She still did not fall.
The fourth bullet struck beneath her collarbone. The fifth tore through her upper arm. The sixth entered her side. The seventh slammed into her hip as she twisted over Sophie, shielding the child with her own body.
Someone was shouting.
Glass shattered.
Men drew weapons from everywhere at once.
Leah heard the eighth shot but did not feel it. Maybe it missed. Maybe it hit stone. Maybe her body had already gone too numb to count.
All she knew was the smell of burned sugar from the ruined candles, the weight of Sophie under her, and a little girl’s voice screaming into Leah’s ear, “Miss Leah! Miss Leah!”
Then Nico Vitali was there.
Witnesses would later swear he crossed twenty feet in less than a heartbeat.
One moment he was by the head table, the next he was on his knees in a spray of cake, blood, and broken china, one arm hauling Sophie out from under Leah while the other pulled a gun from beneath his jacket and fired twice toward the hedges.
He did not empty the magazine. He fired two controlled shots, then stopped.
“Get her inside!” he barked.
Not Sophie.
Leah.
That was the first thing that stunned his own men.
The second was that he dropped the gun almost immediately and pressed both hands to Leah’s wounds instead.
“Stay with me,” he said.
His voice was low. Steady. Not pleading, not panicked. But Leah saw his face through the blur and realized she had never seen a man look more dangerous than when he was trying not to be afraid.
Sophie was crying so hard she could barely breathe. One of the guards tried to carry her away, but she clung to Leah’s blood-slick hand.
“I’m okay,” Leah tried to tell her.
Blood filled her mouth before the words got out.
“Look at me,” Nico said.
She did.
