Dario holds me back. I twist against his grip. I punch him. I make threats I intend to keep. But he won’t let me near Armando.
“Let me go!”
“He could be wired.”
“He could be dying,” I snap.
With Dario between the gate and me, he lets me push him off.
“What hap—?” Celia says from behind me, brought out by the commotion.
“Get the first aid kit and sheets.” She’s already halfway to the house when I shout the last command. “And alcohol. A lot of it.”
Celia passes Loretta, who follows her to get the supplies. Dario gives up on me and climbs the ladder to the top of the stone guardhouse.
Armando’s on his back just outside the gate. Vito crouches about six feet away from him while the other guys hang back.
“You sure, Mando?” Vito takes a bent step closer. “They didn’t plant nothing on you?”
“Something.” Armando’s booming voice has been reduced to a breathy scratch, and there’s something wrong with his speech.
“What kind of something?”
“It won’t hurt you.”
“Show it to us,” Dario calls from above.
“No. It’s…” He shakes his head and swallows with difficulty. “Only Violetta.”
“They using you to get us to open the gate?” Vito asks.
“Just a message.” He’s talking as if he’s weak and in pain, but even past that, he sounds as if he’s talking with a new mouth.
“We ain’t gonna let her near you. Not before you’re checked. You know that.”
“Then check me, stunad.” Armando groans in pain. “Get to it.”
Vito takes a deep breath and scurries to Armando, opening his jacket. “Oh, Jesus fuck.”
Dario calls from atop a stone pillar, “Faster!”
“I’m sorry, man,” Vito says, gingerly patting down Armando’s body.
I’ve been daring to get closer, but now I’m at the gate, and the angle has changed enough to reveal what upset Vito. Armando’s shirt is gone, and his torso is a mess of blood and tissue. His gut has been cut open.
Blood loss.
Shock.
Infection.
I know how to stabilize him, but I’m not a doctor. I’m not even a nurse.
Face covered in nervous sweat, Vito bolts up to standing position. “He’s clear!”
The men jump down from the posts. The gate opens.
I rush through. “Armando!”
He kind of smiles. He’s missing two teeth, which explains the sudden speech impediment. “Good to see you.”
The men pull him up and bring him inside the gate. It closes. They’re about to drop him, which means they’d have to pick him up again.
“No!” I shout, and they all freeze. “Inside. The dining room table.”
They look at each other like a bunch of clowns.
“Do it,” Dario barks, and they listen, making a disaster of the transport—but these are the men we have, so this is what it is.
Unencumbered, I run ahead into the dining room. The table has a candleholder in the center surrounded by shoeboxes of mismatched dishes and silverware. I throw off everything but the tablecloth.
“Here,” I say, tossing aside the last box as Armando’s brought in. They lay him down. “Hello, Armando, how are you doing?”
Gingerly, I check the damage. The space between his navel and his open waistband is meat. A bullet ripped him open from one side and exited the other. I’m overwhelmed. I don’t know how to fix this.
“I have a message,” he says. The effort sends a spring of blood upward.
“I found this.” Celia drops a red bag with a big white cross onto the table, and I wake up. It’s the super deluxe first responder kit, and I have never been so thankful for anything in my life.
“Sheets and towels.” Loretta drops a pile onto a sideboard.
“What’s the message?” I open the bag and dump it onto the card table. “Open all the gauze. Don’t touch it. Rip the sheets into strips. Someone, get me the alcohol.”
The guys do exactly as they’re told.
“Listen.” Armando coughs. “Violetta.”
“You shouldn’t talk.”
“They got him.”
The sounds of tearing fabric and shuffling feet get far away as I’m sucked into a sensory tunnel where nothing exists outside Armando and me.
“Who?” I’m not stupid. I know who, and I also know asking this man to say a single unnecessary word is cruel and dangerous…but I don’t know how to believe it without his confirmation.
“He’s alive, but…” In Armando’s eyes, past the pain and fear, is an apology.
Why does he look like a man who’s about to console me through his own excruciating pain?
No. Whatever it is, I don’t want to know.
The tunnel widens and disappears. I’m in the dining room again.
“I have to get you stable first. Where’s the fucking disinfectant?!”
Loretta puts a gallon of Smirnoff on the table. “It’s what I found.”
“Inside pocket,” Armando says. “Jacket.”
I unscrew the bottle and hold my hands out to Loretta. They’re shaking. “Pour it.”
She dumps a stream of vodka on my hands. I rub them together, ignoring Dario, who’s rummaging through Armando’s jacket pocket.
“They want the crown,” Armando gasps. “Even my sweet Gia.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“They ambushed us.”
“Oh, fuck,” Dario says when he takes out what’s in the bottom of Armando’s pocket.
“Gia… She’ll trade his life for it.” The wounded man doesn’t have the blood flow to sob for his love, but the sadness and disappointment are unmistakable. “For the crown.”
“Disinfect, Loretta,” I continue to anyone who’ll listen. “Where’s the gauze?”
Remo has ripped open a blue paper envelope, and he’s ready to dump the gauze inside into a dish, but he’s stuck in place. I follow his gaze to Dario, who’s holding a ziplock bag. The plastic is cloudy with condensation, as if something warm and wet was put inside before it was sent into the cold night.
No.
They didn’t. Not for a dumb crown.
“I don’t have it!” I yell. “They have it!”
“I’m sorry, Vuh-vuh…” Armando trails off as if he has no energy to continue.
“Don’t you dare make those your last words,” I bark.
Dario is opening the bag. Nothing I say will make him stop.
I grab a handful of gauze and staunch the bleeding. “Loretta. Hold this here. Someone disinfect Celia. The women are going to hold this man together, am I right, ladies?”
“You need to look at this,” Dario says, looking into the open baggie.
“No, I don’t. You.” I jerk my chin at one of the guys. I’m face-blind with panic. He could be the pope for all I know. “Wash your hands and rip some sheets.”
“You have to confirm this is his or not,” Dario says.
Or not.
Whatever is in the bag could be a mistake or a trick, and if it is, I’ll be able to tell.
Putting pressure on the bleeding, I lean forward. Dario tips the opening toward me. My eyes close because they have a mind of their own…but my curiosity is stronger. I look inside.
It’s a finger.
It has a gold ring on the bottom.
“He’s not breathing!” someone shouts.
I tear my gaze away and put my ear on Armando’s chest. No heartbeat. “Does anyone besides me know CPR?” Celia steps forward. I drop the bag and get on a chair to start chest compressions. “Rescue breathing, okay?”
Celia tilts his head back, and we begin.
“Is it his or not?” Dario demands.
“How the fuck should I know?” I say between counts, then breathe into Armando’s mouth.
“Come on, Mando,” Celia says, her hands on his face. I never realized how big they are. “We ran out of the cherry biscotti. Please. You have to get more.”
Dario holds the bag out to me while I’m trying to save a guy’s fucking life.
“These fucking assholes want a crown they stole.” I deny everything in the rhythm of the compressions. “They should check the goddamn cupboards instead of asking me, and you tell me if it’s his finger and where the crown is because I don’t fucking know.”
I know. I’ve had that finger inside me. I’ve sucked on it. I’ve watched how it moved with its brothers and sisters. How it made a fist. How it looked tucked in the web between my fingers.
But I don’t really know, do I? This could all be a bluff.
“Come on, Mando.” Celia’s voice is getting hopeless. We’re going to lose him.
“What’s engraved inside the ring?” I ask.
If it’s a bunch of numbers, it’s Santino’s. But there won’t be. It’ll be a date with words of tender eternal love. The finger belongs to one of the other guys, and that will be terrible.
“Nothing’s happening,” Celia says, looking into Armando’s glazed eyes.
Dario isn’t squeamish about taking the ring off a dead body part.
“Something has to be happening,” I say without evidence. “Give it a chance.”
Dario is looking inside the ring. I don’t want to know. I don’t.
“It says…”
“I’m counting!” I shout because I don’t want him to finish.
“The bleeding stopped,” Loretta says. “That’s good.”
“No. That’s bad,” I say.
I keep trying. I’m exhausted. My arms ache. I’m sweating myself into a raisin. But I can’t stop. If Armando’s dead, and that ring… I don’t know if I’ll survive if it comes all at once.
“Violetta,” Vito says, putting his hand on my shoulder.
“Shush!”
“I think—”
“Did I ask you what you think?” I turn to Dario. “We have to get him to the hospital. St. Anne’s isn’t too far.”
Everyone in the room seems to know it’s too far over the bridge, even if I won’t admit it. It’s too far a distance, and too long ago. He should have been taken there when the moped was at the bottom of the mountain, but he bled and bled to get up it, and now he’s gone.
Celia lets her hands slide off Armando’s face and puts her forehead to his chin. She weeps. I get off the dining room chair and stand on weak knees.
Dario holds out his hand. The bloody gold ring is in the center. “Do you recognize this? Is it his?”
This cannot be avoided any longer. Closing my fist around the ring, I drop into the chair, close my eyes, and take a breath. I know what I’m going to see.
Goddamn, Armando. You were a good guy. I’m sorry.
“Santino is not your king,” I say, eyes still as closed as the fist holding the ring. “He is mine. He is my country. He’s my kingdom. He’s the earth and the sun to me, and if they have him… If they’re using my entire world as leverage to demand something I don’t have, I consider it a personal insult.” I open my eyes and look at each man individually. “If they have him, I am going to get him. You won’t stop me.” I linger on Dario’s gaze. “I don’t need a crown to kill you for trying. I hope you understand that.”
“Please,” Dario says, unimpressed with my threats. “Read the inside.”
I open my hand. Blood streaks the shiny gold surface. Inside, where a loving couple would share a few words about eternity, the blood has flowed into the engraving and dried into the cut shape of a series of numbers.
I close my fist around it.