My Don's Friends Spoke Italian to Shut Me Out novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Stairwell

They took Gaspare into surgery at University Hospital, in the building where I worked.

Three of my own coworkers saw me walk in with a mob captain's blood to my elbows.

Nobody said a word.

The surgeon came out after an hour and told Cesare the bullet had missed the artery by the width of a pencil.

"Whoever stopped the bleeding on that dock," he said, "saved his life."

Cesare turned and looked at me across the waiting room.

Then he took my elbow and walked me out of there, fast, without saying anything, and put me in the back of his black SUV on the fourth level of the parking garage.

He told the driver to go get coffee.

The door shut.

It was very quiet.

"I told you to stay home," Cesare said.

His voice was flat, and his hands were shaking.

"You'd be dead."

"You think I don't know that?"

"You didn't even look up!"

"You think I don't know that either?"

He had a butterfly bandage on his forehead where the pavement had scraped him, and a stripe of Gaspare's blood dried on his collar.

I had never seen him afraid.

It looked terrible on him.

"You came into that yard with nobody," he said. "You ran at a man with a rifle. Do you understand what I thought when I heard you shout?"

"No."

"I thought, she's going to die in front of me because of me."

He stopped, and I saw that he hadn't meant to say it.

"Three months ago," he said, much lower, "I woke up on your table and the first thing I saw was you with your sleeves rolled up, telling me to keep breathing. I haven't stopped seeing it."

I reached up and touched the bandage.

He caught my wrist.

His grip was hard enough to hurt, and I did not pull away.

"Margo."

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