Chapter 2 - The Edge of Death
The emergency room at Northwestern Memorial Hospital was placed under immediate, total military-style lockdown.
Forty armed men in black suits lined the hallways, blocking every entrance, exit, and stairwell. Hospital administrators walked on eggshells, terrified that a single mistake would turn the trauma bay into a warzone.
Inside Operating Room 4, a team of six top trauma surgeons worked frantically under blinding white surgical lights.
Outside, Marco stood against the glass wall, staring blindly ahead.
He hadn't washed his hands. Vasquez’s dried blood crusted his knuckles, while Lena’s blood stained the front of his black shirt, dark and stiff. His face was hollow, his jaw set so tightly that the muscles in his neck strained.
Isabella sat in a wheelchair nearby, wearing a clean hospital gown, an oxygen tube hooked into her nose. She refused to be moved to a private suite. She held a rosary in her trembling hands, her lips moving in silent, desperate prayer.
"Marco," she whispered softly.
Marco didn't turn around. "She’s not going to make it, Ma."
"She is strong," Isabella insisted, her voice breaking. "She took five bullets for a woman she barely knew. God does not let a soul like that burn out so easily."
"Five," Marco repeated, his voice dangerously quiet, vibrating with a terrifying mix of grief and hatred. "Two in her side. One through her lower left lung. One shattered her shoulder. One lodged an inch from her spine." He slammed his fist into the reinforced glass wall, cracking the outer layer. "She was a nobody! She was supposed to hand you your pills and change your sheets!"
"She saved my life!" Isabella cried, slapping the arm of her wheelchair. "While your high-paid security ran and died, that girl put her body between me and a bullet! Do not ever call her a nobody again!"
The surgical doors swung open.
Dr. Aris, the chief of trauma, stepped out, pulling off his mask. His forehead was slick with sweat, his eyes heavy with exhaustion.
Marco closed the distance between them in a single step, gripping the doctor by the collar of his scrubs. "Is she alive?"
"Mr. Duca, calm down—"
"Is she alive?!" Marco roared, shaking the physician.
"Yes! Yes, she is alive!" Dr. Aris gasped. "We managed to stop the internal bleeding and patch the lung perforation. The bullet near her spine was extracted without damaging the spinal cord. But she has lost an immense amount of blood. She is in a medically induced coma. The next forty-eight hours will decide if her brain and organs survive the oxygen deprivation."
Marco let go of the doctor's collar, taking a step back. "I want the best nurses in this country in her room. I want double shifts. If she spikes a fever, I want to know. If her heart rate shifts by one beat, I want to be called. If she dies, Doctor... this hospital will belong to my grief."
Dr. Aris swallowed hard and nodded frantically. "Understood, Mr. Duca. We will monitor her around the clock."
Two hours later, Lena was moved to the Intensive Care Unit.
The room was vast, cold, and dominated by the rhythmic, artificial hum of monitors, ventilators, and IV drips. Machines breathed for her. Cables snaked across her skin, tracking the faint, fragile rhythm of her heart.
Marco walked in alone.
He pulled a heavy chair right beside her bed and sat down. He looked at her pale, quiet face, stripped of color, bruised and fragile beneath the white hospital sheets.
He slowly reached out, his calloused, blood-stained hand hovering over hers for a moment before gently closing around her cold, thin fingers.
For eleven months, he had ignored her. He had walked past her in his own home as if she were furniture. He had threatened her. He had insulted her.
And yet, when death came knocking, she had offered her life up like a shield to keep his world from collapsing.
"Why?" Marco whispered into the quiet room, his voice hoarse, resting his forehead against the edge of her mattress. "Why did you do it, Lena?"
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The heart monitor beeped slowly in response.
"You survive this," Marco vowed, his grip on her hand tightening gently. "You survive this, and I will give you the world. I will hunt down every man who had a hand in this, and I will burn Chicago to the ground for you."
