Chapter 2 - The Ring in the Emergency Room

I heard the sirens before I could make sense of what Vincent Rossi had said.

This woman will become my wife.

I wanted to tell him that people did not get to choose a wife in the middle of a crime scene. I wanted to ask why he was putting a ring on a stranger's finger instead of calling an ambulance. But my chest hurt every time I tried to draw air, and the diner ceiling kept sliding away from me.

"Emma," Margaret said. Her voice trembled. "Look at me."

I looked at her because that was easier than looking at the blood on my uniform.

Vincent knelt again. Up close, he looked younger than the stories made him sound, perhaps thirty-three, with dark hair damp from the rain and an expression that did not know what to do with fear. He spoke to a man behind him. "The paramedics come through this door. Nobody moves her."

"I didn't agree," I whispered.

His gaze returned to mine. "You don't have to agree to anything tonight."

"You said—"

"I know what I said. Stay here with us."

An emergency medical technician pushed past him, opened my uniform, and called out numbers that frightened me more than the gunshots. The pain in my shoulder had become strangely distant. My leg felt too heavy to belong to me. Somebody secured a mask over my face. When they raised the stretcher, Vincent's ring shifted on my finger, thick and cold against my skin.

At the hospital, I learned there were four entry wounds and more questions than the surgeons could answer in the hallway. One bullet had passed through my shoulder. One had damaged my abdomen. Another had fractured a rib and injured tissue near my lung. The last was lodged in my thigh. They moved fast, explaining that they needed to control bleeding and check for internal injury. I remember signing nothing. I remember asking whether Margaret was alive. Then the lights disappeared.

When I woke, the world was white and full of small electronic sounds. My mouth was dry. My abdomen throbbed under thick bandages, and a tube delivered oxygen beneath my nose. The first person I saw was Margaret, sitting beside my bed with both hands wrapped around a paper cup.

"You made it," she said.

I tried to smile. "Did you eat your dinner?"

Her cup shook. She laughed and cried at once. "You impossible girl."

I looked down. The ring was gone.

"They removed it for surgery," she told me immediately. "It's in a sealed bag with your belongings."

"Good. I thought perhaps your son changed his mind."

Margaret's smile faded. "Vincent doesn't often speak before he thinks. Last night he did."

A nurse came in to check my blood pressure. She told me I had been in surgery for hours and would need careful recovery. I asked about Tommy O'Connor. Her expression tightened. Margaret waited until she left.

"He fled through the kitchen. The police are looking for him."

"And your guards?"

Margaret lowered her eyes. "They failed you."

"They failed you," I corrected.

For a while, she stared at the blanket. Then she said, "The ring belonged to my husband. Vincent wears it because he made himself a promise when his father died."

"What promise?"

"That anyone he called family would be safe."

I thought of the four holes in my body. "He's not doing very well."

She accepted that without argument.

Vincent appeared at the door just after midnight, wearing the same black trousers and a fresh shirt. He stopped when he saw I was awake. Margaret touched my arm and stepped into the corridor.

"Do you remember what happened?" he asked.

"Unfortunately, yes. Including the part where you announced my marriage without asking me."

A muscle moved in his jaw. "I owe you an apology."

That surprised me more than the ring.

"In my family," he said, "placing that ring on someone's hand is a public pledge of protection. I meant the promise. I had no right to give it the shape of a marriage."

"Then tell the people in the diner you were wrong."

"I will."

I watched him carefully. "Why did Tommy O'Connor come for your mother?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out."

"Don't give me an answer designed for a frightened waitress."

He pulled a chair beside the bed but didn't sit until I nodded. "There's been a dispute over a freight terminal. People assume the Morettis ordered this. An assumption isn't evidence."

"You think someone wants you to blame them."

His eyes sharpened. "I think you noticed more than anyone has asked you about."

I told him about Tommy walking past the guards, the cap, the suppressed pistol, and the strange calm with which he had crossed the room. Vincent didn't interrupt. When I mentioned the guard smoking outside, he wrote it down.

"The police need all of that," I said.

"And they'll have it from you directly."

I studied his face. "I am not going to disappear into some private hospital because the Rossi family has a problem."

"You won't."

"And I need my nursing-school placement. I can't miss the entire semester."

"The doctors will decide what recovery allows. Your education is yours."

He rose as though the conversation was over, then hesitated. "Your apartment door has been forced. Nothing was taken that we can identify."

The monitor beside me seemed louder.

"When?"

"While you were in surgery. Your landlord called the police."

I stared at him. My apartment held textbooks, overdue bills, a cheap coffee maker, and photographs of a mother I had buried three years earlier. Nothing worth breaking in for.

Vincent placed a small card on the bedside table. "This is the detective's number. You can speak with her without me."

For the first time that night, I believed he understood the difference between protection and possession.

Then I noticed something else in his hand: a photograph of a diner receipt, the kind I had written a hundred times.

Across the bottom, in my own handwriting, were the words Margaret had asked me to note before the shooting: Tuesday, nine o'clock. Booth six.

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"Why do you have that?" I asked.

"Because someone sent it to your apartment before the intruder got there," he said. "And whoever sent it knew exactly where my mother would be."