Chapter 6 - THE ANTIDOTE
The white gas billowed from the vents, thick and acrid, burning my throat the second I inhaled it.
“Cover their faces!” Damien shouted, coughing violently as he sprinted toward the control panel by the heavy steel door.
I ripped off my sweater, tearing the fabric in half, and pressed it gently over the twins' noses and mouths. Enzo started crying, a weak, muffled sound that shattered my heart, while Luca simply whimpered, too exhausted from the withdrawal to fight.
“Damien, the ventilation override!” I yelled, my eyes stinging.
“He cut the wires from the outside!” Damien slammed his fist against the steel console in frustration. The monitors flickered as the gas grew thicker. “We have to open the door.”
“If we open it, they’ll kill you,” I said, coughing.
“If we don’t, my sons die in here,” Damien said, his eyes burning with a fierce, sacrificial light. He looked at me, grabbing my face in his large hands. “When the door opens, I’m going to rush them. You stay low. You grab the boys, and you run down the maintenance corridor to the garage. Take my car. The keys are in the ignition.”
“No,” I choked out, tears streaming down my face. “Damien, I can’t leave you—”
“You have to,” he commanded, pressing a hard, desperate kiss to my forehead. “Save my boys, Ellie. Save them.”
Damien turned to the keypad and punched in the manual override.
The heavy steel deadbolts clacked loudly.
The door hissed and began to swing outward.
Damien roared, raising his weapon, and charged through the opening into the hallway before the door was even fully wide.
Gunfire erupted instantly. Deafening, chaotic, echoing violently off the marble walls.
I stayed low to the ground, the thick gas hiding my movements. I grabbed both babies, clutching them to my chest, and crawled through the doorway into the chaos.
The hallway was a warzone. Damien was a force of nature, moving with brutal efficiency. Two of Leo’s men were already on the floor, but there were five more, firing wildly.
Damien took a bullet to the shoulder, the impact spinning him against the wall, but he didn't go down. He fired back, dropping another man.
“Get the girl!” Leo shouted from the end of the hall, pointing directly at me as I scrambled toward the dark maintenance tunnel.
A massive enforcer stepped into my path, raising a rifle.
I closed my eyes, bracing my body over the twins to take the impact.
BANG.
The enforcer’s head snapped back, and he collapsed heavily to the floor.
I opened my eyes.
Standing over the body was a man in a bloody suit, holding a smoking pistol.
It was Julian Rossi.
I gasped in shock. "You're dead!"
Rossi wiped a smear of fake blood from his forehead, revealing a perfectly intact skull. He grimaced, favoring his shattered knee. "A graze. I paid the sniper to miss the fatal shot. I knew Marcus was going to betray me."
Damien, bleeding heavily from his shoulder, spun around, his gun leveled at Rossi's chest. "Give me one reason not to put a bullet between your eyes right now, Julian."
"Because I have the antidote," Rossi shouted over the gunfire, holding up a small, silver syringe filled with amber liquid. "The SIDS toxin I gave the boys... the withdrawal will eventually cause their organs to shut down. The water you gave them only delayed it. They need this to survive the night."
Damien froze, the gun trembling in his hand.
Leo laughed from down the hall, safe behind his remaining guards. "Oh, Julian, you always were a coward. Damien, don't believe him. He works for me."
"I work for whoever keeps me alive!" Rossi yelled back. He looked at Damien. "Let me walk out of here, Damien. Give me safe passage out of Chicago, and I give you the syringe."
"Do it," Damien said, his voice ragged. "Throw it to her."
Rossi tossed the silver syringe to me. I caught it clumsily, holding it up to the emergency lights.
"Administer half to each boy," Rossi said, backing away toward the rear exit. "They'll stabilize in five minutes."
Rossi turned and limped down the stairwell, disappearing into the dark.
"Ellie, do it!" Damien shouted, providing cover fire as Leo's men regrouped.
I looked at the amber liquid in the syringe. I looked at the twins, whose breathing was becoming agonizingly shallow, their little chests struggling to rise.
I pulled the cap off the needle.
But as I looked at the chemical structure of the liquid through the glass, my medical training kicked in, screaming an alarm in the back of my mind.
Amber liquid. Viscous. Smelling faintly of copper, not sterile saline.
"No," I whispered.
"Ellie, what are you waiting for?!" Damien roared, dropping another guard. He was bleeding badly, his white shirt soaked in crimson.
"Damien, it's a trap!" I screamed over the gunfire. "This isn't an antidote! It's concentrated digitalis! If I inject this, their hearts will stop instantly!"
Leo’s cruel laughter echoed through the hall. "She's smarter than you, little brother! Rossi was never going to save them. The SIDS toxin was just a primer. This is the kill shot."
Damien looked at me, absolute horror in his eyes. He had almost ordered me to execute his own sons.
The distraction cost him.
One of Leo's men stepped out from behind a pillar and fired a shotgun.
The blast caught Damien in the side.
Damien collapsed to the marble floor with a sickening thud, his gun sliding across the blood-slicked tiles.
"NO!" I screamed.
Leo stepped out of the shadows, walking slowly toward his bleeding, defeated brother. He pulled a silver St. Jude medallion from beneath his shirt, identical to the one Damien wore, and kissed it mockingly.
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"You always were too soft, Damien," Leo sneered, standing over him, raising his weapon. "A mafia king cannot be a family man. You let love make you weak. Now, watch me fix the Moretti bloodline."
Leo aimed his gun directly at the babies in my arms.
