Nineteen years earlier
My entire world just shattered when seeing Becca in front of me, holding a gun and aiming right between the eyes of Salvatore.
Somewhere in the back of my head, I've always known she can't stay away, and right now, having her here, alone but looking all enraged and ready to save her man, makes all things feel right.
God, she's cute!
I still wonder where the fuck Mike is, or Marciano, and how the hell has she managed to get in here before they have.
I know they are not far. They can't be! And I know my wife inside-out. I'm pretty sure she has escaped them somehow.
But beyond her cuteness, her green eyes swimming in tears and glaring at me, break my heart into millions of pieces.
I wished I could find the strength to stand up, grab her and run away, but I'm all black and blue and my right shoulder is pierced with a bullet, making me bleed for the past hour, and I'm fucking tied up!
"Becca, get out of here!" I shout at her with renewed powers.
Fuck, this woman can wake me up even if I'm dead!
"Only if I take you with me," I hear her saying.
She's stubborn! She's a fucking spoiled, stubborn young woman and that's what I love about her but not right now, not in these circumstances.
"With the next bullet I will not miss you, Salvatore," is the last thing I hear from her mouth before a fucking hell of shootings erupts around us and all I care about right now is the woman I love, the mother of my child, my life, my breath... my forever.
The more I look around, the higher my anxiety grows because I can't see her anymore between broken glasses and black shadows jumping in and shooting left and right.
I duck and growl in pain when a bullet burns the flesh of my leg. Thank God is only that.
I can survive this. I can still get out of here, alive, and go back to my family.
Nothing serious.
I can survive this.
I keep searching for Becca around the room through the rain of bullets and finally, next to the exit I see Mike crouched, covering someone, shooting every moving target around.
When our eyes finally meet, it takes us only a second to understand each other. I know he has Becca covered, and I nod at him, signaling that he can let me be and take her out.
I don't care about myself, I can survive this. Right now I only need Becca away from here and I need her to keep herself fucking safe.
She's carrying our baby, for fuck's sake!
I could never live a decent life without that woman and my child. She has to make it out of here. She has to live!
I see Mike passing Becca to someone else, taking her outside. Now I know she's going to make it and only now do I bother to look around and assess the situation, trying to find a way out for myself.
Out of fucking nowhere I can see Marciano closing the distance between us, shooting everywhere and everyone while covering me.
I don't see Salvatore, though. Fucking cockroach! He ran away!
I have to find a way out of here. I don't know who is who, who's shooting whom, so I crawl on the cement floor aiming for a corner to hide and take cover from the hell unfolding around and all I can think about are my fucking tied up hands and the anger building up, popping in my ears and missing the feeling of a gun in my hand.
Gio lies crashed on the floor a few meters away from me, not moving.
"Gio! Gio, stand the fuck up!" I shout, with no result.
I drag myself towards him but some bullets cross my way, forcing me to duck again and I'm thanking God that the chair I've been tied up to is broken and I can lose it behind.
I need to reach Gio and wake him up so we can get the fuck out of here.
I feel one excruciating pain in my right shoulder as some strong hands grab me, making me groan, feeling that fucking pain spreading through all my body.
"What the fuck?!" I shout, and lifting my eyes, I see Vincenzo Benito grabbing me stronger and pulling me away from Gio.
"Come on, Tate! Move! We need to get out of here!"
"What the fuck are you doing here?" I ask him, shocked and irritated at the same time.
"Saving your shitty ass! Come on!" he replies and drags me to a back exit.
"We need to take Gio!" I say, but something in his look makes me internally cringe in anticipation of his words.
"Lucas, Gio's dead. I'm sorry, man," he says, but I don't believe him. I turn my head around to check on Gio again while Benito has his hand firmly clenched around my arm and drags me to the back door.
The fuck he is! No! Not Gio! And besides, I don't trust Vincenzo, but wickedly enough, he is my salvation.
Seeing him standing next to me, helping me to get out and save my life doesn't seem real to me, but he grabs a full hand fabric from my shirt, or what's left of it, and pulls me away. He's very much fucking real.
I try to free myself from his grip a few times but he's stronger and unharmed. I see him taking out a knife and waving it menacingly over his head but instead of harming me, he cuts the robes bound around my wrists before I even realize what's going on.
"You come with me now or...," he bellows, trying to cover the deafening sounds of the shootings and pulling me that much close to him that the tip of our noses almost touches.
He's fucking fuming.
Before he has the chance to finish his words, another jet of bullets springs toward us and we need to run out of the place, leaving the battlefield behind together with Gio who's still crashed on the cement floor while I can't take my mind away from my him. And my wife.
God, I have to find my wife!
We get out through one of the doors in the back with Benito dragging me away from the chaos. I can barely creep my wounded leg with me, but he holds me strong, not letting me fall as we run through the corridor.
The exit door we see at the end seems to be our sole target, both our stares being glued to it as we see it closer with every step we crawl.
And right there and then, before reaching it, a deafening blast pricks the drums of my ears, an explosion so close to us that I can feel the heat on the skin of my back.
The strength of the blast throws us further ahead, crashing our bones on the walls and then bouncing on the floor where I let myself fall numb, closing my burned eyes, letting myself wrapped in the heat of the flames, unable to stay awake and save myself.
I don't know for how long I've been laying here. I hear nothing around.
I hardly manage to open my eyes and I groan with an excruciating pain crossing through every inch of my body just to see a broken Vincenzo Benito next to me, face down and lifeless, with the shirt fuming on his back.
I reach out to him and grab one of his legs making him jump and snap out of his faint, rolling on his back to put the fire off, talking to me about something that I cannot hear.
I know he's telling me something. I can see his lips moving, rolling out words that I can't understand.
He seems angry, shouting and waving his arms around, but I don't give a fuck about it.
I can only think of Becca. I wish that by some miracle I see her one more time before I go, I wish I kiss her one more time, feel her once more, tell her one last time how much I love her, making sure that she knows it, that she'll never forget it.
I let my eyes close slowly. I simply can't keep them open. I'm too tired and fuck, it's too hot!
I'll sleep. That's what I'll do. And then I'll go to Becca... but now... I need some sleep.
Darkness wraps me like some kind of a heated blanket taken right from the sand of the desert. No sound, no word, no light, and no Becca's scent.
That's what I miss the most.
My Becca...
*****
"Cosa è successo a loro?" I hear a male voice saying. (What happened to them?).
That's fucking Italian. I try to open my eyes, but my eyelids barely move.
"Sono stati in un'esplosione. Era piuttosto brutto," a female voice replies. (They were in an explosion. It was pretty bad.)
I keep trying to raise my eyelids till I manage to open my eyes and meet some dim lights around me making me blink a few times before my vision clears. I hear some sounds of airplane engines.
My body feels heavy like a huge piece of iron and I can't move, no matter how much I try. Turning my head to the left side I see Vincenzo, stretched on a hospital bed, laying straight, covered with a blanket from his waist down.
On my right side there's one man and one woman, nurses I presume, judging by their clothes.
"Where am I?" I ask in a hoarse voice, and two pairs of eyes snap right at me.
"Segnore, buongiorno. Nice to see you awake. How do you feel?" the male nurse asks with a wide smile, coming closer to me. (Sir, good morning).
"Where am I?" I repeat my question in a stern heavy voice.
My dry throat feels pricked by tenths of needles. The effort of talking makes me feel like a fucking hero for succeeding to spell some fucking simple words.
"You and your friend are on a medical flight to Italy. Sicily," he replies.
"What? Why?" I ask, becoming worried about being taken so fucking far from my home.
"Sir, do you know your name?" he ignores my question.
"I'm fucking Lucas Tate. Who the fuck are you?" I growl, pissed.
"You and your friend have been badly hurt in an explosion. You got out of that blast worse than your friend, Mr. Tate. It took you a while to wake up," he keeps bubbling things in no way near to my interest.
Why the fucking Italy?
"He's not my fucking friend," I mumbled, remembering how Benito tried to take me out of that warehouse and save my life.
He's not my friend, he has never been my friend. He's the one to have taken Becca away from me.
He made her his!
Even so, why the hell would he risk his life to save mine?
I take one more look at him, my mind twisting all sorts of thoughts, possibilities, and reasons, and none of them seems strong enough to make him risk death for my sake.
"You two have been brought to the hospital by a friend of yours, so he said, but... he didn't make it," the male nurse says, and my eyes pierce his black ones. "That's how we knew who you were and we could contact your family. You are being sent to Italy on their request."
"Do you know his name?" I ask.
"He only said Gio."
Fuck! My Gio! My brother, my best friend, my eyes at the back of my head, my mind reader. As usual, he hasn't failed me. He saved my life for the nth time, the last time.
"In another hand, there was no time for them to reach NY, so they requested that you two travel to Italy at once and they said they would meet you there. They didn't seem to really believe we found you," he continues talking shit I don't care about.
Pretty talkative this... nobody.
"What about him?" I ask, motioning my head towards Benito. "What's his situation?"
"Well, we were hoping you could help us because... he didn't know to tell us his name or anything else about himself. Unfortunately, he suffered amnesia but clinically... he's better than you, sir," the lady nurse finally speaks.
I frown my eyes at her, and I'm almost afraid to ask. I look down along my body and I see I'm missing nothing. My legs are where they're supposed to be, and my arms as well.
"What do you mean? What's wrong with me?" I ask at a fast pace, almost cutting short the words.
It's not the first time I'm being shot. What the hell can be worse now?
"I'll call the doctor. He'll explain to you in better terms what your situation is," she says and leaves the cabin just to come back a few minutes later with the doctor, I presume.
"Hello Mr. Tate, my name is doctor Malldini, and I'll be the one to proceed with your surgery and recovery," he speaks once reaching next to my bed.
"What the fuck is wrong with me?" I interrupt his bubbling.
"Well, because of the blast, your spine has been slightly shattered but strong enough to have some damaged bones that are pressuring some specific nerves. Because of that... you are paralyzed from the neck down."
"What the fuck does that mean? I can't move? I can't walk? Am I just a fucking casket? Fucking shit!" I groan and curse in anger.
"No, that means we'll proceed a surgery on you, and I'm confident that this surgery plus a therapy will be successful enough to put you back on your feet," he explains cordially, speaking at a specific pace as if I'm dumb, but I choose to ignore that.
In the back of my mind, I know he is doing everything he can, and maybe even more. Been there, fucking done that! It's not the first time.
I keep silent for a few good minutes, processing the new me. I can't believe I'm starting this all over again.
"How long was I out?" I ask the doctor.
"Three days. Your friend over there made it two days earlier."
"He's not my fucking friend!" I shout at the doctor.
"Right..." he says, looking all amused.
"What is wrong with him?"
"Well, clinically he's fine, some burns, broken ribs but nothing major. We were hoping you would help him remember about himself. Maybe if you could tell us his name..."
"Vincenzo Benito," I say.
"Is this my name?" I hear Benito asking.
I turn my eyes towards him just to meet the saddest eyes I've ever seen in my life. I stare for a few moments, feeling responsible while his look holds only a dumb sorrow.
"Yeah, that's your name," I finally say, struggling to sound calm.
"Are we... friends?"
"No, Benito, we're not fucking friends! We're enemies! You slept with my wife, you fucking asshole! That makes you a fucking enemy, Benito!" I shout back at him.
How much I wished I could stand up and curl my hands around his neck, choking him till his eyes pop out.
But then again, I remember him fighting to pull me out of that warehouse.
Fucking prick! Don't tell me I owe him now!
"If only I had a Swearing Jar...," the doctor mumbles to himself.
Vincenzo's eyes are still glued to me, blank, sad, empty like a fucking dumb idiot.
"Hey man, I don't even remember your wife," he finally says.
"Well, you better not, fuckhead!"
*****
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