Chapter 1 - The Ring From a Dead Man
The gunshot exploded before I could move.
A guard beside Alessandro jerked backward and slammed into the wall.
Logan screamed.
I threw myself over my son while three men drew weapons at once.
Alessandro did not duck.
He had been dead less than ten minutes earlier, and somehow he was the calmest person in the room.
"GET HER DOWN!" he barked.
Another shot struck the metal cabinet behind me.
A man in a gray suit lunged toward Alessandro's bed.
The huge guard who had been on his knees when Alessandro died hit him so hard both men crashed into the IV pole.
Doctors scattered.
Someone locked the trauma-suite doors.
I pressed Logan beneath me until he stopped fighting.
"Mommy—"
"Stay down."
The fight lasted maybe eight seconds.
It felt like eight minutes.
When it ended, the shooter was on the floor with a knee against his spine.
Blood spread beneath the guard he had hit first.
Alessandro's monitor screamed above all of it.
His heart rate had climbed past one-forty.
A resident ran toward him.
Alessandro shoved the man's hand away.
"The ring."
I realized I still had it.
David's ring.
My fingers shook as I turned it under the surgical lights.
Inside the band were the words I had paid an extra thirty dollars to engrave the week before our wedding.
C + D — STILL HERE.
My knees nearly gave out.
Only two people had known those words were there.
Me.
And David.
I looked at Alessandro.
"Where did you get this?"
His lips were colorless.
"A courier."
"From who?"
"Your husband."
I laughed once because my body had to do something.
"My husband is dead."
"No."
"I buried him."
"You buried a body."
My hand closed around the ring.
"When?"
He understood the question.
"Three weeks ago."
The room tilted.
David had supposedly been dead for twenty-two months.
Logan pushed his face into my side.
I forced myself to breathe.
Then I noticed the red thread looped through the ring.
Thin embroidery thread.
David used to tie red thread around the spare house key when he traveled.
I had once asked why.
He had grinned and said, "Red means the official story is wrong."
I had thought he was making fun of spy movies.
Alessandro saw me staring at it.
"You recognize that."
I looked up.
"Where is he?"
Alessandro's gaze shifted.
Not to the doctors.
Not to the shooter on the floor.
To one of his own men standing beside the locked door.
The man's right hand had disappeared inside his jacket.
Alessandro's face changed.
"Not here."
I turned.
The guard's pistol cleared his coat.
Alessandro shouted, "GET HER DOWN!"
The muzzle flashed.
May you like
CUT.
