Page 121 of Bellini Bound
Itallhappenedsofast I was powerless to stop it.
One minute, I was urgently begging my wife to let me be her human shield; the next, she was throwing her body in front of mine as the crack of a gunshot reverberated through the room.
With my ears ringing from the close-range discharge of a firearm, it was a miracle I could hear the near-silent gasp that spilled from Allie’s lips as she crashed into me, a wide-eyed look of shock on her face.
I opened my mouth to scream at her for being so reckless and not thinking about the consequences of her actions, but before I could utter a single word, my brain finally caught up enough to process that she’d been shot. By her own fucking father.
Blood, sticky and warm, flowed between my fingers as I put pressure on the wound, dropping to the floor and cradling her injured body gently. Fear like I’d never known pierced my heart, making my lungs seize. And when her eyes slid closed, I jostled her, croaking out, “Hey, hey, hey. Baby, I need you to staywith me.”
On a face that had gone ghostly white, her heavy eyelids lifted, revealing that the green gems behind them had grown glassy and unfocused. Voice weak, she asked, “Did he hit you?”
Fuck if my heart didn’t shatter hearing she was more concerned about me than herself in this moment. Squeezing my eyes shut, I pressed my forehead to hers. “No, baby, I’m okay.”
I was the furthest thing fromokay. My wife was literally bleeding out right before my eyes.
“No, no, no, no!” Logan shouted from across the room. “This wasn’t supposed to happen!” I spared the briefest of glances in his direction to find him pacing, gripping the strands of his hair. The gun, thankfully, had been discarded on the floor.
The front door burst open, and Emilio and Rocco ran inside, but both of them stopped dead in their tracks as they took in the scene before them.
“Call an ambulance!” I screamed. “Now!”
Rocco didn’t waste any time producing his cell and dialing 9-1-1.
Emilio kept his weapon trained on Logan. “Didhedo this?”
I grunted in the affirmative, my attention focused on the now-unconscious Allie in my arms, my panic rising with every second that passed while we waited for the paramedics to arrive.
What the fuck was taking them so long? Didn’t they know the life of the woman I loved hung in the balance? Even a few minutes’ delay in the arrival of emergency services could make the difference in whether she survived.
“Want me to take him out?” Allie’s assigned guard asked.
Shaking my head, I gritted out, “Basement. Before the paramedics get here.”
“They’re around the corner,” Rocco relayed, the phone pressed to his ear.
A quick blow to the head with the butt-end of his gun, and Emilio knocked out Logan before dragging him from the foyer. The minute he was out of view, sirens sounded in the distance. I didn’t waste any time in scooping Allie up and carrying her out the front door to meet the ambulance.
The large vehicle cleared the gates, casting our front drive in an eerie glow of alternating red and blue. Two EMTs hopped out, racing toward the back of their rig to grab the gurney. I met them there, hopped inside, and laid Allie down on the thin mattress to save them time.
“Gunshot wound,” I relayed her injury breathlessly. “In the back.”
They went to work, rapidly assessing her condition and hooking her up to monitors before one jumped out the back and latched the double doors behind him. The sirens roared to life again, and we were moving, one EMT still working to staunch the blood flow and keep my wife alive as we raced at top speed toward the nearest hospital.
I was utterly helpless, her limp hand in mine a constant reminder that all of this was my fault.
I knew—I fuckingknew—something was going to go down tonight. But I’d let my guard down after we left the casino, shaking off the foreboding sense of doom that had hung over me like a storm cloud all night, when the event went off without a hitch. But I should have known better. Danger was a constant in the world I lived in, and bad things happened—people got hurt—when you least expected them to, so you had to stay sharp at all times.
All that was left for me to do was pray that my wife wouldn’t become a casualty of my carelessness.
Time lost all meaning after I watched them wheel Allie through the double doors of the emergency room, doctors shouting instructions to each other as they rushed to treat her upon our arrival.
A nurse, Delaney, introduced herself as one of my wife’s co-workers and escorted me to a private waiting room on the surgical floor, where they were currently operating on Allie. She promised to keep me updated if there was any change in her condition before leaving me with nothing but my self-loathing for company.
I collapsed onto a chair in the thankfully empty room, dropping my head into my hands as my mind went to a very dark place—one where Allie didn’t survive surgery and I had to navigate the rest of my life without her by my side. My chest caved in even imagining that scenario, and I decided, then and there, that I didn’t want to live in a world that was devoid of Allie’s shining presence. I would rather burn in Hell for all of eternity than walk on this earth for a single day without my soulmate.
“Enzo Bellini.”
A gruff voice called my name, and I shot out of my seat, replying, “Yes, that’s me.”
