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“Not good, sir. Giving me a hard time.”
“I’ll bring in reinforcements. Hang in there.”
I hang up, pocket my piece, and end my pity party by returning to the ER, where the staff directs me upstairs into a waiting room.
Maria, Frenchy, and almost everyone who was at Frenchy’s is sipping coffee and chatting quietly, waiting for the outcomeof the surgery. Heads turn to me, eyes wide and expecting something I can’t give them. Reassurance? Guidance? I don’t really know what they expect, but there’s nothing new on my end.
I lean against the window frame and look outside. Waves crash against the shore. Traffic jams the narrow streets. Someone should do something about the overflow of cars on the island. In the past decade, traffic seems to have doubled while the narrow streets stayed the same. The heavy traffic compromises the safety of the people. If Cristina remains living here, I’ll do something about it.
Or perhaps I won’t. Perhaps the best thing I could do after she recovers is leave her alone. I know her attempted kidnapping had something to do with me. Besides, before I went flying, she told me to die. She said it in anger, but what if I released her from the Order, from me, from this life? What if I offered her a life free from any obligations to the Order or me? A new beginning.
Cristina would take it, say good riddance to this life. If I asked her to marry me today, she would have refused, probably thinking that with time, I’d forget that I wanted her in the first place.
If I let her go, her newfound freedom would be my penance, a punishment for endangering her life.
I check my watch. It’s been nearly two hours since she went in there. I take that as a sign she’s fighting for her life. A sign the surgeon is fighting for her. I’m fighting for her. I hope she knows that.
Another hour goes by, and Corrado arrives.
My brother wears a sharp charcoal suit and a matching tie. He walks right up to me and puts his hands on his hips while giving me a once-over. I’m unsure what he sees on my face orin my body language but he leans his shoulder on the window frame opposite me.
“Not your girlfriend, huh?” he says in a way that suggests the opposite. “What happened?” he asks in a language we’re certain nobody here speaks.
I tell him about the accident and how I could’ve stopped it all from happening if I’d proposed in a way she couldn’t refuse. Then she would have walked with me to Frenchy’s. Or I’d have gone with her to church. I gave her breathing room, time to decide, you know. I was being nice. “After this, I’ll lock her in a glass cage.”
Corrado’s expression goes from shocked to concerned to pitying. He shuffles his feet, then looks up and scratches his head. “I had a feeling she was more than a means of getting revenge on Gio.” He clasps my shoulder. “I’m sure everything will turn out well. And if not, we’ll burn this place to the ground, brother.”
“I’ll sink the fucking island.”
Corrado nods in approval.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I tell him.
“Wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Drago is fifteen minutes out.” Corrado rubs his hands. “Then we go hunting. Any ideas of who might’ve tried to take her?”
“The same people who killed Gio,” I say so everyone understands. The conversations go silent, my members looking at me for guidance. “It’s the trafficking rings you all allowed into your marinas.”
“We didn’t—” Frenchy starts.
I raise my hand. “Don’t bother. You want to know what I’ll do, hm?” I push off the window. “I know you’re wondering what’s going on. Suffice it to say, the girl better live. You better pray she lives, because whoever is after her had access to herbecause you allowed them on this island, to do business with us, with the birds here.
“This can go one of two ways. One, she lives, you live, and we go to war. Two, she…” They get the idea. “In which case, Drago makes a list, and I’ll put in a special request for each of you to make sure he’s not quick about it. Once I’ve eliminated your dead fucking weight, I will sink this island and wipe it off the map as if it never existed. Think ancient Atlantis. I recommend you all pray hard for her. Pray. Hard.”
Drago walks in, reads the room with one sweep of his gaze, and says, “Looks like it’s payday for me.”
Frenchy says something, but just then, the surgery room doors fly open.
I expect Dr. Tru, the man who tended me at the villa after I got shot, but a short, stocky man in his thirties with dark eyes, matching dark hair, and a pleasant face walks out and looks around at the fifty or so people seated or standing between here and the hallway. “Family of Cristina Mancini?”
He’s not Dr. Tru, and he clearly recognizes nobody, so he’s new and not from the island. A bird.
The Order has thousands of surgeons in every corner of the world, and the one man operating on Cristina isn’t one of them.
Maria rushes to him.
I approach with caution, my heart thudding so hard that it seems like it wants to shatter my rib cage.
The man appears composed, if tired. “Good evening. I’m Dr. Bautista, the surgeon who operated on Cristina Mancini. We addressed the swelling in the brain from the impact and stabilized her. She is resting.”
