Page 121 of Sinfully Savage Mafia

I ignore Conor’s outburst. I can’t move. I can’t let Matteo go.

But Aunt Maura rushes to the pub and to Dad.

“I’m going after the shooter!” Conor tears past me, pulling open the door of his car and peels down the street in hot pursuit.

I don’t care. Matteo isn’t moving now. My heart’s in shreds. Blood pounds hard in my veins as sirens grow louder and louder, competing with the roaring in my ears.

He ran out into a hail of bullets.

For me.

“Please don’t die,” I say, “Damn you.”

What he said to me is still too big to process. The words that hit me when he collapsed to the ground…I…oh, God. He can’t die.

It feels like I’ve been sitting here for ages on this bright New York day, but it’s only been seconds. People are talking to me and the sirens are getting louder. But I fight off every single attempt to pull me free from my tormented thoughts.

“Your father’s been hit, but he’s alive,” says someone, I think it’s Sergio.

I nod, knowing I have to get it together, knowing they’ll be back. And I want them to come back. I want my gun and I want to shoot dead every single one of the bastards who did this. This is cold, heavy anger. Something that eats down into my marrow.

“Where is my aunt?” I ask.

“She’s with your dad. Your brother left.”

I nod again, my mind as numb as my heart. Matteo’s blood is warm and slick on my skin. It stains his T-shirt, a bloom that spreads over the fabric. I push against the wound, keeping the pressure on until someone pulls me away. People in uniforms appear and they put an oxygen mask on Matteo’s face.

I need him to open his eyes. I need those devastating blue eyes to look up. I need to see those lying, deceitful eyes, both cold and burning hot, on me.

I want to tell him how much I fucking hate and despise him, and just how I’m going to hurt him because of how he hurt me.

Fuck, he needs to be okay.

“Let go, Heaven,” Aunt Maura says. EMTs wrap his wound and take him from me.

Someone is screaming ‘no.’

It’s me.

Sergio helps me up and I pull all of the fractured and painful pieces of myself together.

I look down at myself, covered in Matteo’s blood. “Sergio, I need to go with him.”

“Heaven, we have to get you out?—”

I look into eyes so much like my husband’s. “Fucking make me. There are cops everywhere. Bystanders. EMTs. No one is fucking touching me.”

“Jesus, you’re a tough one.” His eyes narrow. “As bad as him.”

“Take me to Matteo,” I say.

Half the cops will be on our payroll. The guns are gone. Tales will be spun about this. No charges will stick; we have plenty of lawyers who will make sure that happens. I bark out orders now to his brothers and to two of the staff who are part of my family. “Get Patrick down here.”

And then I march to the ambulance when they finish loading Matteo.

All this has taken minutes.

Roman calls out to me as he and Sergio walk toward the Escalade they must have arrived in. “Tell him not to die, we’ll meet you there at the hospital.”

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