Page 2 of Taken By the Underboss

"Leave it alone. I'm fine, " Luca muttered, but I didn't listen. I removed the bandage, revealing a bullet hole in his shoulder.

"Shit, Luca. You said it was minor."

"I'm fine. I'll be fine. Just need to get home..." His voice faded out as his body slumped and started to slide to the floor.

I grabbed his biceps to hold him up.

"Luca?" I snapped but he didn't answer.

"Angelo, bring me those medical supplies."

Angelo ran from across the aisle of cargo crates to where I was carefully lowering Luca's head to the floor.

“What happened?” Angelo asked as he unzipped the bag and started pulling out all the supplies that we had.

“This idiot neglected to mention that he had a bullet wound in his shoulder.”

“What? He said it was just a scratch. I figured maybe he got grazed but I never thought it was that bad.”

“Yeah well, it was that bad. He's bled through his bandages, and I don't know how many more he's gone through that he didn't think to mention. We got to get the bleeding to stop or he's not going to make it home. Grab me a pack of gauze,” I ordered, and Angelo tore open the sanitized pack.

I grabbed out the gauze, unceremoniously shoved it against Luca’s bleeding shoulder, and pressed hard. I held it there while Angelo grabbed some bandages to wrap around the gauze, but before we had time to secure it, Luca’s blood had already soaked through.

"Shit. I need more gauze. There's too much blood.”

“We're running out. Definitely don't have enough to help that wound.”

“Grab me a clean shirt out of my bag. Over there. Quick.” I nodded toward my bag and one of the other guys, who had started to crowd around us, tossed it to me.

With bloody hands, I dug through my pack to find a clean undershirt. I balled it up and pressed it to his shoulder, managing to get the bandage wrapped it to keep a firm pressure on it.

“How much longer before we reach the dock?”

"It shouldn't be long now. This is a smaller ship than the one we took with Teo last time and it seems to be a bit faster. If I had to guess, I'd say maybe another quarter hour,” my guy, Vinnie answered from the crowd.

“He's not going to make it all the way home like this. Even if Teo sends the jet to pick us up he wouldn't make the trip. As soon as we dock, I'm taking him to get help while the rest of you disembark.”

“I'll go with you,” Gino offered.

“Us to,” Angelo said, and Vinnie nodded.

“Okay. But we keep our group small, so we don't draw too much attention. We'll find a car and take him somewhere we can get him patched up.”

Vinnie pulled out his phone and started typing. “Looks like there's a local hospital about ten minutes from the port. We could take him there.”

I shook my head. “A gunshot victim will get attention and its attention we don't want while near Tuscany. We've got more than a few enemies around this area who would love to pick off a group of Venturi men.

“So, we need to find someone outside of the hospital to fix him up,” Gino added.

Angelo looked around at the group. “Anyone got connections around here? Someone who knows what they're doing?”

“I know one guy, a vet. He can handle small things, but this is probably a little much for him. We're going to need somewhere to take Luca, though, so I'm going to give him a call. See if he can open up his office to us. At least he'll have some of the medical supplies our guest doctor will need.”

For the next half hour, Luca was in and out of consciousness. The time it took for us to get to the port, find a car, and get him to the vet's office felt like a lifetime. We left Luca with Vinnie at the office while the other three of us headed for the closest hospital. It was late by the time we arrived.

We parked in an inconspicuous spot away from the lights of the staff parking lot and turned off the car.

“I need to get closer,” I told the others. “I need to find a good hiding spot so that I can do a snatch-and-grab whenever the opportunity comes up.”

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