Chapter 8: Five Stitches

Dominic hit me at the waist and we went down in the dirt beside my mother's fresh grave.

The third shot took a splinter out of the wooden marker above our heads.

Stone dust fell in my hair.

"Don't move," he said into my ear.

"I'm not moving."

"Stay low."

"I know how to stay low, Dominic."

"Then do it."

He was lying across me with his whole weight, and his heart was pounding against my back.

I could smell his shirt, cedar and coffee and the cigarettes he swore he'd quit.

A fourth shot hit the dirt a foot from my hand.

"North hill," I said. "Behind the cypress. It's a rifle, not a pistol."

"How do you know?"

"The crack. It comes before the whistle."

He stared down at me.

"Where did you learn that?"

"My father's range. I was eleven."

Then there were engines, and Nico's voice shouting, and the whole line of black cars tore up the cemetery road behind us.

Doors slammed.

Men ran past our mound in a wave with their guns up.

"The hill!" Nico bellowed. "The cypress! Alive, if you can!"

The shooting stopped.

Dominic rolled off me and sat up.

He winced, and I saw the dark patch spreading across his left shoulder.

"You're hit."

"It's nothing."

"Take off the jacket."

"Ila, it's a scratch."

"Take it off, or I'll cut it off."

He took it off.

There was a furrow across the top of his shoulder as long as my finger, and the blood ran down his arm in a thin, bright line.

My hands knew what to do before I did.

Nico drove us back to the villa with one arm out of the window shouting at his men on the radio.

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