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My neck strains but doesn’t move. I can’t lift my head to get one final glimpse of her.
As I bleed out on the drive in front of the Titone mansion, all I see is the unrelenting brightness of the clear sky.
Blue.
So sunny.
Always sunny when she’s here.
My body is cold, but the light on my face is warm.
I slip away, and pretend the warmth is her.
Chapter 22
Valentina
Aiming his gun and firing that shot distracts Papà just enough for me to wriggle free of his hold. I don’t stop to question him, to scream at him, to ask him how he’s managed to bring himself back from the dead. I just give a high scream, then sprint down the stairs.
“Back away from him!” Papà shouts. “I’m going to shoot him again. Make sure he stays fucking dead.”
The ground bites my knees. Oh, God, Darragh is bleeding from the side of his neck. I have nothing to fix it. Nothing to offer.
I yank my sweater off from over my head and stuff it against his neck, ignoring everything I know about jugular veins and carotid arteries and bleeding to fucking death.
“Get back!”
“No!” The word tears out of me as Papà bends and grabs my shoulder with one hand, my soaked sweater with the other. He’s breathing hard, with anger or maybe exertion, having left his wheelchair behind.
He rips the sweater out of my hands. The pretty pink Irish wool, half scarlet now with Darragh’s blood, goes sailing through the air.
And I absolutely lose it. I scream like someone’s reached between my ribs and torn out my heart, because maybe that’s what Papà has actually done.
And then I hit him.
I’m not a boxer. It’s not a proper punch. More of a wild hammer swing, but the hammer is my fist. I catch Papà beneath his jaw, and while this would never affect him in normal times, he’s clearly still recovering from his injuries. He loses his balance and falls.
His face goes purple with rage. He rises, his shadow falling over me like doom.
He might kill me now, too. How fucking tragic, how very Romeo and Juliet of us. For Darragh and I to perish together like this.
I could run. I have time to get up and go before he grabs me. Papà wouldn’t be able to catch up to me in his current state.
But I won’t leave Darragh. Giving a ragged cry of rage, I reach for the sweater. Papà raises the hand holding his gun. I don’t know if he’ll hit me with it or shoot me.
But he doesn’t do either of those things.
He drops it on the pavement.
Then, he clutches his chest. The colour in his face darkens, then vanishes, like someone’s sucked all the blood out from beneath his skin through a straw.
He collapses to his knees.
And then he falls.
He lies on his side, still clutching at his chest.
Like a gong has been rung inside my head, I shudder with the knowledge that he might actually be dying this time. A heart attack, or stroke, or something else going terribly wrong deep inside him.