by Rowena
“As I expected,” I say.
“Yeah, well, I don’t know if you expected this much. If those crates are filled, they’ve got a couple hundred million worth of drugs in there right now and are moving more in every hour.”
“Damn,” I say.
“Yeah, they’re preparing, Donnie,” he says.
The door to the warehouse in the next room opens and the sound of squealing tires and a roaring engine override anything else I could say.
“The fuck is going on?” Max yells over the phone.
“I’ll call you back,” I say, hanging up.
“ Simon, protect Miss Fletcher.”
Bella looks around, wide-eyed and scared.
Good, she should be.
Simon grabs her arm and she resists him so he physically pulls her away from the wall between us and the main area.
I go to one side of the door then reach slowly over and turn the knob, braced for anything as it swings open.
The squealing of tires stops but the engine roars once more.
Car doors fly open and there are shouts over which I hear the rumble of the garage door being closed.
“Get over here!” Francesca’s voice cuts through all the other noise.
Running feet echoes in the mostly empty warehouse.
Francesca’s car is parked in the middle, long black marks showing where the brakes were unable to stop the forward motion.
She’s pulling a man from the rear of the vehicle, her hands hooked under his shoulders and jerking him free of the car.
As his torso clears the door of the car, crimson blood stains his once-white shirt, running down to drip on the floor with a loud splat.
Two more of my men run over and take him.
Carrying him by his arms and feet, they transport him to a table.
Francesca runs there first, knocking the stuff on it onto the floor with a loud clatter.
The men heft him up and onto the table, then Francesca pushes them aside.
“Towels!” she screams, ripping at his shirt.
The shot man doesn’t moan or react.
He’s passed out and maybe dead already.
I jog to the table and look down into his face. It’s Alex.
“What happened?” I ask.
Francesca looks up at me, anger boiling in her eyes.
“Baldini thugs,” she says.
“Impossible. We just signed the peace!” I yell.
“Tell that to him,” she says, grabbing towels from one of the other men and putting pressure on the hole in Alex’s gut. Blood pours out fast from the hole that’s the size of a quarter.
“What happened?” Max asks as he storms in.
Guess he hurried over after I hung up on him.
As soon as he gets close enough to see Alex on the table and the blood, he turns pale and looks away, holding a hand over his mouth. Max has never been able to stand the sight of blood.
“Baldini,” Francesca says again, her eyes locking with me even though she’s answering Maxwell.
“We have a truce!” Max says.
“Like hell we do,” she replies.
“Assumptions are the mother of all fuck ups,” I say. “We have to know for certain.”
“God, I’ve got to… I gotta take care of something,” Max says, running off.
Blood or no blood, it’s not like him to run out in a crisis.
I watch him go but Francesca pulls my attention back to her.
“They were disguised but I knew their voices. They said to tell your boss hi,” she spits. “Goddamnit, I can’t get it to stop!”
“He needs a doctor,” another man says.
“There’s an artery nicked,” Bella says suddenly from over my shoulder.
I whirl around and see her standing there, calm and collected, despite the horror scene laid out on the table behind me.
“ Simon, I told you to protect her,” I bark at him.
He looks sheepish and shrugs from behind her.
“She insisted,” he says.
“And if she insists she needs to kill us all, would you just go along with that as well?”
“No, sir,” he says.
“I went to med school,” she says. “I can help.”
I glance between her and my wounded driver. Alex has a child on the way. A woman who loves him. He survived two tours in Iraq. I can’t let him die on this table in this dirty warehouse. He deserves better.
“Let her in,” I order.
She approaches the table with an air of certainty. Hopefully, I didn’t just consign Alex to his death.
He’s dead if I don’t, though—gut wounds are the worst.
Bella moves the rags aside and blood flows thick and fast. She leans in close, looking at the wound and sniffing.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Trying to determine if he’s worth saving,” she answers.
“What in the hell do you mean if he’s worth saving?” Francesca says dangerously.
“Whether or not his bowels have been nicked,” she says, sniffing again. “If they have, he’s better off if we let him bleed out. That’s an easy death compared to sepsis.”
Francesca and I lock eyes. She wants to hit Bella or shoot her. Of course she does—she’s angry and has no target for that anger except the girl before her saying things she doesn’t want to hear.
“Let her work,” I say softly.
Francesca listens to me. I’m the only one she bothers to heed. Her jaw tightens and her hands ball into fists, then she nods sharply and steps back, leaving Bella to work.
“The bowels are fine,” Bella says at last. “The shot looks clean. I need water—clean water—and a med kit. Thread, needle, bandages if you have them. More towels if not. Keep the pressure on, right there.”
She points to where she wants the pressure and Francesca steps back up and places clean towels onto Alex and leans into him.
One man comes up with a pot of water and another retrieves a medical kit. The man with the medical kit, his hands are shaking as he gives it to her.
She takes it, looks him in the eye, smiles warmly, then turns her attention back to Alex.
She dips gauze in the water and washes the wound until it’s open and bare to the world. A small dark hole leaking life.
Frowning, she opens the kit and looks through it. Items come out and go back in while she looks for something.
“What do you need?” I ask.
“Pliers, I guess,” she says. “The bullet is lodged—I need to extract it before I sew him up.”
Francesca runs to the wall and pulls the drawers of a tool chest open violently, throwing the tools inside out as she looks for what she needs.
“Aha!” she exclaims triumphantly, turning and holding up a pair of needle-nose pliers.
“It’ll do,” Bella says, taking them. “Hold him—this is going to get rough.”
Two men and Francesca grab ahold of Alex.
Bella rinses the pliers with alcohol then drives them into the wound.
Sympathy pain stings in my own side.
Alex wakes, his eyes popping open, his mouth wide, and then screams.
He screams so loudly, so high-pitched, it would break glass if we had any close by.
He fights against those holding him down, kicking one leg loose. Partly free, he bucks and fights, his scream never letting up.
“Hold him, damn it!” Bella shouts.
I rush forward and grab his flailing leg, slamming it into the table.
Bella pulls the pliers out with a small shard of metal between them.
Alex passes out again as a fresh burst of blood bubbles out behind her extraction.
Digging back into the medical kit, she brings out thread and a needle. In moments, it’s threaded and she’s sewing him up. Once she ties it off, she washes the blood away again then inspects her work.
“Keep him warm,” she orders. “His body will try to go into shock. Get water into him and keep forcing i
t down him. He’ll need it. He might make it.”
As she steps back from the makeshift operating table, I see she’s covered in blood.
She wipes her brow with her forearm, leaving a bloody streak behind.
Francesca wipes Alex’s forehead with a damp cloth and one of the men gets a blanket and covers him.
“There are painkillers in there—break them up in the water, get them in him. It’ll help. No aspirin—use the ibuprofen or Tylenol only.”
“Right,” Francesca says with a nod.
While I’m watching Bella, I realize she’s stunningly beautiful.
6
Isabella
What the hell am I doing? I shouldn’t get involved.
This is stupid—beyond stupid.
I couldn’t let that guy die, though. He reminded me of Tommy a bit. I couldn’t stand by and let him bleed out, and he totally would have. He still might, actually, but at least now he has a fighting chance.
Donnie is staring at me intensely, making me uncomfortable.
I wipe the sweat from my brow then look down and realize my clothes are ruined. Great.
Several men come from somewhere and bring along a makeshift stretcher.
They load the guy onto it and take off up the stairs with him.
Francesca follows along behind, barking orders and yelling for them to be careful.
Their voices fade and I’m left alone with Donnie, but I’m certain that we’re being watched from the shadows.
“Impressive,” Donnie says.
“Not really,” I say. “Impressive if he lives.”
“He’ll have a better shot at that now,” he says.
I shrug. “We’ll see.”
I walk over to the pot of water and dip my hands in, washing them the best I can.
I need a shower and clean clothes.
I’m definitely not packed for this. I’m not packed at all.
I shake my head then lean over the bowl and splash the cold, red water across my face.
“Where’d you learn that?” Donnie asks.
“What?” I ask, blinking the water away from my eyes.
“That wasn’t girl scout first aid,” he says, motioning at the table.
It’s a mess. Blood, gauzes, and tools are spread haphazardly.
It looks like the aftermath of a war took place on that table, which, in a way, it did. This time, it wasn’t a war to take a man’s life but to save it. A war my father certainly didn’t believe in.
“No,” I reply.
“So where? Are you actually a doctor?”
“I wanted to be,” I say, shaking my hands to dry them.
“What happened?” he asks.
“Life,” I say, my voice pitifully resigned…
“Father,” I say, trying to remain calm but anger beats in every pulse of my heart.
I want to kill him. I can’t believe he’s doing this to me. Everything I’ve ever wanted, he shits on.
“No, Isabella, it’s over. I’ve indulged you long enough.”
“But I’m doing so well!”
“No,” he says, slamming his hand down on his desk, causing the lamp and papers on it to jump with the force of it. “Do not defy me.”
“I’m not defying you! I’ve worked hard, I made it into medical school, and now I’m about to finish up and you order me to come home? It’s not fair!”
“Fair? What do you know of fair? This life—it’s not fair. You think, when I was a child on the street—no home, no father to care for me—that was fair?”
“Blah, blah, blah. We all know your sob story, how you came from nothing. You don’t have to force that life on me too!”
“Oh, you know my story, do you?” he shouts. “You, who have everything, when have you gone hungry? When have you ever had to work for something?”
“I work very hard for my grades!”
“Grades,” he spits. “Grades are nothing. Grades do not feed your family. Grades don’t push away the gnawing in your stomach or silence the cries of your little sister because she is so cold and hungry.”
God, I hate him. I hate him so much.
I’m so close—my residency starts in six months then I’d be free. He’s taking it all away from me.
“You’re coming home,” he says, sitting down.
He pulls out a cigar, rolls it under his nose, cuts the end, and then lights it.
The glowing orange coal casts his face in an evil light.
“They fill your head with nonsense. You lose respect. It’s over.”
I’m shaking with anger I can’t put into words…
“Life?” Donnie asks, pulling me from my memories.
“Yeah, you know—that shitty thing that happens between the day you’re born and the day you die.”
“That’s not very optimistic.”
“Heh,” I say. “Look, I need a shower. And some clothes. God, I’m a mess.”
“Both can be arranged, but first, tell me—what happened?”
I stare at him, wondering why I should say anything to him. I don’t know him. I don’t owe this man a thing. Anything I did owe I paid back in spades by saving his man’s life.
I know I don’t owe it to him, but he’s interested. And when has anyone ever been interested in anything I have to say? What I think?
I sigh heavily. “My father,” I say.
“Oh?” Donnie asks, encouraging me to go on.
“He decided there was no use in continuing my education. I was forced to drop out of med school before I finished.”
“I see,” he says thoughtfully. “Is this what you wanted?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” I snap.
Donnie looks surprised and he’s not faking it.
“Everything. Why would you not finish if that’s what you wanted?”
“What do you care?”
He frowns then rubs his chin.
At last, he smiles. “I’m not sure I do. I was curious, that’s all.”
“Yeah, well, curiosity killed the cat.”
“And it’s exploring Mars,” he says.
“What?” I ask, confused and angry.
“Mars? The Curiosity rover?” He grins at me.
“What in the holy hell are you talking about?”
“Did you know that every year, on August 5th, it sings Happy Birthday to itself? The first song played on Mars was Happy Birthday.” He chuckles.
“You’re nuts,” I say, unable to suppress a smile of my own. His chuckling is sort of infectious.
“Has no one ever taken an interest in your life before?” he asks.
“No,” I say as tiredness flows through me. All I want is to take a shower and lie down.
“That’s sad,” he says. “What about your… friend? Or should I say, boyfriend?”
“Oh,” I say, feeling suddenly trapped in my lies.
Damn it, I knew this was too good to be true.
Donnie was playing me out, giving me enough rope to hang myself with, and I just walked right into it.
My father has taught me better; I’m smarter than that.
Gah! Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Donnie waits patiently. He’s like a damned big cat, waiting for its prey, knowing that he doesn’t have to chase it—it will come to him in time.
“Oh?” he asks. “I’m not trying to pry.”
“He wasn’t my boyfriend; it wasn’t like that,” I stutter, trying to remember exactly what I’d said earlier. “We’re friends. That’s all. I cared about him, but not like that.”
“I see,” he says. “Did he not take an interest in you?”
“Sure, I guess. I don’t know. Look, I’d rather not talk about it.”
“Okay, so school. You dropped out because your father wanted you to?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Do you always obey your father?”
Not anymore, I think, but I can’t tell him that.
“No,” I say. “It was a difficult time.”
“How come?”
“My mother had passed, and he needed me to come home.”
It’s the truth—or at least part of it.
“Oh. I’m sorry for your loss,” he says.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Well, a shower,” he says, motioning me ahead of him.
I walk through the door and start up the stairs.
“What’s your father like?” I ask, curiosity suddenly striking me.
“He passed recently,” he says.
“Oh,” I say. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yes, it was an unfortunate… accident.”
The way he pauses before calling it an accident speaks volumes to an experienced ear like mine.
“Mr. Soriano,” a man calls, and I stop dead in my tracks.
“Yes?” Donnie asks from behind me.
I turn slowly, everything clicking into place.
Soriano. Donatello Soriano.
Son-of-a-bitch, I knew it!
His father, an “accident.” Yeah, right—I heard my father bragging about that—his lifelong nemesis dying at his hand.
He’d burned him alive!
Shit, things just got deep.
“Maxwell wants to know if Alex is okay?” the man asks.
“I think he’ll be fine,” Donnie says. “Have a good night, William.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” the man says and the door closes.
I resume climbing the steps slowly.
It feels like there’s a two-ton weight on me, making each step a chore.
I’m here with my father’s sworn enemy!
Well, the son of my father’s sworn enemy, which is close enough.
No wonder he wasn’t worried about rescuing me; I’ve heard stories about him and his family.
“Do you know them all by name?” I ask.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“Your men—do you know them all? By name?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Why?”
“Because they’re my men. They work for me and I, in turn, work for them.”
“That makes no sense. If you’re the boss, you’re the boss. You don’t work for them. They work for you.”
He chuckles wryly.
“That is only how it appears on the surface. They work for me—yes, of course. I pay them and I pay them well. I work for them as well, though. Without them, I would not be as successful as I am. Without them, I could not accomplish the things I can with them. One man alone cannot do as much as many organized men can accomplish, not even in a lifetime.”