Chapter 4: Above the Restaurant

I did not remember the drive.

I remembered Vincenzo waking once at a red light and saying "Fio's. The back lane," and then going gray again.

The back lane led to the kitchen door of Fio's restaurant, and the stairs behind it led to a flat on the second floor.

Fio was already waiting at the top with a first-aid kit the size of a suitcase.

"I told you to go sit somewhere," she said to me.

Then she saw her brother between us, and her face changed.

We got him onto the kitchen table.

Fio held the lamp and swore the whole time in two languages.

"I've got the kit, not the hands for it," she said. "I faint at stitches. I always did."

She turned the lamp toward me.

"You do it."

"I sell flowers," I said.

"You cut roses with a knife every day for years, and you've never once missed. Do it."

I washed my hands to the elbow in the sink.

Vincenzo lay with his eyes half open, watching the ceiling.

"Hold still," I said.

"I am still."

I cut his shirt away from the wound with Fio's scissors.

The bullet had gone through the soft side under his ribs and out the back, and blood kept coming.

I pressed gauze against it with both hands and felt him shudder.

It was the first time in three years that I had put my hands on him without wanting something back.

His skin was hot under my palms.

His stomach moved under them with each breath he took.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Don's Runaway Substitute from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.