Chapter 6 - The Broken Alliance
The warning from Eleanor Grimaldi should have kept me away. I was a doctor; I understood the mechanics of cause and effect. Falling into the orbit of a mafia don was a logistical nightmare that could ruin my career, my safety, and my sanity.
But destiny, it seemed, had a very dark sense of humor.
Three weeks after Julian's discharge, the emergency department at St. Mary’s went into a level-one trauma lockdown. A multi-vehicle shooting on the Tobin Bridge had flooded the ER with casualties. I was called down to the trauma bay at 2:00 a.m., my apron already splattered with blood before I even reached the first cot.
"What do we have?" I shouted to the trauma resident over the roar of the sirens outside.
"Multiple gunshot wounds to the torso, Dr. Collins," the resident yelled back, his face pale. "The paramedics pulled him from an armored limousine. He’s in severe hemorrhagic shock. BP is eighty over forty and dropping."
I stepped into Trauma Bay One and froze.
Lying on the gurney, his white shirt soaked in crimson, his jaw clenched in an agony he refused to voice, was Anthony.
He looked up as I entered, his silver eyes glassy from blood loss, but when they landed on my face, a sudden, desperate focus returned to them. He reached out with a bloody hand, his fingers grabbing the edge of my surgical gown with a grip that was surprisingly strong.
"Hannah," he gasped, his breath hitching as blood welled up at the corner of his mouth. "The Morettis... it was a setup. They tried... they tried to take the port."
"Don't talk, Anthony," I said, my professional instincts overriding the sudden, blinding terror in my chest. I threw myself over his body, my hands moving to his chest to apply pressure to a gaping wound just beneath his ribs. "Get me four units of O-negative on the rapid infuser! Prep Operating Room Four right now!"
"Hannah," he whispered, his grip on my gown tightening until the fabric tore. "If I don't... if I don't wake up... look after Leo. My son. He’s at the house..."
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"You are going to wake up, you arrogant bastard," I screamed at him, tears of anger and fear blurring my vision as I pushed down on the wound. "You don't get to die on my table. I already lost your mother. I am not losing you! Do you hear me? I am not losing you!"
His eyes held mine for one more second—a look of profound, beautiful surrender—before they rolled back, and the monitor beside him dissolved into the long, horrifying whistle of a flatline.
