Chapter 5 - Marked by the Enemy
“Hands where I can see them, nurse,” the lead gunman barked in a thick Eastern European accent.
Before Nina could draw breath to scream, Luca moved with terrifying speed. He shoved Nina behind the reinforced corner of the concrete corridor, simultaneously drawing his weapon and firing two deafening rounds into the elevator. The lead gunman crumpled instantly, a bullet penetrating his center mass.
Gus leaped forward, driving his heavy shoulder into the second man, slamming him against the elevator controls. Nina pressed her back against the cold concrete wall, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. The elevator descended into a violent, brutal struggle of muffled gunshots and the thud of heavy bodies hitting steel walls.
Luca ducked inside, parrying a knife strike from the third attacker with his sutured arm. Nina saw the black nylon stitches tear slightly, crimson blooming across his shirt, but Luca didn't even flinch. He grabbed the man’s wrist, twisted it until bone cracked with a sickening snap, and swept his leg, pinning him to the bloody floor with a knee to his throat.
“Who sent you?” Luca hissed, pressing the warm barrel of his pistol against the man’s temple. “Was it Viktor himself, or did Nikolai set this up?”
The man spat blood onto Luca’s polished shoe, grinning maliciously through broken teeth. “You’re too late, Moretti. The doctor in OR 3 is already on our payroll. Tommy won't survive the anesthesia.”
Luca’s eyes widened with sheer horror.
“Vance!” Nina gasped from the doorway. “Dr. Vance isn't on Petrov’s payroll—he owes two million dollars to the illegal offshore sportsbooks run by Petrov’s syndicate! Everyone in the department knew he was drowning in debt!”
Without a word, Luca struck the operative with the butt of his pistol, knocking him unconscious. He turned to Gus. “Hold the elevator bank. Nobody goes up, nobody goes down.”
“Boss, your arm—” Gus started.
“Watch the exits!” Luca roared, grabbing Nina’s hand. “Lead the way, Nina!”
Nina broke into a sprint down the sterile corridor, her hospital sneakers squeaking against the polished floor. They took the emergency stairwell three steps at a time, bursting onto the third-floor surgical wing. The air smelled sharply of iodine and ozone.
Through the double glass doors of Operating Room 3, Nina saw the surgical team gathered around an open operating table. The heart monitor’s alarms were screaming—a rapid, erratic beep that signaled ventricular fibrillation.
“He’s coding!” Nina screamed, bursting through the sterile doors without waiting to scrub in. “Back away from the table! Back away right now!”
Dr. Vance, his surgical mask damp with sweat, turned sharply, his eyes widening in terror beneath his plastic visor. “Nurse Kowalski? What are you doing in here? This is an active surgical field!”
Luca strode in behind her, his charcoal coat splattered with blood, his drawn pistol leveling directly between Dr. Vance’s eyes. The scrub nurses and anesthesiologist froze in place, gasping in horror.
“Step away from the boy, Vance,” Luca said, his voice dropping into a register so cold the temperature in the room felt sub-zero. “Or the next incision will be across your throat.”
“I’m trying to save him!” Vance stammered, raising his gloved, trembling hands. “His potassium spiked, he went into arrhythmia—”
“Because you injected him!” Nina shouted, grabbing a 50cc syringe of sodium bicarbonate and a vial of calcium gluconate from the crash cart. “Calcium gluconate, stat! Push two grams IV right now!” she ordered the terrified anesthesiologist, who immediately scrambled to obey her command.
Nina grabbed the defibrillator paddles, setting the charge to two hundred joules. “Clear the table!”
She slammed the paddles against Tommy’s bare, pale chest. His body arched violently as the shock ripped through his heart. The monitor flatlined for three agonizing seconds.
Nina charged the paddles again. “Clear!”
Another massive jolt.
Beep... beep... beep...
The rhythmic, steady chime of normal sinus rhythm returned to the monitor. Nina dropped the paddles, panting heavily, tears of sheer adrenaline stinging her eyes. She checked Tommy’s pupils, then looked at the arterial line pressure. Ninety over sixty. Stable.
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Luca stood by the operating table, his gun still trained on Dr. Vance. His eyes flicked to the monitor, then down to his nephew’s breathing chest, and finally to Nina. In that bright, fluorescent operating theater, stripped of all deception, Nina saw something in Luca Moretti she never expected: complete, unadulterated devotion.
“Tie Vance to that surgical chair,” Luca commanded quietly. “We have questions for the doctor.”
