’m three coffees down and on my second helping of grilled cheese when the elevator door opens and we both turn around to face Bianca crossing the foyer.
The caffeine is taking its sweet time breaking through the concussion haze, so I’m still processing her presence when she stands in front of me, eyes blazing, and says, “You’re a fucking asshole, Enzo. You went to Rome to see my kids, and you didn’t even tell me?”
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
“Worry me?” Her voice has gone from accusatory to shrill in a heartbeat.
There is no middle ground with Bianca; never has been.
“You think that’s something a mom switches off when her kids are taken away from her, huh?
You think I don’t lie awake at night afraid that some fucker will get to them before I can tell them I love them? ”
I stand up, overturning my cup and spilling the dregs over the counter. I don’t want her here. I want to get her away from Meggie and the children and the apartment they call home before it’s all tainted and bloody and a sitting target for Dmitri fucking Malevsky.
“Not here, Bianca.” I raise my hands to placate her, but she shoves me in the chest, ignoring the blood on my suit jacket.