Chapter 10: Stitches

The bullet had gone clean through the top of his shoulder and out the back.

"It missed the bone," Rocco said from the kitchen table.

He had refused the hospital in the car and again in the driveway.

"Tell her, Zia."

"I'll tell her nothing," Zia Ines said.

She was boiling a needle in a saucepan with her mouth in a straight line.

"Your doctor is in Naples at his daughter's wedding. He'll talk us through it on the phone."

"Then it'll heal on its own."

"It will heal crooked and you will die of it. Sit."

His men had gone out to watch the road. The kitchen was warm and bright, and it smelled of antiseptic and onions.

The doctor was on speakerphone, propped against the sugar jar.

His voice was tinny and calm.

"Somebody has to close the entry wound," he said. "Six stitches, maybe seven. Is there a steady hand in the house?"

Zia Ines held up her own and let me watch it tremble.

"I'll do it," I said.

Rocco's head came up. "No."

"You can't stitch your own back, Rocco. Zia can't hold a needle."

"Livia."

"I stitched a dog once. Don't make me say it twice."

"It was a very big dog," Zia Ines said, and she went to find the thread.

I washed my hands and the bandaged one with it, and I sat down on the chair in front of him.

His shirt was cut away on the left side.

His chest and shoulder were bare, dark with tattoos and old scars.

The fresh wound was an open red hole in the muscle.

I wasn't going to look at anything else.

I looked at everything.

The ink ran from his collarbone down past his ribs, saints and rope and a long line of script.

His skin was hot under my fingers.

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