Chapter 6 - Blood and Ice
Screams tore through the emergency room.
Glass showered across the linoleum like hail. Doctors, nurses, and patients dove behind gurneys and reception counters. The sharp, metallic scent of cordite filled the air instantly.
Through the shattered glass doors stepped four men wearing tactical vests and black balaclavas, armed with compact submachine guns.
“The girl!” a harsh, accented voice barked in the smoke. “Grab the red-haired girl!”
My blood turned to ice. Lorenzo hadn't just followed us; he had breached a hospital in broad daylight.
Before I could move, a heavy arm wrapped around my waist, lifting me off my feet and violently dragging me behind the reinforced concrete pillar of the nurse's station.
“Stay down!” Enzo snarled, drawing his weapon and firing three rapid shots around the edge of the pillar. A mercenary collapsed to the floor with a wet thud.
Return fire tore into the concrete, sending shards of plaster and dust into our hair. Enzo fired again, but a burst of automatic rounds caught him in the side. He grunted, stumbling against the desk, his weapon skittering across the blood-slicked tile.
“Enzo!” I screamed, dropping to my knees beside him.
“Run, Miss Tessa...” he gasped, clutching his bleeding abdomen. “Back stairwell... run!”
A heavy boot stepped around the corner of the pillar. The black barrel of a submachine gun leveled directly at my forehead.
The mercenary smiled behind his mask. “Found you, little princess.”
*Crack.*
The mercenary’s head snapped backward as a crimson mist blossomed behind him. He dropped like a stone.
Standing in the shattered entryway of the emergency room, framed by the pouring rain and flashing red emergency lights, was Mateo.
He held a semi-automatic pistol in each hand. His face was a mask of cold, merciless fury that belonged to the devil himself. He didn't take cover. He advanced through the smoke with terrifying speed, firing with surgical precision.
*Crack. Crack. Crack.*
Two more attackers dropped instantly, their weapons clattering against the floor.
The last mercenary spun around, raising his rifle toward Mateo. Mateo closed the distance in three strides, batting the barrel aside with his left arm. In one fluid, brutal movement, Mateo slammed his elbow into the man’s throat, spun him around, and snapped his neck with a sickening crunch.
Silence descended upon the shattered triage bay, broken only by the wail of distant sirens and the hiss of ruptured oxygen lines.
Mateo stood amid the bodies, his chest heaving, rain dripping from his dark hair onto his collar.
His eyes scanned the room wildly until they locked onto me, huddled on the floor beside the bleeding bodyguard.
“Tessa!”
He crossed the room in two strides, dropping to his knees beside me. His hands were everywhere—checking my shoulders, my face, my arms—his touch frantic and trembling.
“Are you hit? Did they touch you? Look at me, Tessa, are you bleeding?”
“I’m fine! I’m not hit!” I cried, grabbing his lapels to anchor him. “Mateo, I’m fine! But you... oh God, Mateo, look at your side!”
His charcoal coat was shredded on the right side. Dark, viscous blood was pouring through his white shirt, soaking through the fabric with horrifying speed. A high-caliber round had grazed his ribs, tearing open a six-inch furrow of flesh.
“It’s a scratch,” Mateo breathed, his jaw clenching as a wave of pain rippled across his face.
“That is not a scratch, you stubborn idiot!” I snapped, my nursing instincts instantly overriding my terror. I tore a clean roll of gauze from a nearby medical cart, pressing it firmly against the wound. Mateo let out a low, ragged hiss between his teeth, his hand coming up to grip my wrist.
“Enzo,” Mateo rasped, looking down at his bodyguard.
“He’s stable,” I said quickly, assessing Enzo’s wound with practiced eyes. “The bullet passed through the lateral flank. It missed the liver. The trauma team is already coming down the hall—they’ll save him. But we have to leave before the police lock down this entire precinct.”
Mateo stared at me, pain and disbelief warring in his storm-gray eyes. “You’re telling me to run?”
“I’m telling you that if you bleed out in this hallway, I’ll never forgive you,” I whispered, my voice trembling with fierce emotion. “Now get up.”
***
We didn't go back to the penthouse.
Mateo’s backup drivers whisked us away in a nondescript sedan, navigating through back alleys until we pulled into a discreet, subterranean garage beneath an industrial warehouse near the Calumet River. It was a secondary safehouse, spartan and secure.
Inside the sterile, concrete-walled apartment, I shoved Mateo down onto a stainless-steel medical examination table.
“Take off the shirt,” I ordered, ripping open an emergency surgical kit I had grabbed from the vehicle.
Mateo unbuttoned his soaked shirt with slow, agonizing movements, tossing it onto the floor. The sight of his bare torso took my breath away—he was carved of dense muscle and sinew, his skin a tapestry of dark ink and old battle scars. But the fresh wound along his right ribs was angry and deep, blood welling with every ragged breath he took.
I washed my hands frantically, snapped on latex gloves, and drew up a syringe of local anesthetic.
“This is going to sting,” I warned, keeping my voice steady.
“Do it,” he grunted, gripping the edges of the metal table until his knuckles turned bone-white.
I injected the lidocaine around the margins of the laceration, waiting forty agonizing seconds for the tissue to numb. My hands, which had trembled in the restaurant, were now rock-steady. I threaded the curved needle with black nylon suture, my training taking complete control.
*Bite, roll, tie.*
*Bite, roll, tie.*
With every stitch, Mateo watched me. His gray eyes never left my face. The pain must have been excruciating despite the anesthetic, but he didn't make a single sound.
“You’re good at this,” he murmured, his voice husky and rough in the quiet room.
“I told you I was,” I muttered, tying off the eighth stitch. “I didn't spend three years in trauma simulation to let a stubborn mafia boss bleed all over my clean clothes.”
“You kissed me this morning.”
My fingers froze on the needle driver.
My heart slammed against my ribs with enough force to bruise. Slowly, I looked up from the wound.
Mateo was leaning forward, his broad shoulders hunched slightly against the ache, his face mere inches from mine. The intensity in his gaze was suffocating.
“You kissed me,” he repeated, softer this time. “Why?”
“Because...” I swallowed, my throat dry as sand. “Because I was terrified you wouldn't be there when I came out.”
Mateo reached up with his left hand, his warm, calloused fingers cupping the nape of my neck. He pulled me gently forward until our foreheads rested against each other. His breath smelled of mint and adrenaline, warm and dizzying against my lips.
“I will always be there, Tessa,” he whispered fiercely. “In this life, in the next, through every war this family starts—I will always come for you.”
The last barrier around my heart shattered into dust.
I dropped the surgical instruments onto the tray. My hands came up, burying into the damp, dark curls of his hair. When my lips met his, the world outside ceased to exist.
The kiss was desperate, hungry, fueled by the terrifying realization of how close we had both come to death. Mateo groaned low in his throat, pulling me up against his chest, his uninjured arm wrapping around my waist with possessive, unyielding strength. His lips moved against mine with a fierce, demanding tenderness that sent liquid fire coursing straight down to my toes.
When we finally parted, both of us gasping for air, Mateo pressed his lips to my temple, his heart pounding in sync with mine.
Then the encrypted satellite phone on the counter shrieked.
Mateo picked it up, pressing speakerphone without breaking eye contact with me.
“Mateo,” Salvatore’s frantic voice crackled through the static. “Lorenzo has taken the terminal docks at Navy Pier. He has thirty men. And he sent me a video.”
Mateo’s voice turned to ice. “What video?”
May you like
“He has your younger sister, Bianca,” Salvatore choked out, weeping openly. “He said if you and the Carbone girl do not arrive at Warehouse Four by midnight... he will execute her on live camera.”
***
