Chapter 9 - The Final Reckoning
Gabriel stumbled forward, dropping his empty pistol onto the floor as his knees finally buckled beneath him. He caught himself against the base of the grand staircase, sliding down until he sat heavily on the bottom step, pressing his palm desperately against his bleeding side. Simona didn't hesitate. She threw her medical bag down the stairs, scrambled down after it in a blur of motion, and dropped to her knees beside him on the blood-stained marble. "You absolute idiot," she sobbed, ripping open her medical bag and tearing into a package of sterile gauze and surgical thread. "You arrogant, stubborn, bleeding idiot!" Gabriel looked up at her, his face pale as paper, a weak, crooked smile touching his bloodless lips. "I told you..." he whispered, his voice failing him as his eyes fluttered. "I told you... I wasn't going to die today." "Shut up and don't move!" Simona ordered, her hands moving with frantic, desperate speed, pressing the thick gauze pads directly over the torn wound, applying immediate pressure to stem the massive hemorrhage. "Moretti!" she screamed toward the smoke-filled foyer. "Get over here and help me hold pressure! If he goes into hypovolmic shock before we get an IV started, he's gone!" Moretti, bruised and bleeding from a cut on his forehead, limped out from the wreckage of the banister, dropping heavily to his knees on the opposite side of Gabriel. "Dottoressa," Moretti breathed, his face carved with genuine terror. "Is he—" "He's alive," Simona snapped, her voice breaking as tears mixed with the sweat on her face. "For now. But I need sterile saline, adrenaline, and a surgical kit brought up from the emergency bay immediately. Move!" For the next twenty minutes, the grand foyer of the villa transformed into an improvised MASH unit. While Moretti secured the perimeter and confirmed that Dante Rossi’s remaining men had retreated into the Umbrian hills in total disarray, Simona fought for the life of the man she had loved six years ago in Palermo—the man who had secretly watched over her and their son from the shadows of Rome. By the time the private medical team arrived to wheel Gabriel into the estate’s secure surgical suite, his pulse was strong, steady, and anchoring him safely to the world of the living.
