Chapter 3 - The Sanctuary of the Shadows
The private surgical wing of the Duca estate in Lake Forest smelled of antiseptic, ozone, and wet wool from the guards standing outside the reinforced steel doors. It was five o'clock in the morning, and the sky outside was the color of a wet slate shingle.
Dr. Aris Vance, the family's personal surgeon, walked out of the double doors, his green scrubs completely splattered with dark blood. He didn't look at Caruso; he looked straight at Marco, who was sitting on a plastic bench, his hands still covered in dry, dark crust from the penthouse bed.
"She’s alive," Vance said, taking off his surgical mask with a heavy sigh. "But don't ask me how. Two of the rounds missed her abdominal aorta by less than three millimeters. The shoulder can be rebuilt, the hip is a mess of bone fragments, but the lungs are clear. She’s strong, Marco. Safer to say she’s stubborn."
Marco didn't stand up. He kept his eyes fixed on his own knuckles. "Is she going to walk?"
"Too early to tell," Vance said, lighting a cigarette despite being three feet from an oxygen tank. No one stopped him. "Right now, I have her in a medically induced coma. If she wakes up before the nerve endings in her spine settle, the shock alone could stop her heart. Your mother is in the next room. Her blood pressure is stable, but she refuses to take her sedative until you go in there."
Marco stood up slowly. His joints cracked like ice breaking on a lake. He walked past the surgeon into his mother’s room.
Isabella was lying beneath a white duvet, her face looking smaller than it had the night before, her grey hair loose around her shoulders. When she saw her son, her dark eyes—the same eyes he had inherited—flashed with an old, dangerous fire.
"You found out who leaked the grid schedule?" she asked, her voice steady despite the monitor blinking beside her.
"Caruso is handling it," Marco said, sitting on the edge of her bed.
"Don't lie to me, Marco Antonio," she snapped, her hand reaching out to slap his knee. "Caruso doesn't handle leaks like this. You handle them. Who was it?"
"It was Enzo," Marco said, his voice dropping into that terrifying, quiet register that usually preceded a funeral. "Vasquez offered him his own crew in Cicero. He gave them the security bypass codes for the basement transformers."
Isabella closed her eyes for a brief second. Enzo had been her husband’s godson. He had eaten Sunday dinner at their table for fifteen years. "Where is he?"
"He’s in the cold storage under the meat market," Marco said. "He won't be leaving."
Isabella nodded once, a cold, clinical acceptance of the rules they lived by. Then she looked toward the wall that separated her room from the surgical bay. "The girl. Lena."
"Vance says she’s stable. For now."
"She didn't hesitate, Marco," Isabella said, her voice softening, a tremor finally appearing in her chin. "She didn't look for a weapon. She didn't look for an exit. She looked at me, and she used her own life to buy mine. You called her a nobody."
Marco didn't answer. He looked down at his blood-stained shirt.
May you like
"In this life, Marco, we pay for everything," Isabella whispered, reaching out to touch his face. "We pay for the cars, we pay for the judges, we pay for the loyalty of men who would cut our throats for a dollar more. But you cannot pay for what that girl did. You owe her a life. Your life."
"I know," Marco said, his voice a rough whisper. "I know, Ma."
