Chapter 263

• SERA was kept sedated for the first few days after she arrived at Luca’s. She’d suffered a collapsed lung during the trip, but otherwise had relatively minor injuries, all things considered. The first bullet had gone straight through her shoulder. The second they had to remove at the hospital. It had also torn through her small intestine, but the doctors were able to patch her up. She’d lost a lot of blood, but somehow, she’d made it through.
• I had her put upstairs in our bed, and during that time, I never left her side except to shower and use the bathroom. Lisa or Veda brought food up for me. And on occasion, Luca or Tristan would stop in and give me updates on what they’d found out about the shooters. Unfortunately, it wasn’t much. No one had gotten a plate number from the vehicle, and since the shooter had most of his face covered, I wasn’t able to recognize him. But I wasn’t concerned. The truth would come out sooner or later. It always did.
• I’d pulled one of the chairs from over by the window to the bed, and that was where I spent most of my time when I wasn’t sleeping beside her. So that’s where I was when I heard her voice, raspy from disuse, for the first time in way too long.