I grab the heavy roll of medical tape and thick gauze wraps from the kit.
"Lift him up," I instruct. Matteo pulls Cassio into a sitting position, supporting his heavy, lolling head against his shoulder.
I wrap the bandages tightly around Cassio’s chest, winding the thick white fabric over his right shoulder and under his arm, pulling it as tight as humanly possible to maintain the pressure on both wounds. Once it’s secure, I tape it down flat against his skin.
"Lay him back," I breathe, falling back on my heels.
Matteo gently lowers Cassio back to the mattress.
We both stare at his chest. The stark white bandages are already blooming with faint red patches, but the catastrophic, gushing flow of blood has stopped. His chest is rising and falling in shallow, even breaths.
The silence in the room only broken by my ragged, exhausted sobbing.
I look down at my hands. They are completely stained, dark red up to my elbows. The emerald silk of my dress is ruined.
Matteo is staring at me from the other side of the bed. His dark suit is a mess, his face is pale, but his eyes are fixed on me with a mixture of shock and reverence.
"How the hell do you know how to do that?" Matteo asks, his voice is just a whisper.
I wipe a bloody hand across my face, smudging the crimson into my hairline. I look at the underboss.
"I am a Genovese, Matteo," I tell him. "My family has been in a bloody, violent war for two years. Do you honestly think I spent all my time sitting in the library reading poetry? I know what a gunshot wound looks like. I know how to keep a man from bleeding out before the surgeon arrives."
Matteo swallows hard. He looks at Cassio’s patched chest, then back at me. "You saved his life, Noemi."
"I bought him time," I correct, my voice is back to trembling again. I look at Cassio’s pale, motionless face. "Go downstairs. Fix the radio. Hold a gun to a doctor's head if you have to, but get a real surgeon in this house before he goes into shock."
"I'm on it," Matteo says. He doesn't hesitate. He turns and sprints out of the bedroom, leaving the door slightly ajar.
I am completely alone with him.
I crawl up toward the head of the bed, curling my body into the small, clean space beside his left hip. I don't care about my ruined dress. I don't care about the blood.
I reach out, my trembling fingers gently brushing the dark, sweat-drenched hair away from his forehead. His skin is clammy, terrifyingly cold to the touch.
Seeing him like this completely breaks down the final, stubborn walls surrounding my heart.
He is not a monster.
A monster doesn't throw himself over the woman who hates him. A monster doesn't take a high-caliber sniper round to the chest just to make sure she lives to see tomorrow. He is a man. A broken man who looked at the pathetic, unwanted spinster of the Genovese family and decided she was worth dying for.
I realize, with a crushing, agonizing clarity, that I don't hate him anymore. I don't think I ever really did. I hated the cage. I hated the powerlessness. But the man holding the key? The man who looks at me like I am the center of his violent universe?
I am irrevocably, hopelessly in love with him.
"Cassio," I whisper, leaning down until my lips brush his cold cheek.
My tears fall freely, hot drops landing on his pale skin. I slide my bloody hand down, linking my fingers through his large, motionless ones. I hold onto him with a desperate, crushing grip, as if I can physically tether his soul to his body.
"You don't get to leave me," I sob, pressing my forehead against his shoulder. "Do you hear me? You promised you would lock me in. You promised you would never let anyone else have me. You don't get to die and leave me alone in this fucking house, Cassio."
He doesn't move. He doesn't squeeze my hand.
"Wake up," I beg, my voice breaking into a jagged, pathetic cry. "Please, God, wake up. I want the monster. I need my monster."
I pull his cold hand to my chest, burying my face in the curve of his neck, and I hold on, praying for the dawn to come, and praying that he opens his black eyes to see it.
18