The club's bassline thumped against my ribs like a second, frantic heartbeat.
We were finally leaving.
Dante walked ahead, his arm curved protectively around Camilla.
She leaned into him, giggling, her head lolling from too much champagne.
I kept my precise three-step distance.
My eyes swept the rooftops, then dropped to the dark glass of passing cars.
My hand rested near the holster under my jacket, the muscles in my fingers tight, ready to draw.
"Dante, the car's on the left," I called out, my attention snagged by the driver's position in the wrong spot.
"Relax, Serra," he tossed the words over his shoulder, careless. "Paranoid much."
Then the tires screamed.
The sound ripped through the night.
A black sedan jumped the curb, smoke boiling from its tires.
The rear window slid down.
The snout of a submachine gun emerged.
"Get down!" I yelled.
I lunged.
But Dante was a fraction of a second faster.
He didn't go for his weapon.
He didn't reach for me.
He grabbed Camilla, shoving her violently behind a concrete pillar.
At the same time, his other arm pistoned out.
He pushed me.
He pushed me into the open space he'd just occupied.
The air exploded.
Concrete fragments stung my face like hornets.
I felt the impact before I registered the sound.
A violent, internal tearing.
I hit the pavement.
The air vanished from my lungs.
A hot flood spread across my abdomen, soaking my shirt in seconds.
The sedan screeched away, tires shrieking on asphalt, and disappeared.
Silence rushed back in, and with it, a pressure in my ears, like being a thousand feet underwater.
"Camilla? Are you hurt?" Dante's voice, sharp with panic.
"I... I think I scraped my knee," she whispered.
His hands ran down her leg.
He was checking her arms.
I lay five feet away, my life bleeding out onto the sidewalk.
"Dante," I forced the word out.
He turned.
His eyes went wide at the spreading scarlet pool beneath me.
"Get a medic!" he roared at his security, but his hands were still on Camilla's shoulders. "Get Camilla into the armored SUV. She's in shock."
The world went dark.
I woke to the sterile, unforgiving glare of a hospital.
My phone was on the bedside table.
Its screen blinked.
I reached for it, and a lance of fire tore through my abdomen.
One missed call.
Leo.
My brother.
My thumb slipped across the screen twice before it unlocked.
There was a voicemail.
I pressed play.
Static.
Then a scream.
"Serra! Serra, please! They got me! They didn't catch Dante at the nightclub! They said--"
The line went to a dial tone.
An icy stillness flooded my body, drowning out the burn of the bullet wound.
I dialed Dante.
Straight to voicemail.
I dialed the house phone.
Camilla answered.
"Where is he?" I rasped. "Where's Dante?"
"He's in the shower," she said, her voice syrupy sweet, laced with that irritating innocence. "We had a tiring night, Serra. He needed to relax."
"Put him on. My brother--"
"Oh, that phone call?" she interrupted, her tone light, faux-discovery. "Some boy was screaming nonsense. I thought it was a prank, so I hung up. I didn't want to bother Dante with such a trivial thing."
"That was my brother!" I screamed, the force of it tearing the IV from my arm, blood spraying the white sheets.
"How was I supposed to know?" she sighed, her voice heavy with annoyance. "Don't be so dramatic. Dante's tired. We're going to sleep."
The line went dead.
I stared at my phone.
The silence in my ear was a void, larger and more complete than any gunshot.
I pushed myself up. The room tilted.
I grabbed a discarded epinephrine injector from a crash cart and jammed it into my thigh.
I needed chemical fire; my flesh was failing, but my rage was not.
I dragged myself out of the room, one hand pressed tight to my side, blood soaking through the bandages and the thin cotton of the hospital gown.
Every step was a knife twisting in my gut.
I stole a coat from the waiting room to cover the blood.
By the time I reached the warehouse district, the sun was rising, casting a pale, indifferent light on the city.
They'd found my brother in a dumpster.
His face was gone.
But I knew him by the sneakers I'd bought him for his birthday.
Dante arrived an hour later.
He looked fresh. Clean.
He looked at my brother's broken body, and then he looked at me.
"I didn't know," he said.
"She hung up on him," I whispered, the sound escaping my chest like a dry rustle of air. "She deleted the call log."
Dante's jaw tightened.
"Serra, she thought it was a prank. She doesn't know anything. She's just a civilian, she doesn't understand this life."
He put his hand on my shoulder.
I didn't feel it.
I didn't feel anything.
The Serra who loved him died in that dumpster with her brother.
