Chapter 7 - The Anatomy of a Crash
The master suite was deathly silent when the heavy oak doors finally clicked shut behind them.
Nora immediately locked the deadbolts, resting her forehead against the cool wood for five deep, restorative seconds.
Behind her, the sudden, heavy thud of a falling body made her spin around with lightning speed.
Declan had collapsed onto his knees beside the mahogany vanity, his arms wrapped tightly around his midsection.
The synthetic surge of adrenaline and ephedrine had completely burned through his neurotransmitters.
His skin had transformed into an alarming, mottled gray, drenched in cold, greasy perspiration.
A violent convulsion seized his shoulders, forcing him to vomit clear, acidic bile onto the Persian rug.
Nora moved with immediate, practiced efficiency, dropping her heavy skirt and kneeling beside him.
She did not recoil from the sickness or the harsh, rasping sounds of his struggling lungs.
“Breathe through your nose, Declan,” she commanded, pressing her palm firmly against his shivering sternum.
“Your body is purging the metabolic breakdown products of the nerve agent.”
Declan tried to push her away with a trembling hand, his jaw clenched against the wave of agony.
“Don’t… look at me like this,” Declan rasped, his vision blurring as his blood pressure plunged toward the floor.
“Shut up, Rossi,” Nora snapped, grabbing his wrist and checking the thready, erratic pulse.
Forty-four beats per minute.
His vascular system was collapsing under the rebound effect of the massive stimulant dose.
“You played the terrifying don for thirty armed men downstairs,” she said, hauling his left arm over her broad, solid shoulders.
“You don't need to perform for me.”
With a deep, guttural heave from her thighs, Nora lifted the two-hundred-and-twenty-pound mob boss off the floor.
She dragged his trembling frame toward the massive marble bathroom, kicking the door wide open.
She lowered him gently onto the cedar bench inside the walk-in steam shower, propping his head against the tile.
She turned the heavy brass faucets to warm, letting the gentle spray wash the sweat, bile, and tension from his skin.
Declan leaned his head back against the green Italian marble, his chest heaving as if he had run twenty miles uphill.
His dark hair was plastered against his pale forehead, his dark eyes hollowed out by absolute physical exhaustion.
Nora stripped off her ruined ivory bodice, revealing the black carbon-fiber tactical corset beneath.
She unlaced the constricting bindings, taking a deep, unrestricted breath into her own lungs for the first time in twelve hours.
Her rounded arms and full shoulders bore the faint red marks of the tactical gear, but she paid them no mind.
She fetched two clean cotton towels and a pre-mixed saline bag with an intravenous line from her medical kit.
Kneeling on the wet tile beside Declan, she tied a rubber tourniquet around his muscular bicep.
Even in his shattered state, Declan’s eyes tracked her movements with fierce, unyielding concentration.
“You handle trauma like someone who has buried an entire regiment,” Declan murmured, his voice hoarse and raw.
“I spent five years in humanitarian surgical tents along the Syrian border,” Nora said, tapping his median cubital vein.
“I’ve stitched young men back together while mortar shells were rattling the surgical lights.”
“A room full of overdressed Chicago hoodlums doesn't particularly frighten me.”
She slid the 18-gauge catheter smoothly into his vein with one deft, painless motion.
The plastic chamber flashed red with venous blood, confirming a perfect placement on the first attempt.
She taped the line securely to his arm and spiked the bag of lactated Ringer’s solution, hanging it from a brass towel hook.
Declan closed his eyes as the cold, balancing fluids began to flush the metabolic poison from his veins.
“Why did you take Elena’s place, Nora?” Declan asked, his voice barely above a whisper over the sound of running water.
“Elena is a child,” Nora replied, wetting a clean washcloth and gently wiping the grime from his face.
“She writes poetry in leather journals and cries when she sees a stray dog in the rain.”
“If Silvio had staged this poisoning with Elena in the room, she would have curled into a ball and screamed until they killed her.”
“And your father?” Declan probed, his dark gaze piercing through the rising steam.
“Your father owed three million dollars to my loan sharks.”
“My father is a reckless, weak-willed gambler who used his family as collateral,” Nora said without a drop of sentimentality.
“I didn't do this to save his honor or protect his gambling debts.”
“I did it because Elena has a full scholarship to study classical architecture in Florence next month.”
“She deserved a chance to live in the sunlight, away from the blood and filth of this city.”
Declan looked at the woman kneeling in the wet shower, her wet linen chemise clinging to her curves.
He reached out his right hand, his fingers no longer shaking, and gently touched the side of her neck.
His thumb traced the heavy platinum links of the ancestral choker resting against her skin.
“You traded your freedom to buy a child her dream,” Declan whispered, his touch surprisingly soft for a killer.
“I thought I was trading my freedom for a week in an iron cage,” Nora admitted, leaning slightly into his warm palm.
“I didn't expect the iron cage to come with an ungrateful mob don who forgets to thank his doctor.”
Declan let out a low, breathy laugh that ended in a sharp wince as his bruised ribs protested.
“Thank you, Nora,” Declan said, his dark eyes locking onto hers with terrifying sincerity.
“You saved my life twice tonight.”
“Once from the poison, and once from the humiliation of dying at the hands of cowards.”
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“Don't thank me yet, Rossi,” Nora murmured, adjusting the drip rate on the IV line.
“The New York Commission hasn't heard that Silvio failed, and morning is only one hour away.”
