Page 132 of Beni

Or was he already dead?

He couldn’t be dead.

She just found him.

“This isn’t a hospital! He needs to be taken to an ER somewhere and—”

“This is where we can bring him,” Tommaso said sharply, quieting August almost instantly with the look he threw at her over his shoulder. All it took was the smack of his wife’s hand against his side for him to correct his attitude. “Sorry, Aug, I know you’re scared and freaking out … Listen, we can’t bring him into a hospital. Not unless we just want to drop him off, and leave him there alone until they figure out who he is, and call people in for him. It’ll be flooded with cops. He’s a gunshot victim. And just his last name would be enough to tell them that he’s—”

“Connected to the mob,” she whispered.

“Yeah.”

God.

That pissed her off.

It made her so fucking angry for Beni.

“Why,” she demanded, “because you protect the Outfit first, and its people second? Is that how it goes?”

“August,” Camilla murmured, “they’re doing what they’ve always done. Beni would do the same, you know?”

No, actually.

She didn’t know.

However, what she did know was that it would be better for her to just get in line, let them do what they were going to do, and hope for the best. There was nothing else she could do right now except hope and fucking pray.

“We have a trauma surgeon on call that works in this clinic,” Tommaso said, holding open the side door to a rather normal looking brick building. She had seen the sign on the front that explained it was, in fact, a walk-in clinic. “He’s handled this kind of thing for us before.”

Great.

That was just perfect.

“So, it’s a regular thing?”

Camilla gave her a look.

August just shrugged.

She couldn’t help it.

When she was scared, she got mean.

The second they stepped inside the darkened hallway of the clinic, August could hear the shouting. It sounded like pure pain. She didn’t need to be told to know it was Beni screaming like that.

“Hold him down, get him fucking still on the table! Let’s get this controlled!”

“Oh, my God.”

Camilla was at August’s side in a second, an arm locked around her waist like she was determined to keep her still. “You’re not going back there.”

“But—”

“It’s a bad idea.”

Did it matter?