Chapter 19
Zo stared. He had lost enough blood that arguing required more energy than he possessed. Her audacity did the rest. Tessa washed her hands with surgical soap. She scrubbed carefully, dried them, opened a pair of latex gloves, and pulled them on. She did not ask permission. She stepped into his space and gently but firmly moved his hand away from the wound. Zo flinched when her fingers touched his skin. He did not pull away. “It’s a knife wound,” Tessa murmured. The edges were clean. It had been a deliberate strike intended to open his side. “It needs cleaning.” She reached for saline and iodine. “This is going to burn.” Before he responded, she soaked clean gauze and pressed it directly into the cut. Zo sucked air through his teeth. His hand locked around the edge of the marble sink until his knuckles turned white. The muscles across his chest and abdomen hardened beneath her hands.
He did not shout. He made no other sound. Tessa worked efficiently. She cleaned the blood. Assessed the wound. Loaded a curved needle with thick black nylon thread. “You’ve done this before,” Zo said tightly as the needle passed through his flesh. “I grew up on the South Side, Mr. Rossi.” Her eyes remained on the wound. “My brother ran with a crew when we were teenagers. He wouldn’t go to the hospital when he got cut. Said they asked too many questions.” Pull. Tie. Snip. “I learned to sew him up.” “Where is he now?” “He died when I was 19.” Her voice did not shake. She tied another stitch. “He crossed a boundary line. Somebody shot him in the chest.” She continued working. “You can’t sew a bullet hole in a lung.” Zo watched her. She was nearly a foot shorter than him, dressed in a worn nightgown, standing inside a mafia boss’s private bathroom while calmly suturing his stab wound and discussing her brother’s murder.
