Page 44 of The Mad Don
It hits the floor between us and shatters.
A shard finds my hand. I feel the cold and the cut. A line opens across the back of my knuckle, and the blood comes up dark and fast.
Lucia yells.
“Giovanni!”
“It’s nothing, Angel. Look at me. It’s nothing.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“A scratch. Truly. Look.”
I hold my hand up to show her. It is a mistake. The blood is moving down my wrist now, and her eyes have fixed on the line of it, and her face is changing the way I have learned to recognize, the way I would do anything in this world not to see.
“Oh no.”
“Lucia. Lucia. Look at my face. Not the hand. My face.”
She is not looking at my face.
She is looking at the blood.
“Oh no. Oh no no no.” Her voice is climbing. “He hit you. He hit you, and I hurt you, I — I hurt you, I-I —”
“Angel.”
She seizes my bleeding hand in both of her thin, shaking ones and brings it to her chest. Her eyes are wide. Her breath is coming faster.
“I hurt you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I hurt you, I —”
“It was a glass. It was a glass, Lucia. You didn’t —”
“Giovanni.”
She shoves me, and it has not moved me. She does not have the strength to move me. But I was already off-balance on one knee, and the shove catches me at the shoulder, and I rock back, and my hand goes down to catch myself, and the shards are under my palm, and I go down hard on my hip on the floor.
“Giovanni.” Her voice is distant. It’s like she is searching. “Giovanni, where are you? Giovanni, where is he, where is he —”
“Angel —”
“Giovanni!”
I am on the floor, and blood from my hand is on the rug between us. She is looking past me, through me, into a corner of the room where the light is dim, calling my name into the corner like I might come out of it if she calls loudly enough.
“Lucia! Lucia, look at me. Please! Look at —”
“Give me my brother.”
She is on her feet, somehow, and she is staggering, and her hands are reaching for the empty corner of the room.
“Give me my brother. Where is he? Where is he, where, where, where —”
The door opens, and I look up. So does Lucia.
Yana steps in.
She takes in the room, and Lucia sees her.
