Page 62 of Mafiosa
I keeled over, clutching at the pain lancing through my body, trying to find the source, trying to focus my thoughts.
My shoulder was on fire.
Luca yanked Zola backwards and pistol-whipped her in the side of the head. Her next shot lodged in the ceiling. Luca wrestled the gun from her and threw it sidelong towards the other end of the hallway. It clanged off a locker and skittered from my view.
Zola groaned, and Luca hit her again, the crushing sound of metal on bone reverberating around us. She slumped over, unconscious.
The blood was pooling from my left shoulder, leaving a river of warmth all the way down my arm. ‘Luca,’ I said, hearing the fear colour my voice. ‘She shot me. I’ve been shot.’
‘Cazzo!’ He hunkered down and traced his finger around the wound, pulling my arm towards him. I cried out and he flinched. ‘Sorry,’ he murmured, examining it in the darkness. He shuttered his expression. I could almost pinpoint the moment he slipped back into commander mode, and for once I was glad of it. If we were going to get out of hereunscathed, one of us had to have our wits about us.
‘There’s no bullet inside the skin.’
‘It hurts.’ I gasped a shallow breath. ‘Why does it hurt so much?’
‘A graze,’ he said, his eyes tracking the streams of blood on my arm. ‘A bad one. I’m taking you to the hospital.’
‘No!’ I hissed, struggling to right myself. ‘I’m not going anywhere near a hospital.’
He pulled me up on to my feet using my good arm, holding me steady at the waist. ‘Can you walk?’ he asked, urgency flashing across his face. The sirens were piercingly loud now. ‘Do you think you can walk out?’
The pain was bad, and it was only made worse by the realization that I had beenshot. ‘Yes,’ I heaved. ‘I can walk.’
Ignore the pain. Use it as fuel.
He stowed the guns on top of the lockers, grabbed my shoes, and left Zola Marino in a bloody, unconscious heap behind us.
We hurried through the corridors, weaving our way back towards the gym. I was lagging behind, but he pulled me with him.
‘The blood,’ I said, watching the red track across the side of my dress. The cuts Donata had left on my neck were adding to the crimson rivers on my skin. ‘They’ll see. They’ll know.’
Luca was already shrugging off his suit jacket. He draped it around me, and then pulled me against him.
‘I’m going to staunch the wound.’ As he said it, the hand that had been draped around me squeezed against the bullet wound in my shoulder, pressing so hard I slumped against him.
‘Urrgh,’ I warbled.
‘Sorry,’ he said, straining. ‘Just try and grit through it, Soph.’
I examined myself for any more tell-tale signs of blood, trying not to focus on the mild torture coursing through my body. Luca’s suit jacket was so big it dwarfed me. It dwarfed all evidence of our scuffle.
We made our way across the now-empty dance floor. He dropped my shoes among the other stilettos that had been discarded during the chaos. There was no way I could teeter convincingly in them now.
I groaned.
‘I’ll get you a new pair,’ he said.
‘Not that,’ I hissed. ‘The pain. Your grip. It’s so tight.’
‘It’ll stop the bleeding,’ he said. ‘We’re about to walk into a huge amount of cops. Just follow my lead, OK?’
‘Jack – Donata,’ I tried to explain. ‘They’re here.’
‘They’ll be long gone,’ he said, but there was no confidence in his voice, no confidence in the way he was scanning the gym.
I wound my good arm around his back, pressed my head against his shoulder and tried not to flinch from the pressure coming from his other hand. We stumbled through the front doors, joining the last dregs of students crying and shouting, and then I channelled every element of hysteria inside me and started screaming too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVERED AND BLUE
