Chapter 8 - The Price Of Loyalty
I took the stairs three at a time, tearing down the hall toward the master bedroom. When I burst through the doors, the scene inside looked like a battlefield trauma center. IV stands surrounded the bed, bags of dark red plasma hanging beside saline bags. Dr. Bennett was kneeling beside Alina, performing chest compressions while a nurse pumped an manual ventilation bag. Eleanor was collapsed on her knees in the corner, clutching a rosary, her face wet with tears.
The rhythmic, agonizing beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor was erratic, showing a chaotic rhythm that was collapsing into a flat line.
“Move!” I shouted, shoving Bennett aside with enough force to send him tumbling against the wall.
I flipped open the velvet case on the bed. “Here! The three ampoules! Bennett, read the formulation notes!”
Bennett scrambled to his feet, adjusting his glasses with trembling, bloody fingers. He grabbed the Russian laboratory notes, his eyes scanning the Cyrillic text and chemical symbols with desperate speed.
“It requires an initial bolus of five milliliters,” Bennett yelled, tearing open a sterile syringe wrapper with his teeth. “Followed by a slow intravenous infusion of the remaining ten milliliters over three hours! But her venous access is collapsing—her peripheral veins are blown!”
“Then put it directly into her central line!” I snarled, holding Alina’s head between my hands. Her lips were blue. Her skin was freezing, drenched in a cold, clammy sweat. Her pulse under my thumb was a dying flutter.
Bennett didn't hesitate. He plunged the needle into the amber ampoule, drawing up the golden fluid. With surgical precision born of forty years of mafia patching, he inserted the needle directly into the catheter port beneath her collarbone and slowly, steadily depressed the plunger.
Ten seconds passed. The silence in the bedroom was deafening, broken only by Eleanor’s quiet whimpering.
Nothing happened. The monitor continued its irregular, dying dance. 42 beats per minute. 38 beats per minute. 35.
“Why isn't it working?!” I roared, grabbing Bennett by the lapels of his white coat. “Why isn't her heart responding?!”
“The venom has been bound to her tissue for three years, Dante!” Bennett cried, tears of frustration gathering in his old eyes. “The peptide needs time to break the molecular bonds! Her heart is too weak to circulate the compound through the liver!”
“Then I’ll circulate it myself,” I said.
I pushed Bennett away, climbed onto the bed, and placed the heels of my hands directly over the center of Alina’s chest. I began CPR, counting the compressions out loud with every ounce of physical power and stubborn will I possessed.
“One, two, three, four...”
Every press of my palms was a demand to the universe. I had killed men; I had broken empires; I had defied every law of God and man. I refused to let death steal the only pure thing that had ever touched my blackened hands.
“Come back to me, Alina,” I growled between compressions. “Come back to me. You saved my life. Now let me save yours.”
Five minutes of grueling compressions passed. Sweat dripped from my jaw onto her pale forehead. Bennett checked the monitor, his eyes wide.
“Wait... Dante, stop!” Bennett shouted.
I froze, my hands still pressed against her chest.
On the digital display, the jagged, dying line suddenly spiked upward. A sharp, rhythmic beep echoed through the quiet room.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
May you like
Sixty beats per minute. Seventy. Seventy-five.
The gray, sickly pallor on Alina’s cheeks began to recede, replaced by a faint, fragile flush of warm peach. A long, shuddering gasp escaped her lips as her chest rose on its own.
