Blood and Broken vows

The sheriff made his way forward through the confusion, his men dropping about him, but his eyes fixed on us, his rifle in rest again, "It is all over, d'Agostino! Your son is dying, your empire lies bare--give up and I'll do it in no time! but the eyes of Mantovani twitched again, up upon him, with the feeble smile of his bloody lips, "Strong... girl... love you... always," and his hand fell loose in my hand, his chest heaved once, once, and sank in a dead-light, the light in his eyes fluttered out like a light in the wind. I screamed it then--a sound, not mine, but animal, tearing at my throat at the thought of his death, drowning all in a wave of black, the familiarity of the painful of the consummate, the agonies of losing the love of your life that curled me inside, and was his words of forever now ashes in this godforsaken mountain.

More bullets were coming, and Conti and his arm around my waist drew me to the treeline, Sanna keeping us on, and firing on all sides, but the sheriff was upon us now, too near, and his rifle was swinging my way, with the finger tightening once more. There were no loose ends, he snarled, and the red dot came back to my forehead, this time, burning like a brand, and I did not fight Conti any more, facing it, to find myself numb and empty, and I wondered, assuming Mantovani was dead, what was there to fight anyway? The shot, but not the sheriff, went off--but the sheriff heard it; the shot of the gun bucked Conti into the air, and the bullet struck the sheriff full in the breast, and he went reeling back, rifle falling, blood streaming on his shirt, and his eyes opened with delight.

He dropped on his knees, holding on to the injury, and groaning, You... can not win... but Conti came forward, again plunging, this time above the head, and the body of the sheriff like a puppet with its strings cut the architect of the war was at last struck dumb in his own blood. A silence ensued, interrupted only by the choppers rotating distant, as our men took possession of the area, hauled out the remaining guards, but I was unable to move, unable to think, and my eyes were fixed on the body-less figure of Mantovani, the passion which had so far characterized us being replaced by a hole in my chest.

Conti, who was kneeling next me, choked, "He is gone, Candice; we must go--the feds are after us. But I shook my head, crawling back to Mantovani, with his head in my lap, his head, and rubbing my hair over it, and saying, Wake up; please, Wake up, the denial too human, the sorrow too crude to accept. Sanna followed, with tears on his face, the first tears in his life, and hauled me up, and cod, daughter, but as the chopper touched down, the rotors on its flank plowing the air, cracking my eyes, he uttered with a gasp, faint and and wet, the lips of Mantovani, his chest hitching once, twice, and the voice little more than a whisper, Candice...

The globe was reeling back, and hope soared to adrenaline and I screamed at medics and pressed the wound, "He lives! He's alive!" but when they got him on the stretcher he opened his eyes once more, heartbeat feeble to my fingers, chopper bobbing the air with him in him, and I was left standing on the ground, cursing to any God that was listening that it was not the end.

Back at the farmhouse, our discreet, discreet doctors operated on him in a kind of Operating Room, hours passing to torment, my time outside the door, Mom in my arms, my father praying to himself, and the family watching silently. The doctor at last appeared, with blood on his scrubs, his face grim, and said, He is all right--at present. His heart was only missed by the bullet by a few millimeters though he has lost a lot of blood. Suppose he is spared the night....

I passed him to the room, and falling on his side of the bed, I took the cold hand of Mantovani in mine, promising him love and tomorrow, the intensity which would not yield even with machines fluttering his precarious claim on life. But soon after midnight his monitors suddenly flattened, the alarm went off, and I was pushed aside, with the doctors rushing in, as they shocked his heart, once, twice, and the war had taken its last victim in the small bedroom of a farmhouse.