1. The Night Everything Changes #2
I don't go. Instead, I check the wound again. The bleeding is slowing — a good sign, perhaps, or a sign he's running out of blood to lose. His skin is pale beneath the olive tone, and his breathing has become shallow. Shock, maybe. Or just stubbornness holding the body together past its limit.
"You need a hospital," I say.
"No hospitals."
"You've lost a lot of blood?—"
"No. Hospitals."
The words are iron. I recognize the tone — it's the same one the nurses use when they tell me Lucia's insurance won't cover the next round of treatment. Final. Immovable. A wall dressed up as a sentence.
I don't push. I adjust the jacket, press harder, and don't flinch when his hand tightens over mine.
"You're calm," he says after a moment. Like it's a data point he's filing.
"I'm not calm. I'm functional. There's a difference."
"Most people would've run."
"Most people didn't watch their mother code twice in the ICU last year." I say it flat, factual, the way I say everything about Lucia now — stripped of emotion because emotion is a luxury I can't afford to unpack. "After that, a guy bleeding in an alley doesn't really move the needle."
He watches me. I can feel him cataloging — the dark circles under my eyes, the hospital pharmacy bag crushed on the ground behind me, the burgundy polo with Rosario's stitched in gold thread above the breast pocket — a diner uniform, stained at the hem with coffee and kitchen grease.
He reads me the way I imagine he reads everything: completely, efficiently, and without mercy.
"What's your name?" he asks.
"I told you. Nobody."
"Nobody," he repeats, and the word sounds different in his mouth. Heavier. Like he's deciding whether to believe me or overrule me.
The sound of an engine cuts through the silence—close and moving fast. Headlights sweep across the mouth of the alley, and a black car skids to a stop twenty feet away.
The door flies open before the wheels have fully stopped, and a man jumps out.
He's built like a wall — broad shoulders, thick neck, gun already drawn, eyes scanning the alley with the focus of someone who's done this a thousand times.
"Dio santo—" The man sees the blood first, then me kneeling beside his boss, and his gun swings toward me.
"Enzo." The bleeding man's voice is quiet, but it stops the big man mid-stride. "She helped."
Enzo's eyes narrow. He doesn't lower the gun immediately — he looks at me, at the jacket pressed to the wound, at my blood-covered hands, and makes his own calculation.
His gaze lingers for half a second on my polo — the name of the diner sitting right there on my chest like a business card I didn't mean to hand out. Then the gun drops.
"We need to move," Enzo says. "Now."
He hauls the bleeding man to his feet with practiced ease — an arm under the shoulder, absorbing the weight without effort. The injured man grunts but stays upright, which tells me his pain tolerance is either extraordinary or pathological.
They move toward the car. I stay on my knees in the alley, my hands red and trembling now that the adrenaline is fading, watching them go.
At the car door, he stops. He looks back at me — then at the alley, the blood on the pavement, and the dark mouth of the street where his attackers disappeared minutes ago.
"Get in," he says.
"What?"
"They left a body breathing. Men like that come back to fix their mistakes." His eyes move from the alley to me. "You're standing in the middle of the evidence. Get in the car."
It's not a request. My stomach drops — because he's right. The blood is everywhere. My jacket is soaked with it. If those men circle back to finish what they started and find a woman alone in the alley, kneeling in their target's blood?—
I get in.
The backseat smells like leather and iron. I press myself against the far door, as far from him as the space allows. It's a big car, but still not big enough. He's slumped against the opposite side, My jacket balled up against his ribs, breathing through his teeth.
"They rammed us at the intersection on Tremont," Enzo says from the driver's seat.
His voice is tight — not just urgent, but guilty.
"Two cars. One took out the front vehicle, and the other boxed me in from behind.
By the time I got through, you were gone, and there was blood on the street.
" He stops. His knuckles are white on the steering wheel.
"It was a setup. They split the convoy on purpose. "
The bleeding man doesn't respond. Not with anger, not with reassurance. Just a slow exhale through his nose, like this confirms something he already suspected. Whoever sent those men knew his route, his schedule, and exactly how to pull his protection away first.
The car goes quiet. He doesn't look at me. He looks out the window, jaw clenched, processing something I can't read.
"Where," he says. One word. Not where do you live — just where. Like full sentences are a luxury his body can't afford right now.