Chapter 11 - The Surgeon’s Table in the Carriage House
The smell of sterile antiseptic collided violently with the copper stench of my own spilled blood.
Every shallow breath felt like inhaling crushed glass and liquid fire.
I was drifting in a murky abyss between consciousness and death, surrounded by the harsh glare of halogen overhead surgical lamps.
“Keep those clamps tight, Julian!” a gruff, elderly voice barked through the haze.
That voice belonged to Dr.
Harrison, the retired chief of trauma surgery from Massachusetts General Hospital.
Harrison was a battle-hardened veteran who had spent decades pulling shrapnel out of bodies without asking legal questions.
“His systolic blood pressure is cratering,” Julian replied, his voice calm, steady, and focused despite the chaos.
Julian wasn't panicking.
He had stripped off his tailored suit jacket, rolled his dress shirt sleeves past his elbows, and had his gloved hands buried deep in my open chest cavity.
The former federal prosecutor who had once prosecuted mobsters was now fighting with every ounce of his soul to keep the king of Chicago alive.
“Lungs are partially collapsed, but the bullet missed the subclavian artery by less than two millimeters,” Dr.
Harrison muttered as surgical steel clicked rapidly against metal trays.
“He’s an incredibly lucky son of a bitch,” Harrison added, wiping sweat from his forehead with a sterile gauze pad.
“He didn't get lucky,” Julian responded quietly under his breath.
“He threw himself into the line of fire.”
Through my half-closed eyelids, my blurred vision drifted toward the frosted glass observation window of the carriage house.
Evelyn was standing on the other side of the glass.
Her hands were pressed flat against the transparent pane, her pale face illuminated by the harsh white fluorescent light.
She was watching every incision, every clamp, and every bloody sponge being tossed into the stainless steel bin.
Her lips were moving in silent, desperate prayer.
For three years, I had believed Evelyn Carter was cold, distant, and incapable of forgiving my sins.
Yet right now, she was crying for the man who had brought nothing but misery and neglect to her youth.
A sudden wave of intense cold washed through my veins as the local anesthetics fought against the trauma.
The monitor beside the gurney began emitting a frantic, rhythmic beep that echoed off the brick walls of the carriage house.
“He’s fibrillating!” Dr.
Harrison shouted, grabbing the manual suction tube.
“Adrian, stay with us!” Marcus’s voice boomed from the doorway, his rough hand gripping my booted ankle with desperate loyalty.
I wanted to let go.
The darkness pulling at the edges of my mind was peaceful, quiet, and completely devoid of guilt.
In that darkness, there were no boardrooms, no rival cartels, no gunshots, and no mother demanding perfection.
Then, through the fog, I heard a child’s faint, innocent laughter echoing in the back of my memory.
I remembered the hazel eyes of my little boy clutching his wooden toy train on the school steps.
I remembered my daughter’s face, looking up at me from that first photograph beside the Charles River.
If I died on this surgical table tonight, Victoria would win.
My mother would tear through Massachusetts with her lawyers and mercenaries, ripping those innocent children out of Evelyn’s arms forever.
I couldn't die.
I forced my heart to beat against the searing agony in my ribs.
I clawed my way back toward the light, dragging my soul across the edge of the grave with pure, stubborn defiance.
“Rhythm is stabilizing,” Julian exhaled slowly, his shoulders dropping an inch as the monitor resumed its steady, rhythmic pulse.
“The bullet is out,” Dr.
Harrison announced, dropping a bloody slug of deformed lead into a small stainless steel bowl with a sharp metallic clatter.
“Start closing the thoracic wall.”
Julian stepped back from the gurney, his forearms smeared with my blood, his chest heaving with exhaustion.
He looked down into my open eyes, realizing I was conscious and looking directly at him.
“You survived, Moretti,” Julian whispered, his gray eyes piercing through the surgical mask.
“Don't thank me,” I rasped, my throat raw and burning with the taste of bile and blood.
“I’m not thanking you,” Julian replied, pulling off his latex gloves and tossing them into the waste bin.
“I’m keeping you alive so you can help me destroy the woman who ordered that hit on our family.”
Julian turned and walked toward the heavy oak door leading into the main residence.
As the door opened, Evelyn caught my eye one last time before the sedative finally overwhelmed my brain.
Her tears were still falling, but for the first time in three years, she didn't look at me with disgust.
May you like
She looked at me as the man who had finally chosen to bleed for someone other than himself.
Then the darkness took me again, but this time, it was filled with the promise of war.
