Chapter 4 - BLOOD IN THE DINING ROOM
“No!”
I threw myself across the room, tackling Nico flat against the mattress just as a spray of bullets tore through the air where his head had been. Feathers exploded from the pillows, raining down on us like grotesque snow.
“Mommy!” Nico screamed, clapping his hands over his ears.
Adrenaline, sharp and blinding, erased my fear. Instinct took over—an instinct I didn’t know I possessed.
I rolled off the bed, pulling Nico to the floor on the far side, using the heavy oak frame as a shield.
“Dr. Vance!” I screamed, my voice raw. “You’re a doctor! You swore an oath!”
Evelyn laughed, the sound dry and hollow over the crunch of her shoes on the ruined floorboards. “My loyalty is to the syndicate, Elena. Your mother-in-law pays much better than a hospital.”
Footsteps approached the foot of the bed. She was flanking us.
I looked around frantically. My eyes landed on a heavy brass fireplace poker leaning against the stone hearth three feet away.
“Nico, cover your eyes,” I whispered urgently.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
I lunged.
I grabbed the brass poker just as Evelyn rounded the corner of the bed. She raised her gun, but I swung the heavy metal rod with every ounce of strength in my body.
It connected with her wrist with a sickening crack.
Evelyn shrieked, dropping the gun. It clattered across the floorboards.
I didn’t wait for her to recover. I swung again, striking her squarely in the knee. She collapsed, screaming curses in Italian.
I grabbed the submachine gun. The metal was cold and strangely familiar in my hands. My finger slipped over the trigger guard naturally, my stance widening without conscious thought.
Who was I before the fire?
I didn’t have time to wonder.
“Let’s go,” I grabbed Nico’s hand, pulling him up.
We sprinted out of the destroyed bedroom into the dim hallway. The estate was terrifyingly quiet. The heavy carpets absorbed our footsteps.
Where was Matteo?
We reached the top of the grand staircase. Below, the dining room doors were wide open.
A gruesome scene awaited us.
The mahogany table was overturned. Crystal and china lay in thousands of glittering shards. Three of the armed guards lay dead on the marble floor.
And slumped against the overturned table, bleeding heavily from his shoulder and side, was Matteo.
“Matteo!” I screamed, rushing down the stairs with Nico in tow.
His head snapped up. His face was pale, his dark shirt soaked with blood. But when he saw us, a fierce relief washed over his features.
“Elena,” he grunted, trying to push himself up. He failed, slipping on the bloody marble.
I slid to my knees beside him, dropping the gun.
“Where is she?” I demanded, pressing my hands frantically against the wound on his neck. “Where is your mother?”
“Gone,” Matteo gasped, his head rolling back against the wood. “She took her personal guard… went to the underground garage. She knows… she knows you remember.”
“I don’t remember everything,” I sobbed, ripping the hem of my apron off and pressing it hard against his bleeding shoulder. “But I know about Mia.”
Matteo’s eyes flew open. They locked onto mine, wide with shock. “What?”
“The ultrasound,” I cried, pressing harder as he groaned in agony. “I found it. We had twins, Matteo. Nico and Mia. Where is my daughter?”
A tear slipped from the corner of Matteo’s eye, cutting a clean path through the blood and soot on his face.
“My mother,” he choked out. “She told me… she told me only the boy survived the smoke. She told me the girl died in the womb.”
“She lied,” I said fiercely. “She took her.”
Matteo’s hand shot out, gripping my wrist with terrifying strength. “We have to get out of here. Her backup… the syndicate enforcers… they’ll be here in minutes.”
“You can’t walk,” I said, panic rising. The blood was seeping through my makeshift bandage too fast.
“The library,” Matteo wheezed. “Behind the fireplace. There’s a panic room. A tunnel.”
I hauled him up. He leaned heavily against me, his massive weight almost crushing me. Nico pushed from behind, his small hands pressing into his father’s back.
“Push, Papa, push!” Nico cried.
We stumbled through the manor, leaving a smeared trail of blood on the Persian rugs.
We reached the library. Matteo slapped a bloody hand against a hidden panel on the bookshelf. The massive stone fireplace groaned and swung open, revealing a dark, narrow corridor.
We slipped inside just as the sound of screeching tires and slamming car doors echoed from the front driveway. The enforcers had arrived.
The fireplace clicked shut, plunging us into total darkness.
I fumbled along the wall until I found a light switch. A string of dim, flickering bulbs illuminated the concrete tunnel.
At the end of the hall was a reinforced steel door. The Panic Room.
We got inside, and I locked the deadbolts. The room was stocked with medical supplies, weapons, and a bank of security monitors showing the estate above us.
Matteo collapsed onto a cot, his breathing shallow and wet.
“He’s dying!” Nico wailed.
“No, he’s not,” I said, stripping off my sweater. I ran to the medical cabinet.
I pulled out gauze, a trauma kit, and a needle and thread.
I knelt beside Matteo. I tore his shirt open. The bullet had passed clean through his shoulder, but the one in his side was lodged deep.
“Elena, you don’t have to—” Matteo started.
“Shut up,” I snapped, my hands moving with dizzying precision.
I cleaned the wound, my fingers dancing over the trauma site with muscle memory that terrified me. I threaded the needle in a single, fluid motion and began to stitch the ragged flesh of his shoulder.
Matteo watched my hands, his eyes glassy but intensely focused.
When I finished, I tied off the suture with a complex, one-handed surgeon’s knot.
Matteo reached up and touched my blood-stained hand.
“Only one person ever tied that knot for me,” he whispered, his voice full of awe. “When I got stabbed in Palermo.”
I stared at my hands. “How do I know how to do this?”
Matteo smiled weakly. “Because before you were my wife, Elena… you were a trauma surgeon.”
My breath hitched. A doctor. I was a doctor.
Before I could process it, the security monitors above the cot flickered to life.
Audio crackled through the speakers.
It was the main driveway. Matteo’s mother was standing by a black SUV, flanked by heavily armed men.
May you like
She was on a cell phone.
“Burn the estate to the ground,” her voice hissed through the speakers, cold and venomous. “If my son chose the whore over the family, he burns with her. And tell the warehouse… prepare the girl for transport. We’re moving Mia to Italy tonight.”
