Dario was at the front door, demanding entrance. Raimondo looked up and saw him with two men he didn’t know. He swore again and shook his head. He desperately needed help, but protocol demanded he know anyone entering the home. He didn’t know the men with Dario. He caught up his phone and texted Dario even as he tried to assess which was the worst wound on Brielle.
“I can’t let that dumb fuck in, Brielle, and he’s threatening to cut my balls off if I don’t. If you die, I think he really will.”
She turned her head away from him, her stomach lurching. This was going to be bad. “Tell Elie . . .” She began vomiting. Not just a little vomiting, but gut-wrenching vomiting, as if the tubes weren’t satisfied with taking her insides, her eyes and hair—they wanted every last bit they could get from her before she died.
Raimondo did his best to keep her head from landing in the mess she’d created. He wiped her face off multiple times and then tried to move her a couple of feet from the vomit. There was so much blood from both Leone and Brielle, she didn’t see how they were ever going to get the floors clean.
Dario continued to pound on the door and it was beginning to hurt her head. Each knock sounded as if it vibrated through her skull. Raimondo looked up, clenching his teeth.
“Let him.” She thought she managed at least those two words. She couldn’t get a full sentence out. Surely Dario could save Leone. He didn’t look as if he was breathing while Raimondo was trying to stem the bleeding on her from various places.
She hardly felt her body anywhere. There was no pain. Just. . . . “Cold.” She couldn’t stop shivering.
“Damn it, Brielle, don’t do this.” Raimondo glanced over his shoulder at the door, texted one-handed and waited for Dario’s assent. The men with him backed off and Raimondo unlocked the door from his phone just long enough to allow Dario in before he locked out his bodyguards.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Dario snarled as he hastened across the room and dropped down beside Brielle. “You just going to let her die because I have men with me you don’t know? What the hell happened to her? I’ve got her, you take care of Leone.”
He was thorough in his examination, uncaring of modesty, tearing off her sleeve to look at the wound on her arm. Yanking down her trousers to look at the one on her thigh. Calling for more medical supplies. In the end, he cut off the jacket in order to attend the wound on her rib cage. He swore steadily as he found everywhere a bullet had bit into her.
Brielle’s body began to shake violently. Dario caught her by the shoulders and glared down at her. “Don’t you dare have a seizure. I’m not kidding around with you. I’m not like that pansy-ass husband of yours so don’t you dare disobey me.”
Dario took off his coat and laid it over her, leaving her leg exposed so he could work on her thigh. “What happened, Raimondo?”
“Interpol agent showed up.” Raimondo’s face remained turned away, desperately working on his partner. “He was legit, but clearly on someone’s payroll.” He looked toward the door as warning lights flashed. “Surgical team is here.”
“You letting them in?” Dario asked, sarcasm dripping from his voice.
“Yeah, Dario,” Raimondo snapped back. “They get in because they’ve been vetted, and in an emergency, I know who the fuck they are and who I can count on.” He opened the door for the surgical team.
Dario immediately stepped back and apprised the surgeon of Brielle’s wounds. She could hear him talking, although his voice was fading in and out. There was something important she had to say, to get them to understand, but it kept slipping away. Everything was so dark. Usually, she could see in the dark, but not tonight. Not with the blood seeping into her eyes and the smell of death all around her.
She was cold. Like ice inside. The shadows could do that to a rider. She’d heard of that syndrome. Riders coming out of the shadows permanently damaged with ice in their lungs. Or had she just had nightmares? She was shaking uncontrollably. She knew she was, but she was detached from her body. Looking down at it.
“She’s crashing. She’s crashing.”
She heard the voice as if from a great distance. She wanted to float away from all the blood. There was a giant pool of it spreading out under Leone and her. Leone’s breathing was shallow. He was struggling, but at least he was alive. She had thought they’d lost him. She was thankful that she had acted fast enough.
She could see Dario bent over her, someone doing compressions on her chest, Dario breathing air into her mouth. What was it she was supposed to tell him? Her brain just didn’t want to work. It was so important, too. She hovered above her body, looking down at the scene below her, the way everyone moved in a synchronized pattern as if they’d done such things a million times.