Page 109 of The Woman at the Funeral

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Nico

“Where’s Salvatore?” I asked when it was Venezio who answered the door at the Family’s clinic. An actual clinic. Exam rooms, included. And I’d heard that he’d somehow managed to get his hands on some sort of imaging machine as well.

“Called ‘em as soon as I saw you,” Venezio said, moving out of the way. “But I can get started.”

“You?” I asked, dubious.

“Don’t got his years in, but I can clean her up and check her for concussion and shit.”

Blair had woken up sometime on the ride over to the clinic, but she wasn’t quite herself. She was slow and oddly distant.

Venezio was one of the youngest members of the family. He’d been a scrappy street kid who mostly worked for Cosimo but was steadily making a name for himself with all the capos.

He wasn’t much of a conversationalist, but he was smart and had good instincts. And he was always up to get his hands dirty.

He didn’t dress like the rest of us. He was always in jeans, a tee, Timbs, and sometimes a leather jacket—weather permitting.

He was tall and a scrappy kind of fit with dark hair, a deep-ass voice, and one fully brown eye and one half-brown, half-green one.

“Okay,” I agreed, following him in through the waiting room—complete with couches, a TV, a coffee and snack station—everything the Family might need while waiting for a loved one to get patched up.

“Is this a hospital?” Blair slurred. She seemed worse since she’d fallen out.

“She drugged?” Venezio asked, glancing back.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

He led us through to an exam room where I set the dazed Blair on the table, staying close in case she blacked out again.

Venezio slipped on gloves then grabbed a flashlight before moving in front of Blair, flashing it in her eyes.

“How long has she been like this?”

“I don’t know. Hours.”

“Oh, this shit don’t work then,” he said, flicking off the flashlight. “Pupils only dilate for maybe an hour. But you definitely seem like you’re on something, huh, babe?” he asked, tilting her chin up.

“They stabbed me,” she said, her eyes welling up.

“Yeah? Where?” Venezio asked.

“Arm.”

Venezio pulled down my shirt that she was wearing—now covered in dirt and blood—to inspect the injection site.

“How you been feeling? Double vision? Queasy? Dizzy?”

“Yes. All.”

“Anything else?” Venezio asked, slipping a pulse oximeter on her finger.

“Um. Everything felt weird. Space. Time felt wrong. My heart was pounding. And I had a cold sweat. And… I was crying. A lot.”

That explained how swollen her lids were and how red her cheeks appeared.

Venezio just nodded along like all that was normal as he dug for a blood pressure machine and slid the cuff up her arm.

---