Her color was wrong. The pallor beneath her olive skin had turned to ash. My heart seized in my chest, and I dropped to my knees beside the gathered crowd, begging anyone, everyone, to help me get her to a hospital. But the onlookers pulled back as though I carried a plague. They averted their eyes, tucked their hands into their pockets, stepped behind one another. No one wanted to be seen touching the granddaughter of a dying Family, a woman branded by scandal. As if dishonor were a disease that spread through skin.
It was the two blood-promised who finally stepped forward from the crowd.
Giancarlo moved first, his expression unreadable as he pulled his car keys from the breast pocket of his charcoal suit. Salvatore appeared at my side without a word, and together we lifted Nonna Elisabetta between us, her frail body lighter than it had any right to be, and carried her to the waiting car. Giancarlo drove. Salvatore and I held her steady in the back seat as the city blurred past the tinted windows.
The hospital smelled of antiseptic and fluorescent grief.