Chapter 1
She pressed a cartoon bandage over his blood.
He obeyed when she whispered, “Shh.”
Upstairs, the woman who ordered the shooting rehearsed his funeral.
I found my three-year-old daughter kneeling beside Lorenzo Duca in a gardening shed at eleven forty-three on a storm-blackened Thursday night.
His white shirt was red from the ribs down.
Emma’s pink dress was muddy at the hem. Her brown curls clung damply to her cheeks, and one of her canvas shoes had come untied. She had placed her one-eyed stuffed rabbit against Lorenzo’s uninjured side as if assigning it guard duty.
A plastic first-aid kit sat open on the dirt floor.
Inside were toy scissors, a thermometer that lit up but measured nothing, and cartoon bandages printed with smiling bears.
One of those bandages was stuck above Lorenzo’s right eyebrow.
“Shh,” Emma whispered, pressing one finger to her lips. “I’ll protect you.”
For one second, the sight was too strange for fear to enter.
The most feared man in the Duca organization lay half-conscious beneath a rusted gardening hook while my daughter held three of his fingers between both of her hands.
Rain hammered the corrugated roof. The shed smelled of wet soil, fertilizer, old cedar, and the metallic heat of blood. A cracked lantern on the workbench cast a trembling yellow circle across Lorenzo’s face.
His eyes opened.
Dark.
Focused.
Dangerous despite the blood loss.
He looked first at me.
Then at the phone in my hand.
“Don’t,” he said.
The word barely reached me.
Boots moved somewhere beyond the shed.
One pair.
Then another.
Slow.
Methodical.
The sound carried through the rain from the mansion’s west terrace.
People were searching.
Emma raised her finger again.
“Shh.”
Lorenzo closed his eyes.
He obeyed her.
That frightened me more than if he had threatened us.
I stepped inside and pulled the door almost shut, leaving a narrow gap so we would not disturb the warped hinge.
“Emma,” I whispered. “Come to me.”
“He’s hurt.”
“I can see that.”
“He needs Mama.”
The boots stopped outside the greenhouse.
A man’s voice carried through the rain.
“Check the garden paths. Marco said he went through the window.”
Lorenzo’s hand moved toward the inside of his ruined jacket.
I caught his wrist.
His eyes opened immediately.
“No gun,” I whispered. “Not with my daughter here.”
His fingers were cold.
That was bad.
His pulse was fast and weak.
Worse.
I had spent three years cleaning rooms, pressing shirts, and pretending I had never completed two years and nine months of nursing school before my husband died and the tuition became impossible.
Training does not vanish simply because life forces you into another uniform.
I put two fingers against Lorenzo’s throat.
Emma copied me on the opposite side.
“Mama, his heart is running.”
“I know.”
“Can you catch it?”
“I’m going to try.”
The bullet had entered high along his right side. I could not see the full exit wound beneath him, but the amount of blood suggested it had passed through. His breathing was shallow, though not wet or bubbling.
No obvious chest collapse.
No blood at the mouth.
He might have missed the lung.
Might.
I opened his jacket.
His hand closed around my forearm.
“Who are you calling?”
“No one yet.”
“Good.”
“That was not reassurance.”
His grip loosened.
The voices outside moved closer.
May you like
The flashlight beams reached the shed wall.
A dog barked.
