Chapter 4
“Who am I?”
“The woman risking her life because her daughter gave me a rabbit.”
“My name.”
He looked at my uniform.
The stitched name tab sat above the pocket.
“Sophia Rivera.”
“Good.”
Emma climbed onto the edge of the bed.
“I’m Emma.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Your mother has said it seventeen times.”
“She says it when she’s worried.”
“I noticed.”
I cut away the blood-soaked fabric along his side.
He did not protest.
The entry wound sat below the ribs, narrow and dark. The exit was larger but not catastrophic. The bullet appeared to have passed through soft tissue without striking bone.
He was lucky.
Dangerously lucky.
I irrigated the wound with saline.
His entire body tightened.
Emma placed her palm against his hand.
“Shh,” she told him.
A tear slipped from the outer corner of Lorenzo’s eye.
Not a grimace.
Not sweat.
A tear.
He turned his face toward the wall before Emma could see.
I saw.
I pretended I had not.
“We need a doctor,” I said.
“No one connected to the house.”
“Then an outside hospital.”
“The emergency departments will notify police.”
“That is what they are supposed to do when someone has been shot.”
“The police arrive. My people arrive. The men searching for me arrive.”
“You may die here.”
“If I leave, you may die with me.”
The sentence landed quietly.
Not a threat.
An assessment.
Lorenzo looked at Emma.
“The person who shot me believes I am dead or close to it. If he learns she saw me alive—”
“Stop.”
I knew what witnesses meant in his world.
My daughter did not need the definition.
“I can stabilize you tonight,” I said. “Nothing more. Tomorrow I need a physician I can trust.”
“There is one person.”
“Name.”
“Marisol Greene.”
“A doctor?”
“A lawyer.”
“That is not medically helpful.”
“She knows a trauma surgeon who does not belong to me.”
“Belong.”
His mouth tightened.
“Works for me.”
“Better.”
“There is an emergency number hidden in the back of the photograph.”
I looked toward the wall.
“Why would your father hide a lawyer’s number in a room you could not find?”
“He did not trust that I would always trust the right people.”
A wise man.
Or a frightened one.
Sometimes the difference depends on what happens later.
I found a yellowed card behind the photograph.
One telephone number.
No name.
I memorized it but did not call.
Not yet.
The house above us was compromised.
Any nearby cellular signal could reveal the room.
I cleaned the wound, packed it, and wrapped a pressure dressing around Lorenzo’s torso. I gave him measured water, no food, and covered him with an emergency blanket.
Emma crawled beside him.
“No.”
The word came from both Lorenzo and me.
She frowned.
“He’s cold.”
“He needs space,” I said.
“I have space.”
She arranged herself carefully near his left arm and tucked the rabbit between them.
Lorenzo looked at me.
“Let her.”
“She may hurt your side.”
“She weighs less than my jacket.”
“That is not the point.”
Emma placed one small hand over the blanket near his chest.
“I’ll protect you.”
His expression changed.
The man people described as cold, disciplined, and incapable of visible fear closed his eyes while my daughter rested against him.
His face did not soften beautifully.
It broke unevenly.
His mouth tightened.
His forehead drew inward.
A second tear entered his hair.
He could not stop it.
Emma did not laugh.
She did not ask why.
She lifted the corner of the emergency blanket and wiped his cheek.
May you like
“Shh,” she whispered.
That was how the most feared man in New York survived the first hour after his own family tried to kill him.
