Page 93 of By Blade, I Love
My hands went to Leo, who was covered in blood.
I touched my own body, felt my chest and my stomach, but felt nothing.
I finally understood what had happened. Wolfe had shot Icarus from behind, and when Icarus squeezed the trigger, Leo had taken the bullet from me…and he was probably dead. “Leo?”
He lay there, eyes heavy lidded, blood everywhere.
“Leo—Leo?” It took me a second to snap out of the reverie of the past. “No…”
Elio rushed over and lifted Leo’s shirt. “We need something for the pressure. We’ve got to get him to a hospital, or he’s gonna die.”
“How do we get out of here?” Andre said when he kneeled down. “We can go through the sewers.”
“We’re going to have to take him out the front,” Elio said. “We don’t have another choice. Frankie, is there anything you can do?”
“I—I don’t know.” Gunshots went off nearby and made my ears ring again.
Elio grabbed my shoulder and shook me. “Frankie, you’re a nurse.”
“Oh shit…I am a nurse.”
“Come on, we’ve got to stabilize him before we get him to the hospital.” The two men lifted Leo and started to carry him into the house.
When I looked up, Wolfe and Icarus were facing off against each other. The back of Icarus’s shirt was soaked from the gunshot that had struck him in the back. Even though Wolfe held a pistol in his hand, he didn’t aim it at Icarus.
Icarus reached into his pocket and grabbed a switchblade. He pushed the handle down and flicked his wrist, and then the knife appeared.
Wolfe tossed his gun aside, reached into his pocket, and did the same, releasing the sharp edge of a switchblade.
Wolfe didn’t take his eyes off his opponent as he spoke to me. “Get Leo out of here. I’ll finish this.”
I wanted to stay and help Wolfe, but I could tell this was the final showdown between two men. That they wanted to fight to the death honorably, with just their knives and their flesh as armor.
I had faith that Wolfe would win, so I ran inside as they put Leo on a table. Someone ripped his shirt open, and I saw the bullet in his chest, really close to his heart and probably embedded in his lung.
“Focus, Frankie,” I said to myself. “Gauze. You guys must have some around here.”
Someone from Cosa Nostra retrieved a red box that looked like a first aid kit.
When I saw the medical supplies, I launched into action. I poured the alcohol on the wound, and I was relieved by the way Leo cringed and grimaced. I wiped it clean, grabbed the suture kit, and made a quick effort to stitch the wound together. But this wasn’t about helping him heal—it was about minimizing blood loss until we could get him to the hospital. It was the worst job I’d ever done, but I got it mostly sealed. Then I wrapped the gauze tight around his body and secured it in place.
Roman ran from the front of the house to the double doors and then looked back. “We have cover. We’ve got to move quickly.”Gunshots continued to explode in the courtyard while the battle raged on.
The men lifted Leo and carried him to the closest SUV, which was so mutilated I wasn’t sure how anyone would be able to see while driving. They laid Leo in the back seat, and Elio and Andre hopped into the car and took off to rush him to the hospital.
I stood there for a second on the sidewalk and watched until their taillights disappeared around the corner. Dead bodies and destroyed cars were everywhere. Blood was in puddles as if it had just rained from a crimson sky. I breathed harder and harder, not on the verge of tears, but something worse than that. Panic. Because I’d watched my father die…and now my brother was next.
26
WOLFE
Icarus held a relaxed stance, his switchblade gripped by the hilt. He continued to bleed from the open wound but didn’t seem to care about it. When I’d shot him, he didn’t cry out, like he’d been shot a lot.
That made two of us.
Don Russo and some of the others rushed to his family to unbind their wrists and remove the nooses from their necks. Then they were ushered into the garden and back to the secret passage, where they could get to safety.
Any of Cosa Nostra could shoot Icarus as he faced me, but we were all bound by honor.
