Six hours of screaming had pushed Dominic Moretti to the edge, and everyone inside the Chicago restaurant knew better than to go near him. Then I crossed the dining room, looked the most feared mafia boss in the city straight in the eye, and told him, “You’re hurting your own baby.”

The gunshot echoed through the monitor speaker.

Dominic spun around, but the bullet struck him in the left side of his chest. He collapsed onto one knee, blood immediately staining his white shirt dark red.

Ginevra laughed hysterically, her eyes wild with madness as she stepped over the fallen guards toward her brother.

"You chose a peasant girl and a helpless brat over me!" Ginevra screamed, raising the gun to fire the execution shot into Dominic’s head. "I built this empire with you! You deserve to die!"

Inside the panic room, I didn't think. I acted.

I placed Mateo securely into the reinforced emergency bassinet inside the panic room, locking the clear acrylic lid.

I grabbed the heavy steel medical oxygen tank resting against the wall, unlocked the panic room door from the inside control panel, and threw the door open.

Ginevra heard the pneumatic seal release and turned her gun toward the opening.

Before she could acquire her target, I charged out of the secret room with every ounce of strength in my body, swinging the heavy steel oxygen cylinder like a battering ram.

The heavy metal tank smashed directly into Ginevra’s chest and face.

The force of the impact knocked her off her feet, sending her flying backward through the wooden railing of the balcony, crashing thirty feet down onto the marble floor of the grand foyer below.

Her gun clattered harmlessly across the hallway floor.

I dropped the oxygen tank, ignoring the ringing in my ears, and threw myself onto the floor beside Dominic.

"Dominic! Dominic, look at me!" I screamed, pressing my hands hard over the gunshot wound on his chest.

Blood was spurting between my fingers—a high-pressure arterial bleed near the subclavian artery.

"Hannah..." Dominic gasped, his face turning pale, his eyes struggling to focus on me. "You... you were supposed to stay inside..."

"Shut up! Save your strength!" I barked, my clinical training taking complete control. "Marco! Get the trauma kit from the nursery! NOW!"

Marco, bleeding from a scalp wound, stumbled out of the stairwell and rushed over with the heavy orange medical kit I had demanded be stocked on every floor.

I tore open Dominic’s shirt. The bullet had entered just below his left collarbone. He was entering hypovolemic shock.

"Hemostatic gauze, chest seal, and IV line!" I ordered Marco, who acted as my surgical assistant without hesitation.

I stuffed the specialized combat gauze deep into the wound track, applying immense pressure with my body weight. Dominic groaned in excruciating agony, his hand clenching my wrist so tightly my bones groaned.

"I'm sorry, Dominic, I know it hurts, but I have to stop the bleeding!" I sobbed, tears blurring my vision as I kept absolute pressure on the wound.

I applied a chest seal to prevent a tension pneumothorax, then expertly inserted a large-bore IV needle into his forearm, connecting a bag of saline from the kit to elevate his dropping blood pressure.

By the time the emergency trauma surgeons arrived with the private Moretti ambulance team ten minutes later, Dominic’s bleeding was controlled, his vitals were stable, and he was conscious.

The lead surgeon examined my emergency field work, looking up at me in absolute shock.

"Who performed this field stabilization?" the surgeon asked.

"I did," I said, my hands covered in Dominic's blood, my body shaking with exhaustion.

"You saved his life, young lady," the surgeon stated solemnly. "If you hadn't packed that artery within two minutes, he would have bled out before we reached the gate."