Page 35 of Loss and Damages
People scream, their cries full of agony and fear, and more gunshot blasts echo off the buildings surrounding us.
A horrible howling rises above the noise and someone yells, “Call an ambulance!”
Stunned, I push myself into a sitting position and the guard cowering by my side says, “Mr. Milano, you’re bleeding.”
Sweat drips down my back and I can’t stop shaking. “What?”
“Your arm, sir. You need medical attention.”
My vision swims, the protesters scattering like frightened ants, the greedy reporters sucking in every last second to splashall over the six o’clock news. There’s a hole in my suit and the fabric is quickly soaking up blood, but my brain won’t connect the ruined sleeve to the pain burning like fire up and down my arm.
A cameraman lies still, his camera broken on the sidewalk, and someone leans over him, speaking urgently into his face. Crudely made signs lay on the ground, blood smeared across the angry words, grotesquely accentuating why the protesters were here in the first place. I’m heartless and don’t have blood in my veins, but doesn’t the wound on my arm prove differently? I can hurt too, but no one wants to think so, not even me.
Not all of the picketers ran away, a few giving in to their morbid curiosity and staying to see what would happen next. An ambulance careens to a stop behind a news station van, its lights flashing, and the siren cuts off in mid wail, the driver having reached his destination.
An EMT rushes up the steps wanting to assist me, and I wave him off. There are people hurt more severely than I am, a flesh wound from a bullet as it hummed by. I should be helping, at the very least offering to place phone calls to friends or family members, but still in shock, I have no strength or wherewithal to get up. Two cop cars park in front of the building, and the guard sitting next to me staggers to his feet and down the stairs, the other who had come outside with us joining him. I have no interest in talking to the police. The department is full of traitors who like nothing better than to sell me out for a quick buck.
I wait until the others who are injured are taken care of, then let a young medic look at my arm. Gently, she pulls off my suit jacket and cuts the sleeve off my dress shirt.
“You should let us take you to the hospital. You need stitches.”
“No. I’ll go to the ER myself.” I hold my arm away from my body and she wraps gauze around my bicep.
Reporters still stand on the sidewalk directing their cameramen to film the subsiding chaos. I don’t want it all over the news I went to the hospital in an ambulance. Sitting here in a stupor is bad enough. I’d look weak if I don’t already, and right now during the negotiations I can’t afford it.
“I’d advise against it,” she says, taping the gauze in place. “You’re not in any condition to drive.”
“Then it’s a good thing I don’t have to. Thank you.” I don’t give her another second to argue and lurch to my feet. Leaning against the handrail, I call Duncan. I shiver as if I’m cold, but I’m sweating. “I need the car around front.”
The reporters are smart enough not to approach me to ask more questions, but I feel every camera lens as I shuffle tiredly to the curb. Duncan opens the door, and grateful for the privacy, I climb inside. The tinted windows block me from their prying eyes, and I lean back in the seat, the pain consuming me.
The situation is escalating, and I need to hurry the purchase of the 1100 block. I’m not going to let the property go. I’m not going to let whoever was shooting think they succeeded. If they were trying to change my mind, they only made me more determined to get what I want.
I don’t go to the emergency room. I have a doctor who will see me at a moment’s notice and Duncan drives me to his private clinic instead. In an exam room in an office empty but for the nurse assisting him, he stitches the bullet’s graze, cautioning me that I’m going to have a scar once its healed. I don’t care about that and brush off his warning, though what he says next brings me up short.
“Dominic, you should call someone to spend the night with you. You could be in shock and shouldn’t be alone. It’s not every day someone gets shot at, not even you.”
I could call Jimmy and ask if Bianca will help me, but they have small children and can’t afford her time away. I could stayin a guest room at my parents’ penthouse, but my mother won’t care I’m hurt and chances are my father won’t be there. Their housekeeper would look after me, but she’s not worth having to put up with my mother.Nonnawould fuss and cry and tell me, in no uncertain terms, that I deserved it while shoving pasta at me because food is the cure for everything.
It chills my blood to think how alone in the world I am, and I never used to let it bother me until I met Jemma. What would she do if I called her and asked her to spend the night with me? Would she let me stay at her cottage if I showed up at the gallery?
Leo never wanted to spend the night, but I do.
“Thanks, Doc, but I’ll be fine.”
He sighs and shakes his head. “If you say so.”
It’s not because I say so, it’s because that’s the way it has to be.
Chapter Twelve
Jemma
I feel unsettled all day. It doesn’t strike me until I sell one of Leo’s paintings to a woman passing through on her way to Minneapolis that it’s because I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. You’d think it wasn’t that big of a deal—I should be glad to see the back of Dominic Milano as my Grandma Darcie used to say—but I’d wanted to at least tell him once more that I’m sorry about Leo. The secret Leo asked me to keep is weighing heavily on my heart, but I don’t know what would make me confess to Dominic. Leo’s gone and nothing I do can hurt him, but he asked me not to tell anyone, and even though he’s dead, I’d feel like a traitor if I didn’t abide by his wishes.
While I replace Leo’s painting, choosing an evening scene out of his stock in the back, I think about Dominic sitting next to me in the limo and letting me fall asleep against his chest. I don’t remember one second of the ride to Hollow Lake, or him carrying me into the cottage and laying me on my bed. I’d slept hard until the alarm on my cell phone went off, and when I tried to open the door to cross the yard to the gallery, I realized he’d locked the door behind him.
I want to contact him, but I don’t know what I’d say. That I feel sorry for him after the conversation I had with his mother? That wouldn’t go over well. I doubt even if he was dying from dehydration in the desert he’d accept water from someone if they offered it out of pity instead of kindness.
