Chapter 61

“You going to let me carry you?” Frankie asks, crouching back on his heels and smirking at Lucy.

“No, you idiot,” she sighs, shaking like I am and working to get to her feet. “They shot me in the arm, not the leg.”

I just stand like an idiot, watching as Frankie reaches out and helps Lucy to her feet, holding her steady as she finds her balance. Then he turns towards me, all cool calm. “So, we’re going to end our shifts early tonight –“

I burst into anxious laughter, not knowing what else to do.

“Can you stay here with her?” Frankie asks, standing straighter and making space with me next to Lucy. “While I pull the car around?”

“Sure,” I say, instant, moving in to take Frankie’s place and letting Lucy slip her arm around me. Frankie gives us a steady nod before he strides back through the bar, easily side-stepping the corpses and heading for the back door where our car is parked.

“What,” I whisper, still baffled. I mean, honestly, I think maybe three minutes has passed since Frankie and I were arguing in the corner. I have not at all had enough time to process this. “What just happened?”

“I just lost my job is what happened,” Lucy says, her voice trembling a little, and I turn to stare at her, because she is either much cooler about this than I am or much, much better than pretending.

“What?” I ask, frowning. “Lucy, how could this possibly be your fault?”

She laughs a little, shaky, trying to smile at me and failing completely as she glances down at her arm. “No, it’s not my fault,” she murmurs, “but there’s no way Tony is going to let me keep this job after this. He is going to flip.”

“Oh,” I say lamely, understanding now. Tony – her fiancé – Christian’s youngest brother. And if he’s anything like Christian then Lucy’s right – he is never going to let her out of the house ever again.

“Yeah he’s going to lock me up,” she sighs, looking at the ceiling like it’s even worse than getting shot in the arm.

And I smile, genuinely, because Lucy – she gets it.

“Well, they wounded your wing,” I say, nodding down to her arm. “Gotta cage you up for a minute until it heals. But after that, I’m sure you’ll get your freedom back.” Lucy frowns at me for a second, but then looks where I’m looking at her poorly bandaged arm and bursts into laugher.

“My wing,” she murmurs. “I like that.”

Both of us jump almost into the air when the front door to the bar opens behind us. But we relax instantly when we see that it’s just Frankie.

“Come on,” he says, beckoning. “I want to move fast. Let’s get out of here.”

I sit in the back of the car with Lucy, who cries quietly at the pain in her arm now that the shock of it has passed. I do my job, which is to keep pressure on the bleeding wound, and, in Frankie’s words, “be really nice to her, because she just got shot.”

I rolled my eyes at him when he told me that, but he’d just smirked at me and started to drive, making about a thousand mumbled phone calls as he did.

Lucy sniffs and holds up well, but after about twenty minutes I frown and look up and around. “Frankie,” I say, confused. “Where the hell are we going? The nearest hospital to Lupa is –“

But Frankie stops me in my tracks when he just laughs at me.

“What?” I ask, looking between the back of Frankie’s head and Lucy, next to me. “What’s going on?”

“This family doesn’t go to hospitals, Bambs,” Frankie calls from the front seat, and I look at Lucy in surprise. She just shrugs and sniffs.

“Well then where do you go?” I say, a little appalled. “To some magical healing spring?”

Frankie laughs. “No, they go to private physicians who get paid a great deal of money. Doctors who conveniently forget to file the police reports when a gun shot comes to their door.”

“Oh,” I say, thinking it suddenly makes an incredible amount of sense that we’re in a wealthy suburban neighborhood. Frankie slows the car and pulls into a wrap-around driveway, heading behind a tall white house.

When we get around to the back, I see that there are about three gigantic black SUV’s already here.

“Oh geeze,” Lucy says, sniffing harder and wiping beneath her eyes with her good hand. She turns to me and tilts her chin up. “Do I look okay?” she asks as Frankie pulls the car to a stop. “No mascara under my eyes?”

“You’re the prettiest shooting victim I’ve ever seen,” I murmur, and she obliges me by laughing as I wipe a little black smudge off her cheek.

But before I can say anything else, the door behind Lucy flies open and a young man is bending in, reaching for her, calling her name.

I blink in surprise because even though he’s younger –

God, this one too is a dead ringer for Christian. Clearly, Don Romano’s genes are the ones that run strong in this family, because even though they don’t have the same mother the family resemblance is uncanny.

Lucy gives a little cry of joy, climbing out of the car and letting Tony Romano wrap her in his arms, rocking her back and forth.

I don’t miss the little sigh Frankie heaves as he unbuckles his seatbelt and climbs out of the car like it pains him to do so. I do the same, stepping out of the car and walking around the car mostly to have something to do. A big part of me just…doesn’t want to sit in the car alone.

We don’t stay long in the doctor’s driveway – just long enough for Tony to snap a few questions at Frankie and get the full picture of what happened, of just how wounded Lucy is, of whether or not she was the actual target. Frankie answers all of the questions satisfactorily, though I don’t miss the weird tension that builds between him and Tony as he does.

I especially don’t miss the way that Tony’s arms wrap tighter and tighter around Lucy, pulling her lovingly to her side like he he’s scared he’ll lose her if he lets her go. It’s incredibly sweet, really, but…

There’s also a possessiveness there that surprises me, surprises me almost as much as the way that Lucy hangs her head, not looking at either Tony or Frankie as they speak to each other. Lucy, who is so vivid, always looking around, always laughing and chatting.

Is she just in pain? Or…

There’s no real time to think of it, though, as Tony snaps my attention back by bringing me into the conversation. “And who is this?” he asks, raising his chin at me.

“Bambi,” Frankie says, gesturing at me with an easy hand. “Bartender in training. Andre told me to take her out too because she was a mess.”

I mean, that’s a lie, but…well. I guess Frankie has his own reasons for telling it. I don’t counter him, just giving Tony half a smile and murmuring that it’s nice to meet him.

Tony nods to me but I can see his attention moving on as he turns Lucy towards the back door of the doctor’s house, eager to get inside.

“Bye, Bambi!” Lucy calls to me, her voice still a little shaky and scared. “Thanks for all your help! I’ll see you back at work soon!”

My eyes open wide to hear her say it, but the way she immediately turns to Tony and smiles up into his angry face lets me know that the words weren’t really for me – they’re to let him know that she has no intention of leaving the work force.

“I do all the work,” Frankie murmurs next to me, shaking his head and watching the pair of them go, “all the shooting, all the rescuing, all the bandaging, all the driving – and she thanks you.”

“Well, in her defense,” I murmur, watching him watch her walk away, “you did tie her bandage on with an iPhone chord.”

Frankie’s face bursts into a grin as he turns to me. “That was creative, Bambs,” he says, slinging an arm around my shoulder and leading us back to the car. “I did what I could with the materials at hand! I should get a boyscout badge for that.”

“Yes, top marks in mafia field medicine,” I mutter beneath my breath, sarcastic as he laughs and gives me a little shove between the shoulder blades towards the front seat.

“Enough from you,” he sighs, making his way around the car. “Let’s get you home to your own Romano brother so we can get yelled at there too.”

“Yes, sir,” I sigh, buckling myself into my seat and sitting back, knowing that this is going to be bad. “Whatever you say.”