Wounded Redemption by Brook Wilder
Chapter 18
Rory
I watched as the guards realized that their leader was down the moment that Vincent crashed through the door, his face growing pale as he realized the same. “Fuck, no,” I heard him breathe before he fell to his knees, ripping open the silk shirt that Nico always favored.
“Tell me he’s alive!” I screamed at him, feeling completely helpless at not being able to reach my husband. He could be dying.
Vincent’s jaw clenched as he glanced over at me. “Get her untied now.”
One of the guards did as he asked, and the moment the zip ties were freed, I rushed to Nico’s side, breathing heavily as I realized he was wearing a vest. “Where’s the blood coming from?” I asked in a panic, my hands shaking. “Vincent.”
“I know, I know,” he stated, removing the vest. “It barely stopped the bullets.”
“We have to get him to the hospital,” I urged as the three small holes precariously near Nico’s heart oozed rivers of blood. Reaching for his neck, I hung my head as I found the thready pulse under my fingers. “He has a pulse.”
“Help me get him up,” Vincent growled at the guards, motioning for some of them to help. I waited until they had him up before I touched him, taking his hand in mine, slick with his blood.
“Please, Nico,” I begged, walking alongside them as they carried him into the warehouse and toward an open door. “Please, you can’t leave me like this. You can’t.”
“He’s not going to,” Vincent cut in, grabbing my shoulder before I walked directly into the wood wall near the door.
Nico’s hand slipped through mine, and I watched as he was carried out to a waiting SUV. “I have to go,” I said, trying to move toward it.
Vincent’s hand tightened on my shoulder as the SUV roared out of the parking lot, and he spun me around. “Rory, listen to me. I will get you there.”
I looked up at Nico’s most trusted guard and threw my arms around him, crying into his shirt. “He can’t die!”
Vincent surprised me by putting his arms around me. “He’s not going to. He’s not going to want to leave you and Anthony. You have to be strong.”
I knew I had to, but it was hard, given the state that my husband was in when he was carried out. “We have to go,” I stated, pulling away from Vincent. “We have to be there in case.”
He didn’t answer but steered me toward the other SUV that was waiting, letting me climb into the back seat. He climbed in as well, and it took off as I wrapped my arms around my waist. “Angelica is dead,” I said numbly, thinking about how Carmine had just killed her so viciously and with so much malice.
“I saw that,” Vincent grunted. “We will take care of it.”
Tears leaked from my eyes as I watched the city fly past the window. “He didn’t have to kill her. It’s my fault that she was interviewed for the article.”
“She didn’t have to, remember?” Vincent reminded me, his voice gentle. “She hadn’t fucking spoken before then. She could have just ignored you too.”
He was right. Angelica hadn’t spoken to anyone before she opened up to me, and I had prodded her to do so. Still, she wouldn’t have even been in that room if I hadn’t printed that article, taunting the Mafia don.
Carmine. “He got away,” I rushed out, looking at Vincent. “You should be going after him.”
“We have men on it,” Vincent replied. “My main priority is ensuring your safety.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he held up his hand. “Boss’ orders. And if you would like to know, the boys are safe. No one is touching them.”
My body sagged against the seat, guilt eating me up inside about a lot of things, namely Nico’s injuries and Angelica’s death. There was one consolation, if one could be found, that she was with her family now, but a little boy was without his mom. No matter what had happened to Angelica, she had still been Lorenzo’s mom, and he wasn’t going to see her again.
Vincent and I fell silent the rest of the way to the hospital, and I knew he was just as worried as I was about Nico. “Here,” he said gruffly, handing me a mask as the SUV pulled up. “You are going to need that if you want to go in.”
I reluctantly slipped it over my ears as the door opened, and somehow I got my legs to carry me to the entrance, Vincent close to my side. I knew I must have looked a fright to those that we passed, with blood on my hands and a haunted look on my face.
I didn’t care, however. I just wanted to see my husband.
Vincent helped me get to the front desk of the emergency room, and the woman there gave us a wide-eyed stare. “May I help you?”
“My husband was just brought in,” I forced out, my voice cracking. “He was shot.”
She looked at the computer in front of her. “Oh yes. The John Doe that was dropped off. He’s in surgery.”
My knees buckled, and I would have fallen if Vincent hadn’t been there to catch me. “Surgery?”
She nodded, giving me a once-over. “You need to be checked out, too, sweetheart. You look a sight.”
“Why don’t you do that?” Vincent suggested, gripping my elbow to keep me upright.
“I’m fine,” I mumbled. “Is there somewhere I can use the restroom?”
The woman nodded, reaching behind the desk. “We keep these on hand at all times,” she said, her voice softer now as she handed me a set of blue scrubs. “Why don’t you go get cleaned up and change? I will show you where you can wait.”
Tears crowded my eyes, and I was unable to form the thank you I wanted to tell her, taking the bundle instead and walking to the restroom somehow. “I will be right here,” Vincent told me as I pushed open the door. “I’m not going anywhere, Rory.”
I didn’t answer, locking it behind me so I could slide down, not caring that I was sitting on a dirty bathroom floor in a hospital, with the pandemic still raging on. My heart couldn’t stop hurting over what had happened today, my anxiety creeping up at what sort of injuries Nico had that would have warranted surgery, and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to help. He had always been the stronger of us, the one who knew what to do immediately.
Now I was on my own.
The first tear slid down my cheek, then the next, until I was sobbing in my arms, heedless of the blood that covered them. I cried for Angelica, for how she in her last moments had looked like she had completely given up. Was death the better alternative for her? I wasn’t sure, but she clearly thought so, and it hurt my heart to think she had gotten to that point.
I cried for Nico, for how he had come to save me and now was clinging to his life, all because I had once again decided to take on a foe that I couldn’t control. Because of me, Nico was likely coming to trade himself for me, and there was little doubt that his father would have killed him in front of me before doing the same to me.
This was all my fault.
I cried for our son, who was too young to know what was going on or the family dynamics that he was growing up in. What if the men that Vincent had put on Carmine couldn’t find him? What if Carmine did go after Anthony now that he had killed or thought he killed Nico?
What if the danger wasn’t over at all?
And poor Lorenzo. He hadn’t had a normal life since he was born, and right now, I couldn’t offer him anything else. His mom was dead and so was his father.
I don’t know how long I sat on that floor, crying, but the gentle knock on the door roused me out of it and forced me to stand on shaky legs, shedding my bloodstained clothes and scrubbing the blood off my face and arms before donning the scrubs. My jaw was blooming with a bruise already, and the woman that stared back at me in the mirror was unrecognizable.
I couldn’t lose Nico. I couldn’t face another day without him. “Please,” I whispered as the knocking grew a little louder. “Please don’t take my husband. I know he’s not perfect by any means, and I have no reason to ask you to spare his life other than I love him.” I didn’t know if prayer worked, but it wasn’t going to hurt. “Please.” There was no way that I had been given Nico to have it end like this, to have my heart ripped out of my chest and plunge me into a darkness I didn’t know if I could get out of.
I needed Nico, and he needed me.
“Rory?”
Wiping my face of the fresh tears that had fallen, I gathered up my clothing and dumped it in the trash before unlocking the door, finding an anxious Vincent standing on the other side. “Are you all right?” he asked.
I let out a hollow laugh. “No, I’m not all right.”
I wasn’t sure when I would be again.
