Page 81 of The Vow
“Okay, I’m going to pack it with gauze and sew up the skin, then he’ll need antibiotics for infection … this is going to hurt. ”
“Get Lyle, he’ll have a hip flask on him I bet-”
“Asked him earlier, he’s only got that Clean Gin shit in there-”
“Fuck! I mean, good for him staying sober but fuck we could have done with an alcoholic-”
“Alcohol thins the blood. I would take more Rohypnol instead,” Ardian said simply. He went over to the dead body of his brother, flapped open the now ragged tatters of his suit jacket and pulled out a small plastic bag. “I wasn’t in on this, by the way-” Ardian said, his face solemn.
Colt gave him a look that would wither a cactus and then snatched the bag out of Ardian’s hand, and tossed it to Greta. “Okay, what next?”
“Fuck, his blood is just draining out of his body-”
“Better that then draining into his lungs, he’d be dead in half an hour if it was,” Jared muttered, looking haunted.
Greta threw a look at him. “Okay, I’m going to do a live blood transfusion, fuck this is so dangerous, it’s what they’d do in World War One or something, I’m going to have to literally connect him up to one of you and have you beat blood into him while I sort out the wound-” Greta tugged at Carmelo’s wedding suit, trying to get it off him.
“Okay,” Colt licked his lips and sank to his knees beside Carmelo. “Everyone else out, Lena, you can stay or go-”
“I stay,” came the steel reply from Lena.
“-but everyone else fuck off, apart from Lena, Greta, Jared, and Carmelo…”
Ardian threw a concerned look over his shoulder as he was the last to leave the scene. Kavan’s dead body stayed there, prone, forgotten and irrelevant. Jared was at Greta’s side, and started ripping the clothes off Carmelo with his hands. “He’s likely to go into shock-”
“I know, Lena, sit here, keep him warm, I need jackets on him… I need something to apply to the wound, we don’t have enough in the kit…”
Lena sat down on the floor and wordlessly ripped her wedding dress. She grabbed the skirt hem in both hands, and pulled it apart. They all looked on as she ripped the skirt right up to the bodice, in strips, and yanked. White ribbons fell to the floor like party streamers. Carmelo thought about smiling. That was his woman. He was proud of her. She had surprised them all.
“But he’s a fucking rare blood group, they don’t even have enough in some of the hospitals, he needs a blood relative-” Jared grimaced.
“Oh fuck! We need one of Carmelo’s family members!” Greta exclaimed, sagging suddenly.
Colt pursed his lips. “None of them came today. He doesn’t have anyone.”
Lena froze in her ripping. A silence settled into the room and Carmelo swore he could hear his blood dripping out of his body onto the cold flagstone floor. It was now or never, he knew it, he felt it. Time to face the music.
“Yes I do,” Carmelo spoke up with a croaky, slurred voice he didn’t recognise. “I have you,” nodding to Colt.
“What?”
“Colt, I’m sorry, I meant to tell you in Vegas but I fucked it up-”
“Spit it out, goddammit, there isn’t time!”
“You are my brother.”
“I know I… what do you mean?”
“Half-brother. My mother was your mother, too. Mafia fucker raped her, my father convinced my mother to give you up for adoption-”
“That… can’t be.”
“I wasn’t sure at first, I saw a photo of you, as a baby… I researched it, found your birth certificate, and found the hospital records. You were named Colt because you were left in the hospital wrapped in a blanket with a little baby horse on it. Colt. My mother embroidered that blanket. You’re my brother.”
Colt stared and blinked. And blinked again. Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. Carmelo’s blood oozed. And for a moment he thought he was going to be left to bleed out on the floor at the altar.
But then, Colt yanked his jacket off, and ripped the sleeve of his shirt up.Carmelo felt the warmth of redemption, true, utter, un-conditional redemption. He belonged right here, with Lena, with Colt, with the MC, with his family. He smiled. He would live, Carmelo felt it. He would thrive, he would be surrounded by love, at long last.