Page 121 of The Butcher's Wife

My intuition screams that something’s wrong. He’s favoring his left leg and clutching his neck. As he steps under a streetlight, the form his body suggests cuts into sharp definition. Blood. Blood on his hand, his neck. He’s pale and gritting his teeth.

My breath seizes.

I lean over to open the car door as he approaches, and groaning, he hauls himself inside.

“Drive,” he wheezes.

I don’t question him, I just start driving and glance into the rear view mirror for anyone that might be following him.

“Dom, what’s going on?” I take every effort to smother the panic in my voice.

He’s covered in so much blood. It’s streaming through his fingers onto his chest.

He laughs, but it’s a frail-sounding thing. “I kicked the hornet’s nest, and I got stung. They had a couple of guards I had to take out first. Marco had extra friends over for poker, and I spent too long fucking with the last one. Marco snuck up on me and shot me. Bastard got me right in the fucking shoulder.”

Dom wheezes a chuckle as he pulls out medical tape from the glove box and wraps it around the bloody meat of his shoulder, right where I bit him a lifetime ago. “Don’t worry. I got him back. He’s dead. Drive to Giulia’s house.”

I swipe at the tears welling in my eyes. “You need a hospital.”

“Drive to Giulia’s house,” he grits out. “That’s a fucking order.”

I could disobey him.

I should.

Instead, I maneuver his car through the labyrinth of million-dollar homes, toward my ex-mother-in-law’s house. There’s no safety, no peace for any of us until this is finished. My former family knows that, and it’s taken me all this time to understand it as intimately as they do.

I strangle the steering wheel and pray to a god I’ve forsaken a hundred times over to please keep my husband safe. Take anyone, takeme, but please don’t let Dom die. And like always, He is silent.

The edge of Giulia’s property slices into view. I press down on the gas pedal. We’re almost done.

CRUNCH.

The airbag explodes into my face like a grenade and smashes me against my seat.

What was that?

My ears ring. I can’t hear anything else.

The airbag hangs from the center of the steering wheel like an empty pillowcase. Acrid gunpowder smoke stings my nose.

“Drive,” Dom shouts.

I don’t think—I slam on the pedal. Our car revs, but something has it hooked—it won’t move.

We’re stuck.

Bullets punch into the glass of the back window. Dom’s hand slams onto my head, jerking me down. He lets loose a slew of curses.

“I get out. Then you run.”

“No, Dom?—”

“That’s afuckingorder. Now run!”

He jumps out of the car, his gun popping off at the car behind us—at Marco—he survived?

I scramble to unbuckle myself and dive out of the car. When my feet hit the street, I bolt straight for Giulia’s house.