Page 112 of Poison and Wine
“Please don’t leave me,” she begged.
“Kitten, I’ll fight with everything I have.”
She lowered her head to bring her lips to mine. Where she usually tasted sweet, her lips were salty with her tears and sadness. When she pulled away, she stared into my eyes. Although the pain was intense and I didn’t feel like smiling, I curved the corners of my lips up. Since I didn’t want to appear weak in front of the doctors, I knew I couldn’t say the words out-loud. I couldn’t even resort to Irish since they were Irish doctors.
Instead, I embraced my wife’s lineage by whispering into her ear, “Ti amo.”
Caterina jerked back to stare incredulously into my face. I nodded at her. “Now go.”
And for the first time in a very long time, I prayed.
I prayed to see another day with Caterina.
Chapter Thirty-One: Caterina
My fingers trembled over the antique rosary in my hands. It had been a wedding gift from Orla, and one that had been in her family–the Byrne’s-for almost a century. With my eyes pinched shut, I whispered prayers of healing in my head. The silence of the room was punctuated by the pacing of Quinn and Dare. Kellan sat stoically beside me.
I don’t know how long I passed in desperate agony, fearing the worst and hoping for the best. When I thought I would lose it and start screaming, I rose out of my chair to walk the length of the small room that served as a makeshift waiting room. Standing in the doorway, I peered down the hall where the surgeons were working on Callum. In the shadowy hallway, I made out three other rooms with closed doors.
In all the months I’d lived in Callum’s house, I’d never ventured into the basement. As the daughter of a capo, I knew better than to want to explore underground areas. Like in the house I grew up in, there wasn’t only a medical/surgical room in which to treat the wounded.
There was also a torture room.
When I was seven, Gianni had dared me to peek inside ours. Scared out of my mind but too stubborn to let him win, I stuck my head in the door. To my horror, Leo and Rafe shoved me inside and held it closed. They claimed they were punishing me for snitching to Talia about them looking at my dad's Playboy magazines.
In the pitch black, I’d fumbled for the light. When the fluorescents buzzed on, I started screaming. All these years later the image remained burned into my mind. As my brothers rushed into the room, they hadn’t anticipated my father’s latest double crosser to still be strung up by chains. Blood congealed on the floor from the gaping wounds on his chest and neck. His vacant eyes stared out at me.
The vividness of the memory caused a hard shudder to roll through me. At the feel of a jacket draping over me, I turned and met Dare’s smile. “So you won’t be cold,” he replied to what must’ve been my questioning look.
I gave him a small smile. “Actually I was remembering a memory from my childhood.”
Dare raised an eyebrow. “About your father?”
“Yes.” I swallowed hard. “His torture room.”
When Dare and Quinn exchanged a look, I asked, “Am I to assume that there’s one here behind one of those doors?”
While Quinn retained his usual silence, Dare flashed me a grin. “I plead the fifth.”
“I would have imagined as much.”
It was then that the door at the end of the hallway swung open. As one of the surgeons stepped out of the room and started for us, my breath hitched. At the somber look on his face, my knees buckled. I would’ve dropped to the floor if Dare hadn’t caught me. “I don’t like the look on his face,” I moaned.
At Dare’s snort, I jerked my gaze to his. “Dr. Feany’s face always looks like a slapped arse.”
“I heard that Darragh,” he replied sourly.
I closed the gap between Dr. Feany and myself. “How’s my husband?”
“He’s one of the luckiest bastards I know.”
My breath wheezed out of me. “Callum’s alive?”
Dr. Feany nodded. “When we went in to get the bullet out, we found that while it had slightly nicked his axillary artery, it did miss the brachial blood vessels and narrowly missed damaging his glenohumeral joint.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Dare demanded as Quinn nodded
“It could’ve been a lot worse of a recovery if his rotator cuff had been injured,” I replied. At Dr. Feany’s surprised look, I replied, “I’m in my undergraduate for nursing school.”