“No!” she cries.
I have one, two minutes maybe before all hell breaks loose.
“Good you’re here,” Catalano says, looking at Rafa. “You should be the one to do it. Kill him and take your place. Claim your birthright.”
Rafa looks from me to Catalano and back.
“Let him go,” Rafa commands the soldiers who have me.
“I give the orders, Rafa. Until he’s dead,” Catalano says.
Rafa looks to Catalano, then back to me.
“How long have you known?” I ask Rafa.
“A few months.”
“Months?”
He nods.
“Why didn’t you tell me yourself?”
He shrugs a shoulder, can’t quite hold my gaze. When he finally forces himself to I see that same look in his eyes as I saw earlier. Sadness. Regret.
“I’m sorry, Stefan,” he says.
“Get her out of here,” I tell him. “She doesn’t need to see this.”
Rafa nods, gestures to one of Catalano’s soldiers.
Lucas glances at me. He knows what’s coming.
The soldier takes hold of Gabriela and drags her kicking and screaming from the room.
That’s when all hell breaks loose.
When windows crash and guns blaze and smoke and screams and blood and flesh explode around us, every man ducking for cover, every man drawing a weapon and shooting blind.
I’m knocked to the floor.
“No!” someone yells but I can’t tell who.
My men rush around me and everything happens in slow motion as I take a dropped pistol and get to my feet, opening fire on any Catalano man or cousin left alive and holding a weapon.
My mind is on her, my brain telling me she wouldn’t have had time to get out while simultaneously trying to block the thought.
She’s out. She’s safe. She has to be.
Because none of this will matter if she’s not.
The gunfire quiets, no more machine guns. It probably lasted all of two minutes but felt like an eternity.
As smoke clears, I take in the room, the carnage. What we leave in our wake in my family.
Collateral damage.
It’s what most of them become.
It’s what she was.
“Gabriela!”
I walk out of the room, count the bodies. Take in the blood.
“Gabriela!”
I see him first. Marchese on the floor, on top of her.
Blood pools around them and he’s not moving. Is she?
My steps slow.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Why was she here?
Why did he bring her here?
“Stefan,” it’s Rafa from behind me.
I don’t turn. I don’t care.
I get to them. Look at the expanding pool of blood.
I drop to my knees in it.
The floor is hard, the blood warm. It seeps into my jeans and I know Rafa’s calling me again but it’s like an echo, a distant sound.
Dropping the pistol, I push Marchese’s body off her, barely taking notice of him. Her eyes are closed and she’s not moving.
“Gabriela.” Even my own voice, it’s strange, that echo again. Like we’re in a tunnel.
She makes a sound, coughs, and her fingers move, streaking blood.
I roll her gently over, touch her, feel for a bullet wound, but the blood isn’t hers.
She blinks her eyes open, touches her head. “Stefan?”
I smile. In this terrible moment, I smile, and I lift her into my arms.
Her forehead’s bleeding. The impact of Marchese falling on top of her must have knocked her out.
I hold her to me with my cuffed hands, closing my eyes, kissing the top of her head, thanking God. Because it’s what we do in moments like this, believers and atheists.
It’s then she turns to see her father. It takes her a moment to register the fact that he’s not moving.
“Dad?” She pulls away from me, touches his face. “Dad?”
I watch them. See his eyes open, but it’s weak.
“Dad.” Her voice breaks.
His hand moves, reaches for hers. He can barely move it.
She takes it and blood soaks her fingers.
His lips move, but I don’t hear any sound. She must hear what he says though because she begins to cry softly, leaning down toward him.
His eyes close then and I hear the grief she’s feeling. I hear it in her sob.
Marchese saved her life. He shielded her from the bullet that would have killed her and died in her place.
“Stefan.”
I finally look up. Rafa stands beside Catalano. Catalano is holding a pistol in each hand, Rafa’s bleeding from his shoulder, but Catalano is unhurt.
I leave Gabriela with her father’s body and rise to my feet.
It’s not over.
“Do it,” Catalano says, holding a pistol out to Rafa. “Do it, or I will.”
Rafa takes the gun and walks toward me and I look at my cousin, my brother, at this man I would give my life for. Will he take it now? Will he be the one to take it now?
“I’m sorry,” Rafa says, coming to stand before me.
I catch him when he stumbles. He’s hurt worse than I realized.
“Rafa,” I start, sliding my hand over his, the one that’s holding the gun.
Rafa looks over his shoulder at Catalano and I know the answer to my unasked question. And so does Catalano.
“Fucking waste of space,” Catalano curses and raises his arm and just before he fires, Rafa meets my eyes and raises himself to his full height for one single, final moment.
I feel the impact of it with him. I feel him jolt, feel the breath forced from him.
And I take the gun from his hand and shoot Catalano, emptying it in him, sending him backward, drumming bullets into his stomach until the pistol clicks, empty and useless. Until there are no bullets and the only sound is that of my screaming as I drop to my knees with Rafa in my arms.
Rafa’s body limp in my arms.
“Fuck. Rafa. Don’t…”
“Brothers. Who knew?” he says, giving me that goofy smile one last time. One last fucking time before his eyes close.
“Rafa. No. Fuck. Don’t fucking die! God, please…”
I hold him and rock with him and I think this is worse than when I found out Antonio had died. When I saw Antonio’s body.
I think this is somehow sadder. Can you rate death as sad or sadder or saddest? It’s wrong.
All the loss. All the fucking loss.
And for what?
His lips are open, breath shallow as his chest barely rises and falls.
Gabriela crawls to me, and I see she’s crying too, pushing Rafa’s bloodied hair from his face, and he looks so young. Like a kid almost. Like he used to.
I think about how sorry I am as sirens wail in the background. I think about how much I’m going to miss him.
“Hold on, brother. Hold the fuck on.”
35
Stefan
Any luck I’ve ever had has been bad.
But that night in the warehouse, that luck finally took a turn. Or maybe there is a God. And maybe he heard me. Because I’m sitting beside Rafa’s hospital bed holding a fucking cup to his mouth as he drinks water from a straw and I’m so fucking grateful. I am so fucking grateful.
“You look like shit, you know that?” he says to me.