Chapter 3 - Salvatore’s eye moved to Norah.
Surprise crossed his damaged face.
He studied her carefully.
Then nodded once.
A short, sharp acknowledgment.
Norah had moved farther inside the circle.
Dominic left.
Norah prepared medication.
Salvatore continued staring.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
She opened the blister packs.
“I didn’t do it for him.”
“I did it because I’m a nurse.”
Her tone stayed dry.
“And bleeding during my shift is against the rules.”
Salvatore produced a sound suspiciously close to laughter.
3 days later, at dusk, the estate was attacked.
Norah was in the kitchen preparing Salvatore’s dinner when the security radios went silent.
The normal static and routine check-ins stopped at once.
Frank entered.
His expression had changed.
He drew a matte-black pistol and chambered a round.
“Lock down Salvatore’s room.”
Norah’s pulse jumped.
“What happened?”
“They hit the gate guards.”
Frank loaded another magazine into his vest.
“Cameras are down.”
“Dominic is in the armory.”
His eyes hardened.
“Go upstairs.”
Norah took her medical bag.
Then ran.
She entered Salvatore’s bedroom, locked the heavy door, and dragged a mahogany dresser in front of it.
Salvatore was in bed.
His left eye widened.
“We have visitors.”
Norah struggled to position the furniture.
“Frank says nobody leaves.”
Salvatore did not panic.
His expression returned to the cold mask of a man who had survived decades of violence.
He pointed urgently toward the walk-in closet.
“What?”
Norah looked toward it.
“Clothes?”
He shook his head.
Pointed lower.
Norah opened the closet and dropped to her knees.
Beneath Italian leather shoes, 1 floorboard was loose.
She pried it up.
A velvet-lined recess contained a small vintage revolver.
Loaded.
Norah lifted it.
Salvatore reached for the weapon.
“No.”
She stepped away.
“You can barely hold a spoon.”
“You’ll shoot yourself.”
Salvatore glared.
Then lowered his hand.
Gunfire exploded downstairs.
Shattering glass.
Automatic weapons.
Men shouting.
The noise was nothing like the controlled violence of movies.
It was chaotic.
Deafening.
Norah backed toward Salvatore’s bed with the revolver in both hands.
“I am not dying in a mansion in upstate New York.”
She spoke mostly to herself.
“I still owe student loans.”
Salvatore produced a low vibration in his chest.
Norah realized he was humming.
Tuneless.
Grim.
Ready.
Footsteps charged along the hallway.
Somebody hit the bedroom door.
“Open up, old man.”
A rough voice came from outside.
“Dominic’s dead.”
“It’s finished.”
Norah’s chest tightened.
Dominic.
The reaction was immediate and painful.
She pushed it aside.
3 gunshots struck the door near the lock.
Wood exploded.
Then a boot forced the opening wider.
The dresser scraped across the floor.
A masked man entered carrying a suppressed submachine gun.
He saw Norah.
The revolver in her hands.
He laughed.
“Put the toy down.”
He began lifting the weapon.
Norah fired.
The recoil snapped her wrists upward.
The revolver’s report filled the room.
The bullet struck his left shoulder.
Blood erupted.
The man dropped his gun and collapsed into the hallway screaming.
Norah stood frozen.
Smoke curled from the barrel.
A second attacker stepped over him.
He raised his weapon directly toward her.
Before he fired, a massive hand caught him from behind.
Frank slammed him into the wall.
Dominic appeared immediately behind Frank.
Tactical shotgun.
Blood and soot across his face.
Alive.
His eyes were full of fury.
He fired.
The threat ended.
Silence followed.
Norah dropped the revolver.
She sagged against Salvatore’s bed.
Breathing hard.
Dominic entered.
Looked at the gun.
Norah.
Then his father.
“Are you hurt?”
Norah shook her head.
No words came.
Salvatore reached toward her.
His left hand seized her wrist.
Not angrily.
He squeezed once.
Hard.
A thank you.
An initiation.
Norah looked toward Dominic.
Blood on his face.
Weapon in hand.
The truth of his life fully visible.
She understood she had crossed a bridge she could not uncross.
The cleanup was worse.
Men wearing heavy rubber boots carried wrapped bodies toward the rear stairwell.
Industrial bleach replaced the smell of pine and leather.
The house operated like a trauma ward after disaster.
Norah sat on the kitchen floor with her knees against her chest.
A maid scrubbed blood from white grout.
Frank had taken the revolver.
He had needed to pry Norah’s fingers from it.
The man she shot had not died from her bullet.
The round shattered his collarbone.
Frank finished him later.
That fact did not erase what Norah had done.
She had pulled the trigger.
Dominic found her approximately 1 hour before dawn.
He had showered.
Black sweatpants.
Gray T-shirt.
Wet hair.
A trace of soot still near the hairline.
He carried 2 glasses of amber liquor.
He placed 1 beside her.
“Drink.”
Norah stared at it.
“I shot someone.”
“You stopped someone from shooting my father.”
“I took an oath to preserve life.”
Her voice broke.
Dominic sat on the floor beside her.
He did not offer reassurance he did not believe.
“Oaths are a luxury when nobody has a gun on you.”
He leaned against the cabinet.
“You survived.”
“Do not apologize for that.”
Norah looked at him.
His eyes were hollow.
The usual coldness gone.
“How do you sleep?”
“I don’t.”
Dominic took a drink.
“Not really.”
Silence settled.
Shared rather than hostile.
“They breached the estate because 1 of our own guards turned.”
Dominic stared across the kitchen.
“Rossi.”
“He served my father for 12 years.”
“He held me when I was a child.”
Dominic’s voice remained flat.
“Barzini paid him to leave the western gate unlocked.”
Norah listened.
“In this world, loyalty is a lease.”
Dominic continued.
“Eventually someone offers more.”
“You expect betrayal.”
“Plan around it.”
His expression tightened.
“But when it happens, it still leaves a hole.”
He looked toward Norah’s hands.
They were trembling.
Dominic reached out.
Took 1.
His scarred fingers closed warmly around hers.
The shaking slowly eased.
“You didn’t run.”
His thumb moved across her knuckles.
“You had Salvatore’s gun.”
“You could have hidden in the closet.”
“You stood in front of him.”
Dominic’s eyes met hers.
“Why?”
Norah looked at their hands.
“Because he was my patient.”
“Liar.”
The word was quiet.
Norah pulled away.
Not quickly.
She took the whiskey and swallowed it.
“I’m checking his vitals.”
She stood.
Dominic let her go.
Upstairs, Salvatore remained awake.
His bedroom was damaged.
Doorframe shattered.
Furniture displaced.
Norah crossed the threshold.
Salvatore’s eye tracked her immediately.
She wrapped the blood-pressure cuff around his good arm.
He studied her.
Noticed what remained in her face after the shooting.
Then his hand moved.
Not grabbing.
He laid his palm on the back of hers.
Patted twice.
Awkwardly.
An offering of peace.
Norah stopped pumping the cuff.
She looked at him.
A man who had ordered murders.
Extortion.
Violence.
A man who knew exactly what pulling a trigger could cost the first time.
“Your pressure is high.”
Norah removed the cuff.
“Sleep.”
She looked toward the ruined doorway.
“Nobody is getting through there tonight.”
Salvatore nodded.
Then closed his eyes.
4 days later, the estate looked repaired.
New wood replaced the splintered doorframe.
Blood had been removed.
The dead were buried quietly in unmarked graves far away.
The machinery of the Moretti family resumed.
Norah packed her belongings on Tuesday afternoon.
May you like
Scrubs.
Jeans.
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