Page 114 of The Silence Lies

“It’s not that simple.”

“Like fuck it isn’t!” Luca snaps. “That could have been you back there!” He tosses a thumb over his shoulder toward me and Giovanni. “Or worse!”

“You think I haven’t thought about that already?! I was there, Fontana!”

Ouch. She only uses his surname when she’s pissed or playful, and the latter isn’t likely right now.

“The asshole had a gun to my head!”

“So why didn’t he pull the trigger on you?”

“I don’t fucking know!” she screams.

We all lapse into silence for a beat, the gravity of the situation thickening the tension with every second that passes. I notice her eyes in the mirror, and though she won’t look at me, I can tell this is hitting her hard.

I lean forward, resting a hand on her shoulder. “Sera—“

“Don’t!” she snaps, shaking me off.

“Let me drive,” Luca urges, but she shakes her head.

“No,” she sniffles. “I need to focus.”

I’m pretty sure I know the answer to what she needs to focus on. Neither of us want to say it, but it definitely has something to do with Enzo and all the buried emotions she’s been fighting since his death.

After another ten minutes of excruciating silence, we pull up to the gates of Sera’s home. The guards wave her through, the look of confusion depicted on all of their faces at the sight of their leader driving. When we get to the courtyard, the doctor is already there waiting for us.

Sera gets out first, a march in her step as she rushes to speak to the doctor. While she’s busy, the twins rush out, immediately by our side and helping Giovanni out of the car.

He grumbles and groans, but he’s too out of it to say anything coherent. The blood pouring from his stomach has now spread across his crisp white shirt, his hands stained red, too. I look back in the car, and that too is covered in his blood.

So much blood.

“Get him to the kitchen,” Sera orders.

Luca gives her a pointed look.

“Unless you have a better idea?”

The only response she gets from Luca is silence. He shakes his head and all four of us take Giovanni into the house.

Raf is already waiting in the kitchen, a sheet of plastic covering the wooden surface of the table. We place Giovanni on it. There’s a level of disgust on all of our faces because this just looks fucked up, like we’re expecting the worst.

“Looks morbid, I know,” Raf comments. “Bianchi doesn’t exactly have an operating room here.”

“And I don’t think it’s time I invested in one either,” she remarks, joining us with the doctor by her side. Under the lights, I can see her clearer. Her skin is painted with smatters of dried blood—thankfully not her own. This dress is yet another she’ll have to trash, it’s not even salvageable at this point. The skirt is torn, blood caking every layer of the material. Despite the trauma, she still looks beautiful, and I have to admire the way she’s keeping herself together right now. If it were any lesser woman, they’d be falling apart.

The doctor slices through Giovanni’s shirt with medical shears, the material ripping through the silence. We all wait with bated breath as he orders the twins to turn Giovanni over so he can get a better look at the bullet wound.

“The bullet is still inside,” he murmurs, pressing gauze to Giovanni’s stomach.

“What does that mean?” Sera asks.

I press a hand to her shoulder. “It means he’s going to have to take it out.”

“Is he…” her voice quivers, but she quickly covers it with a cough, her fists tightening. “Will he be okay?”

The doctor huffs, already getting to work with his utensils. He’s probably done this a thousand times before because it doesn’t phase him in the slightest. He doesn’t ask questions, he just gets on with it. He sterilizes the wound with some clear liquid from a bottle kept in his case. Then his gloved hands start pressing at the surface of Giovanni’s skin, a finger sinking into the wound.

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