Four nurses had already fled the penthouse before midnight, and the fifth was stuffing medical supplies into her bag when security warned me that Chicago’s

The penthouse study smelled of old paper, aged bourbon, and gun oil.

Luca laid the contents of the safe across the heavy mahogany desk: three unregistered Glock 19s, stacks of bound hundred-dollar bills totaling at least a quarter of a million dollars, and a series of legal deeds for commercial shipping docks along the Calumet River.

I stood beside Gabriel, watching him closely as he sat in a high-backed leather chair, his legs stretched out stiffly before him. Every breath he took was an act of raw discipline. His back was screaming from the trauma of the extraction, and the neurotoxin had left his peripheral nerves twitching with involuntary fasciculations.

"Close your eyes," I commanded, kneeling before him on the parquet floor with an alcohol swab and an ampoule of methylprednisolone.

"Why?"

"Because if you watch the needle go into your quadriceps, your muscles will tense, and the spasm will lock your knee."

Gabriel held my gaze for three seconds, challenging my authority, before slowly closing his eyes. His dark lashes rested against high, aristocratic cheekbones that looked like they had been chiseled out of granite. Up close, without the feral snarl of fever and pain, he was an extraordinarily handsome man—rough-hewn, dangerous, but possessing an innate elegance that bespoke generations of old-world mafia royalty.

I plunged the high-dose corticosteroid deep into his vastus lateralis muscle.

Gabriel’s jaw tightened until the tendons in his neck looked like cables, but he didn't make a sound. Not a flinch. Not a groan.

"That will reduce the spinal cord edema," I explained, discarding the needle into an empty water bottle. "Next is an intramuscular injection of neostigmine. It’s an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor. It will artificially flood your synapses with the neurotransmitter the toxin was trying to destroy. It will give you your muscle tone back for roughly four hours."

Gabriel opened his eyes, staring down at me as I knelt between his knees. "And the side effects?"

"Nausea, profuse sweating, extreme abdominal cramps, and an elevated heart rate," I said bluntly. "You will feel like your veins are filled with boiling battery acid. If your heart gives out, you will have a massive coronary before you even make it to the lobby."

A faint, wicked smirk touched Gabriel's lips. "Sounds like a standard Sunday dinner with my family."

"I'm serious, Gabriel," I said, placing my hand firmly on his knee. Beneath the fabric of his trousers, the muscle was trembling violently. "This is chemical madness. You are treating your central nervous system like a rented car."

"I don't have the luxury of caution, Elena," he said, his voice dropping into that deep, magnetic register that seemed to command the very air in the room. "My grandfather built this syndicate with two revolvers and a warehouse on Taylor Street. My father died defending our freight routes from the cartel. I spent seven years in federal prison rather than give up three names on a piece of paper. I will not lose my life's work to a cowardly cousin who kills with poisoned needles in private clinics."

He reached out, his thumb lightly grazing the high curve of my cheekbone, just below my eye. The touch was unexpectedly gentle, almost reverent, completely at odds with the violent world he commanded.

"You risked everything tonight for a man you don't even know," Gabriel whispered.

"I took the Hippocratic Oath," I said, my voice faltering slightly as the heat from his skin radiated into mine. "I don't let people die if I can stop it."

"Many people take oaths," Gabriel replied softly. "Politicians. Judges. Priests. Every single one of them breaks them when the guns come out. You didn't."

The tension between us broke when Luca returned to the study, holding a garment bag in one hand and a polished ebony cane with an ornate silver handle shaped like a lion’s head in the other.

"The escalades haven't moved," Luca reported, his voice low. "Vincent’s lieutenant, Marco Ramos, is down there. He's got six men stationed across the lobby and the underground garage. They’re checking every vehicle that leaves."

"They won't expect us to leave through the front," Gabriel said, his hand dropping from my face as his professional, cold demeanor snapped back into place. "Where is the freight tunnel?"

"Sealed three years ago by the city," Luca answered. "Construction on the new subway line blocked the western exit."

"Then we go through the front," Gabriel said coldly.

"Boss, you can barely stand," Luca warned. "If Marco sees you leaning on a nurse, he won't even wait for the council meeting. He’ll execute all three of us right on the sidewalk."

"Then I won't lean on her," Gabriel said. He gripped the arms of the leather chair. "Elena. Give me the neostigmine."

I hesitated for half a second, then snapped the glass neck of the ampoule. "Gabriel, once I inject this, there is no turning back. You have four hours before the cholinergic crash hits you. When it does, your nervous system will collapse completely."