Page 7 of Forsaking All Others

“Pen?” I echoed, looking around frantically for a pen in the midst of the cowering bodies still pressed to the ground all around us after the shooting.

I swallowed thickly when I looked at my papà’s prone body because he had always kept a Montblanc pen on his person, insisting every other writing implement was inferior.

I knee walked closer to Papà and held my breath as I delicately slipped my hand under his into the inside of his blazer pocket. The pen slipped out of my bloody fingers as I brought it into the open, cracking against the stone before I caught it, and crawled back to Ricco’s side.

“Knife in my pocket,” he croaked, coughing up more blood, viscous and bright red.

My hand shook as I reached into his pocket for the knife and unsheathed it from the leather. It was a pointed hunting blade, wickedly sharp and gleaming in the light.

“Cut into my chest,” he gurgled. “Count down from my collarbone to between my second and third rib. Not too deep.” He gasped as I cut open his shirt and pressed my fingers to his skin to count his bones.

When he next tried to speak, only a wheezing rasp emerged, and I noticed with wildly mounting panic that his lips were turning blue.

I sent a silent prayer of gratitude that I was obsessed with English-speaking medical procedurals and quickly dismantled Papà’s pen so I could pull out the hollow barrel housing the ink cartridge. Only then did I press the knife to the point my fingers had found in the still side of Ricco’s right chest and cut.

Blood welled up rapidly, but I blotted it away with Ricco’s shirt and tried to keep my fingers steady as I inserted the hollow pen part deep into the incision until a thin stream of air burst from the top.

Ricco gasped and then choked on his blood-wet breath.

But he was breathing, both sides of his chest rising again.

“Grazie a Dio.” I thanked God, bending to press my forehead to his moving chest.

Hands gripped me around either shoulder and hauled me back so firmly, I would have fallen onto my bum if whoever grabbed me hadn’t used the force of the pull to lift me to my feet and then up, up into their arms.

His arms.

Dario’s.

I was so shocked by the maneuver that at first I could only stare at him as he practically ran down the stairs toward the car that was still idling for us at the curb.

“What are you doing?” I asked, forgetting myself and speaking in Italian.

“Getting the fuck out of here,” he growled back in English.

“No,” I whispered, punched in the gut by his intention. “My brothers are back there. My father!”

“The shooter is still out there,” Dario gritted out between clenched teeth, his hands clamping around me even tighter as I started to struggle. “We’re leaving.”

“No!” I shouted, shoving a hand into his chin to push out of his hold. “Let me down! I’m not leaving my family like this. Wounded on the steps of a church.”

“The ambulance will be here any second,” he told me calmly as he reached the car.

A stern-faced older man opened the door for us, and Dario slid into the seat with me still secured firmly in his hold.

“No,” I protested again, frantic tears pushing at the backs of my eyes, curdling the tone of my voice. “No, I have to go with them to the hospital.”

“Woman,” he said as the car took off with a loud screech of tires. “Your father is dead. Beppe was shot in the throat and will likely bleed out before they get him to the hospital. Only Ricco has a hope, and you gave him that. Let it be enough. You have no other option.”

“You could let me stay with them,” I cried out, pushing against him, scrambling for the door handle, only to find it locked. An enormous sob threatened to cleave my chest in two. “They aren’t dead. They can’t die. Not like that. Not today.”

I couldn’t tell him that half my panic was allocated to a man who was not family, a man I loved who had been kept from me and who now lay crumpled at the base of the cathedral’s steps like discarded garbage.

Dario only stared impassively at me as I writhed in his lap. His utter cool drove my panic to fury, and I lashed out, scoring my manicured, painted white wedding nails down the side of his cheek and neck.

He flinched, cursing loudly before securing both my wrists in one of his huge hands. His skin and blood were wedged under my nails, a trickle of it running into my palm and down to his fingers wrapped around my forearm.

I had made him bleed.