Nothing prepared me for the moment my dying wife was wheeled past while my hand was wrapped around another woman’s fingers

I stood in the hospital restroom, leaning over the porcelain sink.

The water was running scalding hot, steam fogging the mirror until my reflection was reduced to a dark, menacing silhouette.

I grabbed the industrial soap dispenser, slamming the pump down four, five, six times until a thick, chemical lather covered my forearms. I dug my nails into my skin, scrubbing with a ferocity that tore off the top layer of epidermis.

Clara’s blood washed away in swirling pink ribbons down the drain.

Yet no matter how hard I scrubbed, no matter how raw and blistering my hands became, the stain remained burned into my retinas.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her wedding ring on that gurney. I saw the ultrasound image of my unborn child. And I saw myself, sitting in an armchair with a smirk on my face, stroking Serena’s blonde hair.

A sudden, blinding wave of self-hatred detonated in my chest.

I pulled back my right fist and drove it directly into the center of the mirror.

The glass exploded into a thousand silver shards. Shrapnel bit deep into my knuckles, blood welling up from four deep gashes across my fingers, splashing into the sink alongside the running water. The physical pain was a relief. It was a drop of rain in a desert of agony.

The bathroom door creaked open.

Mateo walked in, holding a fresh, dry towel and a black wool coat. He didn't flinch at the shattered glass or the blood dripping from my hand. He had served my father for twenty years before serving me. He knew what a Valente looked like when the beast broke through the leash.

"The surgeon just finished, Dominic," Mateo said quietly.

I turned the faucet off with my bleeding fist and grabbed the towel, wrapping it tightly around my knuckles without bothering to disinfect the cuts. "Is she alive?"

"She survived the operating table," Mateo answered, choosing his words with surgical precision. "They removed her ruptured spleen, repaired two arterial lacerations in her abdomen, and set the fractures in her left leg and ribs. But the head trauma is extensive. Subdural hematoma. They had to relieve intracranial pressure."

My throat closed up. "And the baby?"

Mateo’s eyes softened with genuine wonder. "The child has a heartbeat. The obstetrician called it an anatomical miracle. But Clara is in a medically induced coma. They are transferring her to the Neurological Intensive Care Unit on the ninth floor. The next forty-eight hours will determine if her brain function recovers... or if she slips away."

I pulled the coat from Mateo’s arm, shrugging into it, feeling the cold weight of my shoulder holster settle against my ribs.

"Who hit the car, Mateo?"

Mateo’s posture changed. The sorrow vanished, replaced by the rigid, lethal discipline of a syndicate soldier.

"An armored Ford F-350 registered to a shell company in Gary, Indiana. The driver was a heavy named Frank 'The Anvil' Caruso. He’s Lorenzo Moretti’s primary enforcer on the South Side."

"Where is he?"

"Our scouts tracked the truck to an abandoned cold storage warehouse off 51st Street," Mateo replied. "Lorenzo is there right now with twenty men. They’re celebrating. They think Tommy’s death and Clara’s crash broke our logistics spine. They think you're still sitting by a mistress's bedside, paralyzed."

I looked at my reflection in the surviving shard of mirror on the wall.

The man staring back was no longer a CEO. He was no longer a polished political donor who wore bespoke Italian wool and shook hands with senators.

He was a monster with blood on his hands and hellfire in his lungs.

"Call the family," I commanded, my voice dropping into a lethal, guttural register that made the hair on Mateo’s arms stand up. "Call every Capo, every soldier, every button man who owes fealty to the Valente name. Empty the armory in Cicero. Bring the heavy armor. Bring the breaching charges."

"Dominic," Mateo warned cautiously. "If we hit Moretti on his home turf with that kind of force, the Chicago Police Department and the feds will turn this city into a war zone by sunrise."