Chapter 16: The Bullet

Tadeo's POV

I had promised to stay outside, and I kept the promise for ten minutes.

Then I stood in the church vestibule with my back against the door.

I could not stand on the steps where I had held her mother.

I heard every word through the oak.

I heard her say no.

I heard her say my name in front of twelve captains, and my chest went tight.

Then I saw the choir loft.

The rifle barrel was a thin black line against the candle smoke.

It pointed down the aisle at the back of her head.

I don't remember crossing the stone.

I remember her turning, and her mouth opening, and how slowly she moved.

I took her around the waist and drove us both down behind the end of a pew.

The shot came a half second later.

It went through the meat of my left shoulder and out the front.

The pain arrived after the sound.

"Tadeo!"

She was under me, with her hands already in my shirt, pressing on the wound.

"Don't," I said. "Stay down."

"You're an idiot. You're an absolute idiot."

"Yes."

Behind us the church broke open.

I heard the old captain bellow a name, and boots on the stairs to the loft, and a man screaming.

I heard Gaspare's voice somewhere to the left, raised and shocked, saying he knew nothing, nothing.

By the time I got my head up, the side door was swinging shut.

He was gone.

His captains had dragged the shooter down the loft stairs by the collar.

They threw him on the floor in front of the altar, a thin young man with a split lip.

Nobody was looking at the shooter.

They were all looking at Serafina, kneeling in my blood in her good black dress, calmly telling the priest to call Ines.

It took them two days to let me out of bed.

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