Chapter 9 - The Tears of Dominic Moretti
The Don of the Five Families dropped to his knees as if every bone in his body had turned to dust.
The hard oak floorboards cracked beneath the weight of his fall, but he felt nothing.
He reached out with trembling, soot-stained hands and gently touched Madeline’s cold, blood-spattered face.
Her skin was the color of winter marble, pale and translucent beneath the flickering candlelight.
Her dark eyelashes lay motionless against her cheeks.
Her lips, once warm and full of life, were tinged with a faint, ghostly blue.
"Madeline," Dominic choked out, his voice breaking into a ragged, pathetic sob that tore from his throat.
He carefully slid his arms beneath her broken, fragile frame and lifted her away from his mother’s chest.
Her head fell back against his shoulder with terrifying limpness.
Her blood immediately soaked through Dominic’s shirt, hot and heavy, soaking into his own flesh.
"No, no, no... Madeline, look at me," Dominic begged, rocking her back and forth in his arms.
"Madeline, please open your eyes."
"Look at your husband, look at me!"
Donna Elena pulled herself up against the mahogany headboard, her silver hair stained with her daughter-in-law’s blood.
"She took every single one of them, Dominic," Donna Elena sobbed, her voice breaking into agonizing grief.
"They came into my room with poison and guns."
"Geno was going to shoot me like a dog in my own bed."
"Madeline kicked the door down alone."
"She didn't run, Dominic."
"When they started shooting, she threw her entire body over my heart."
"She whispered to me that everything would be alright."
"She told me to close my eyes so I wouldn't see the muzzle flashes."
"She took five bullets for your mother, Dominic!"
"Five bullets meant for my chest!"
Every word that fell from Donna Elena’s lips felt like a jagged blade twisting inside Dominic’s soul.
He remembered standing in their bedroom, looking down at her with contempt while holding that burner phone.
He remembered the cold, arrogant tone of his voice through the brass intercom: “When you remember which family you belong to, we’ll talk.”
She had always known which family she belonged to.
She had belonged to him, body and soul, even when he had treated her like an enemy in his own home.
She had walked through the freezing storm without shoes, without a coat, and without protection to save the woman who had given him life.
Dominic buried his face into Madeline’s blood-soaked neck and wept openly, his broad shoulders shaking with violent, uncontrollable convulsions.
Tears washed clean paths through the soot and dried blood on his cheeks, dripping onto Madeline’s cold skin.
The hardened mob boss, the man who had ordered executions without blinking, was reduced to a shattered shell of a man.
"I am sorry," Dominic wailed into her hair, his tears mingling with her blood.
"Madeline, I am so sorry... God forgive me, I didn't listen to you."
"Please don't leave me in this dark house alone."
"Please, Madeline, take my life instead!"
Matteo burst through the shattered doorway, his shotgun lowered, accompanied by two tactical medics carrying heavy trauma kits.
Matteo froze in his tracks, his breath catching in his throat as he witnessed his boss crying like a wounded animal.
"Dominic!" Matteo shouted, dropping to one knee beside them.
"Is she breathing?"
The lead medic, an experienced trauma surgeon on the Moretti payroll named Rossi, knelt instantly beside Dominic.
"Don Moretti, you have to let us lay her flat on the floor," Rossi insisted firmly, checking for a carotid pulse.
Dominic refused to let go, clutching Madeline’s lifeless body to his chest like a drowning man holding his last anchor.
"Save her, Rossi," Dominic growled through his tears, his eyes wild and bloodshot.
"If she dies in this room, I will burn this entire city to the ground, do you hear me?"
"I cannot work on her while you are crushing her chest, Dominic!" Rossi shouted back with desperate urgency.
"Let her down! Let her down now!"
Dominic slowly, reluctantly loosened his grip, allowing the medics to lower Madeline onto the Persian carpet.
Rossi tore open Lorenzo’s gray sweater, exposing the five horrific entry and exit wounds.
Blood welled up from her chest and shoulder in thick, rhythmic pulses.
"She has a weak, thready pulse," Rossi announced, placing an oxygen mask over her pale mouth and nose.
"Her left lung is partially collapsed."
"Two rounds in the upper shoulder, one through the posterior ribcage, one in the lumbar flank, and one shattered the pelvic rim."
"She has lost at least two liters of blood."
"Start two large-bore IV lines immediately!" Rossi barked to his assistant.
"Hang the plasma bags now!"
Dominic grabbed Madeline’s limp, blood-covered hand, pressing it against his wet lips.
Her fingers were cold, limp, and unresponsive to his desperate touch.
"Fight, Madeline," Dominic whispered, his tears falling onto her pale knuckles.
"You fight for me, damn you."
"You don't let me die with your blood on my hands."
Rossi looked up at Dominic, his surgical gloves already coated in crimson.
"We cannot perform this surgery here, Boss."
"We have to transport her to the private medical bunker in New Rochelle within twenty minutes."
"If she enters hemorrhagic shock before we open her chest, she is gone."
Dominic stood up, his face hardening from grief into a terrifying, icy mask of absolute vengeance.
"Carry her down," Dominic commanded, his voice hollow and dead.
May you like
"Matteo, call the convoy."
"If any vehicle tries to block our route to New Rochelle, obliterate them from the earth."
