Chapter 6 - THE UNDERGROUND CLINIC
The words slammed into me like a freight train.
Colored water.
I threw myself into the passenger seat. “Drive!” I roared at Emily.
She slammed the accelerator, the Civic’s tires squealing as we tore out of the alley, leaving Silvio in the rearview mirror.
“He was lying,” Emily said frantically, swerving through Manhattan traffic. “He had to be lying. Mia and Valentina woke up!”
I turned to the backseat.
Mia and Valentina were awake, crying softly, clutching each other.
But Lucia was utterly still, her skin taking on an ashen, grey tint.
“The dose I spilled,” Emily choked out. “Lucia didn’t get enough of whatever it was. He wasn’t lying, Dominic. It wasn’t a medical antidote. It was adrenaline. A stimulant to temporarily wake them up. It didn’t neutralize the poison.”
My heart stopped.
Silvio hadn’t just wanted to kill my daughters. He wanted me to watch them die, thinking I had saved them.
“How far is the clinic?” I demanded.
“Ten minutes,” Emily said, running a red light.
I climbed over the center console, squeezing into the back seat. I pulled Lucia onto my lap. She was so light. So fragile.
“Lucia,” I whispered, pressing two fingers to her neck. Her pulse was a weak, erratic flutter. “Stay with me, baby. Please.”
Fourteen months I had spent being a ghost in my own house. I let my grief blind me to the fact that they needed a father, not a warlord.
“Daddy’s here,” I choked out, tears finally breaking free, falling onto her pale cheeks. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Lucia’s eyelids fluttered. She didn’t open them, but her small hand weakly grasped my pinky finger.
We skidded to a halt in an abandoned industrial park in Queens. Emily threw the car into park and leaped out, grabbing Lucia from my arms.
I carried Mia and Valentina.
We ran toward a rusted metal door at the back of a dilapidated warehouse. Emily pounded on it with a frantic rhythm. Two knocks. Pause. Three knocks.
A sliding slot opened. A pair of dark eyes looked out.
“Emily?” a man’s voice said, sounding shocked.
“Open the door, David! Now!” she screamed.
Heavy deadbolts clicked. The door swung open.
A tall man in blue scrubs stood there. He looked from Emily to me, his eyes widening in recognition. “Dominic Russo. What the hell—”
“She’s poisoned!” Emily shoved past him, carrying Lucia into what looked like a fully sterilized trauma room hidden inside the warehouse.
David didn’t ask questions. He switched instantly into doctor mode. He grabbed Lucia, laying her on a stainless steel gurney. He hooked her up to monitors that immediately began blaring a frantic, low-heart-rate alarm.
“What’s the toxin?” David demanded, shining a penlight into Lucia’s unresponsive eyes.
“I don’t know,” I said, my chest heaving. “Slow acting. Sedative mixed with something lethal. Rosa administered it an hour ago.”
David swore under his breath. “I need a blood tox screen, but that takes twenty minutes. She doesn’t have twenty minutes.”
“I have the vial!” Emily cried, pulling the empty poison vial from her pocket. She had snatched it from the vault floor.
David grabbed it, sniffing the rim. He touched a drop of the residue to his gloved finger and examined it under a bright light.
“Foxglove extract,” David said grimly. “Digitalis. It stops the heart by slowing the electrical impulses. If we don’t push the neutralizing binding agents right now, she goes into full cardiac arrest.”
“Do it,” I commanded.
David moved like lightning. He prepared a massive syringe of a milky white substance and injected it directly into Lucia’s IV line.
Then, we waited.
The heart monitor continued its agonizingly slow beep… beep… beep…
I held Mia and Valentina tight against my chest. They were watching their sister with wide, terrified eyes.
“Please,” I whispered to Isabella, wherever she was. “Don’t take her too. Leave me one good thing.”
Suddenly, the monitor hitched.
The slow beep stuttered.
Then, it sped up.
Beep-beep-beep-beep.
Lucia gasped, a sharp, violent intake of air. Her back arched off the table, and her eyes flew open.
She looked around wildly, panicked, until her eyes locked onto mine.
“Daddy,” she croaked, the word tearing at my soul.
I buried my face in her hair, sobbing uncontrollably. “I’m here, baby. I’m right here.”
Answer one: The girls were safe. David had neutralized the poison.
Open two: We were trapped in a clinic, and Silvio was still hunting us.
Emily slumped against the wall, sliding down to the floor in relief. David wiped sweat from his forehead.
“She’ll need to stay here for at least 24 hours for observation,” David said quietly. “She’s weak, but she’ll live.”
“Thank you,” I said, my voice thick with emotion. I looked at David. “Isabella trusted you. Now I know why.”
David offered a sad smile. “Isabella was a good woman, Dominic. Better than the world she was forced into.”
Suddenly, a loud crash echoed from the front of the warehouse.
The sound of shattering glass and heavy boots hitting concrete.
My blood ran cold.
Silvio hadn’t bought Emily’s bluff. He had tracked us.
I looked down at the empty poison vial still sitting on the metal tray. Attached to the bottom of the glass was a tiny, magnetic GPS tracker.
Silvio hadn’t just poisoned my daughters. He had used them as bait to find out where I would run.
“Lock the trauma room door,” I told David, pulling my pistol and checking the magazine. Fifteen rounds.
“Dominic, you can’t fight an entire hit squad alone,” Emily said, grabbing my arm.
May you like
I looked at her. Then I looked at my three daughters, sitting on the gurney, finally safe, finally together.
“I’m not fighting for an empire anymore, Emily,” I said, chambering a round. “I’m fighting for my family. And I’m going to kill every single monster in that warehouse.”
