“Thank you, doctor.”
I nodded then extricated myself from the room. There’d been an issue of medication titration that hadn’t actually been an emergency after all, but an overly vigilant and unsure new nurse decided to page me anyway. That was fine—I’d rather they were careful.
I stepped into the hallway and checked my phone. I’d felt a new text come in while I was in the room. I stared at the screen and felt my pulse double as I read the words over twice.
I didn’t think. I started running.
I got some looks from staff, but fuck them. I reached the stairs and flew down them, practically jumping two at a time. I hit the door at the bottom and sprinted through the lobby and out the front. I wasn’t far from home, and if I kept moving, I could get there in two minutes. I growled and gasped for breath, not thinking, just running as fast as I could toward home and toward Erica.
The words played over in my mind again and again: Cosimo is here. He attacked me. I felt so angry I could barely breathe and my legs and chest burned from running as I dodged past a stroller and a group of teenagers and endless young business people in cheap suits. I wanted to scream and growl and throw punches but I had to keep moving, couldn’t stop, couldn’t slow down.
Erica was in trouble and that bastard came back.
He told me he would. I thought he was bluffing, but clearly, I was wrong. He attacked Erica and it was my fault that I let him, my fault that I stepped aside and let it happen. God damn me for being stupid enough to leave her alone even for a second, especially when we hadn’t sealed the deal completely yet.
I saw red, my vision clouded with rage, and finally reached the front door. I fumbled at the lock and managed to fish my keys from my pocket. I got it open and flung the door wide, stepping inside. I was about to yell for Erica when I heard a shout and a bang from upstairs.
I didn’t hesitate. I threw myself up the steps and reached the landing. I heard another scream, definitely Erica, but it was muffled. There was more banging, like someone tried to get in through a door. I ran to her room and stared at Cosimo standing outside of her bathroom, slamming his shoulder against it over and over. He grunted and looked crazed, and I knew he hadn’t noticed me yet.
I grabbed the first thing I saw. A small porcelain statue of a dog sitting on his hind legs rested on her dresser to my left. I grabbed it, flipped it upside down, and stalked over to him.
“Hey, fuckface,” I said, and he looked up just as I smashed the statue down over his head.
He let out a strange grunt and a slash of red appeared on his scalp. He stumbled but didn’t go down, and turned to me, rage in his eyes, wound bleeding freely. He charged me and I hit him against with the statue, shattering it against the side of his face. His momentum carried him into me, and I smashed my knee up against his face.
He didn’t drop, the crazy bastard, although I thought I felt his nose break. He pushed me back against the bed and tried to grab my throat with one hand. He scrambled for something in his jacket with the other, and I smashed my forehead forward, hitting him in the face. He grunted as I swatted against the hand on my throat and grabbed the wrist that slipped inside his jacket.
“Fuck you,” he growled. “You fucking shit. You fucking bastard.” He raved like a lunatic, and I felt what he was trying to grab: a knife in a small sheath tucked into his jacket pocket.
I wrapped my hand around the handle and slid the blade free. He grunted and hit me in the face once, twice, and tried the wrestle the knife from my hands. I turned him, threw him onto the bed, and wrenched the knife from his hands. He got to his feet and jumped at me, trying to hit my face and head with his fists, and I did the one thing I knew I shouldn’t have done, the one thing I knew was a huge mistake.
I plunged the knife into his chest.
He gasped, shocked. It slid in through his ribs and blood gushed out over my hands. I shoved him away and he staggered, slammed against the dresser, then dropped to the floor. He convulsed, staring up with me with wide, shocked eyes, and I watched him bleed out and go still.
I stood there, not moving, heart racing. The violence had been so sudden, and so intense. I hadn’t fully processed what just happened as I turned to the bathroom door.