"You aren't dying tonight, Cassio Vellutini," she orders. "You don't get to tell me you need me and then bleed out on this bed. You are going to fight this. You are going to let the surgeon fix you, and you are going to heal."
I have spent my entire life fighting for control. I have killed men just for challenging my authority. I trust no one. I yield to no one.
But as I look at the woman who plunged her hands into my open wound to keep me tethered to this earth, the need for control completely vanishes.
I let out a long, ragged exhale, letting my head sink heavily into the pillows. I drop my hand from her neck, letting my arm rest limply at my side.
"Okay,moglie," I whisper, a faint, exhausted smile touching my lips. My eyelids are growing heavy again. "I’m yours. Do whatever you have to do."
"Just rest," Noemi murmurs, her fingers gently brushing the hair away from my forehead. "I’ve got you. I’m not letting anyone through that door unless they have a medical bag. I’ll keep you safe."
I close my eyes, slipping back into the darkness. But this time, there is no fire. There is no panic. The fever dreams cannot reach me, because the last thing I feel before unconsciousness takes me is the protective weight of my wife’s hand resting perfectly over my heart.
19
Noemi
The heavy oak doors of the master bedroom fly open, slamming against the plaster I flinch, my grip tightening convulsively on Cassio’s cold, slack hand.
Matteo bursts into the room, his suit drenched in rain and blood. Right behind him is an older, sharp-eyed man carrying two massive black medical bags, flanked by a pair of panicked-looking nurses. Dr. Santoro. The Vellutini family’s underground surgeon.
"Jesus Christ," Santoro breathes, taking in the chaotic scene. The ruined charcoal sheets, the blood-soaked towels scattered across the hardwood, the heavy green trauma kit sitting open atthe foot of the bed. He looks at me, perched protectively on the mattress next to the Don.
"We need to move him to the subterranean clinic," Santoro orders immediately, turning to Matteo. "The lighting in here is shit, and the environment is entirely compromised. Get a stretcher. We move him now."
"No."
The word rips out of my throat.
Matteo freezes halfway to the door. Dr. Santoro blinks, turning his sharp gaze back to me. "Signora Vellutini, with all due respect, your husband has a high-caliber gunshot wound to the chest. He is in critical condition. If we don't get him to a sterile room—"
"He is losing too much blood, and his blood pressure is already bottoming out," I interrupt. I don't move from Cassio’s side. I don't let go of his hand. "If you move him, if you jostle him down two flights of stairs and into an elevator, he will bleed out before you even get him on an operating table. He stays here."
"Signora, it’s not sterile—"
"Then make it sterile!" I scream. I point a blood-stained finger at the sprawling, massive bedroom. "Bring the IVs. Bring the surgical lights. Bring whatever the fuck you need from downstairs and build the clinic in this room! Because nobody is moving my husband from this bed!"
Santoro stares at me, then looks at Matteo for confirmation, waiting for the underboss to overrule the hysterical mafia bride.
Matteo looks at me, and nods firmly at the surgeon. "You heard the Lady of the house, Doc. Set it up here. I’ll get the men to haul whatever equipment you need up here."
What follows is an hour of frantic, terrifying, organized chaos.
They transform Cassio’s luxurious sanctuary into a sterile trauma bay. Heavy surgical lights are wheeled in, casting a blinding, interrogator’s glare over the mattress. IV poles are erected, pumping bags of saline, heavy-duty broad-spectrum antibiotics, and O-negative blood directly into Cassio’s veins.
I am forced to step back, but I refuse to leave the room. I stand near the floor-to-ceiling windows, my arms wrapped tightly around my shivering body, watching as Santoro cuts away the makeshift bandages I applied.
"You packed this?" the surgeon asks, his voice muffled by his surgical mask as he carefully removes the blood-soaked combat gauze from the jagged hole near Cassio's collarbone.
"Yes," I whisper, my voice trembling.
Santoro pauses, glancing over his shoulder at me. His eyes are entirely devoid of their earlier condescension. "You saved his life, Signora. The bullet was a through-and-through, but it nicked a major venous branch. If you hadn't packed it tightenough to force a clot, he would have been dead before I even pulled through the front gates."
A jagged, breathless sob escapes my lips. I press the heel of my hand against my mouth, nodding once.
It takes Santoro two hours to repair the damage. He debrides the torn muscle, stitches the internal vessels, and sutures the entry and exit wounds with meticulous, agonizing precision. Through it all, Cassio remains heavily sedated, his massive chest is rising and falling with the mechanical assistance of an oxygen mask.
When Santoro finally steps back, peeling off his bloody gloves, the sky outside the steel-shuttered windows is beginning to lighten with the bleak gray of dawn.