Chapter 2 - The Five Searing Seconds
The door to the bedroom didn't open; it exploded inward, the heavy wood splitting off its hinges from a hydraulic breach.
Lena didn't think. Her body moved before her brain could process the geometry of the room. She threw herself across Isabella’s chest, her arms pinning the old woman down into the mattress, using her own back as a shield against the flying splinters of wood and glass.
"Get her out!" Caruso’s voice roared from the hallway, followed by the deafening roar of a shotgun. The hallway was a strobe light of muzzle flashes, illuminating figures in black tactical gear, their faces hidden behind ballistic masks.
Marco appeared in the doorway, a heavy silver pistol in each hand, his face transformed into something demonic. He fired three times without aiming, his body positioning itself instinctively between the doorway and the bed. "Caruso! The freight lift!"
But the attackers weren't just in the hall. The balcony glass behind the bed shattered as three men swung down from the roof on tactical ropes.
The first man landed on the floor, his rifle clearing the curtain. His eyes locked onto Isabella’s pale face protruding from under Lena’s arm. He lowered the barrel.
Lena saw the red dot of the laser sight dance across Isabella’s forehead.
She didn't know the Duca family history. She didn't know who Vasquez was. She only knew that this old woman had read her stories about Sicily when her own hands were shaking from the stress of her brother's illness. She knew that this old woman was someone's mother.
Lena shifted her weight, lunging upward, her torso covering Isabella’s head and chest completely.
The first bullet took her in the left shoulder. It felt like a solid iron rod being driven through her bone at three hundred miles an hour. The impact slammed her back against Isabella, a choked gasp escaping her throat.
One.
The second bullet tore through her lower ribs, the heat of the lead burning away the gray fabric of her uniform, turning her breath into a metallic taste of iron in the back of her throat.
Two.
The third and fourth hit her in rapid succession across the small of her back as she twisted to keep her weight over Isabella, her spine screaming with an agony so pure it blinded her, turning the room into a wash of white light.
Three. Four.
The fifth bullet entered her hip, shattering the pelvis, dropping her like a stone onto the blood-soaked linen of the bed.
The shooter didn't get a sixth. Marco had turned. The silver pistol in his right hand barked twice, the heavy slugs catching the attacker in the throat and face, blowing him backward through the shattered balcony window into the Chicago night.
The remaining attackers were retreating, the sound of sirens beginning to wail from the streets twenty stories below as the city’s police response finally crossed the bridge.
The room went completely quiet, save for the sound of rain rushing through the broken windows and the wet, shallow gasps coming from the bed.
Marco dropped his guns. The heavy steel hit the floor with a dull clang. He scrambled over the bed, his hands shaking so violently he could barely grip the mattress. He reached for his mother, his voice a ragged, terrified sob. "Ma! Ma! Look at me!"
Isabella was trembling, covered in blood, but none of it was hers. She was staring down at the girl pinned against her knees.
Lena was lying on her side, her legs useless, her gray uniform completely soaked in a deep, expanding crimson. Her breath was coming in short, rattling whistles through her teeth. She could feel the cold climbing up from her feet, the same cold she had seen in dozens of hospital rooms before the monitors went flat.
Marco reached down, his large hands hovering over Lena’s body, terrified to touch her, terrified that any pressure would leak the remaining life out of her. His face was white, the hard, feared boss of Chicago completely gone, replaced by a child watching his world end.
"Why?" he whispered, his voice cracking, a tear spilling over his dark eyelashes and landing on Lena’s pale cheek. "Why did you do that? You’re a nobody."
Lena’s eyes flickered, her brown pupils dilated, looking past him at Isabella, whose old hands were now pressing against Lena’s shoulder, trying to stop the flow of blood.
"Don't... don't let her be scared," Lena whispered, her voice barely a thread of wind. "She... she has a bad heart."
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Then her eyes rolled back, her chin dropping against the bloody sheet, her chest falling still.
Marco Duca, the man who had ordered twenty executions before his thirtieth birthday, fell to his knees beside the bed, let out a sound that wasn't human—a long, jagged howl of pure, unmitigated grief—and buried his face in the blood-stained hem of her gray apron.
