Chapter 53 - The Barge on the Black Horizon
We broke out of the service tunnels into the teeth of the gale.
The wind off Lake Michigan was brutal, cutting through our soaked clothing like razors. Behind us, the upper twenty floors of the Spire were a beacon of roiling black smoke and leaping orange tongues of fire, sirens converging from every corner of Chicago like a chorus of dying machines.
At slip forty-four, hidden between two towering industrial salt domes, an rusted iron work-barge sat low in the churning black water. Its diesel engine was already rumbling with a low, bone-deep hum.
A figure emerged from the wheelhouse—an older man in a yellow slicker, a shotgun resting casually in the crook of his arm. "Took you long enough, Dante," he shouted over the surf.
"Uncle Joe," Dante managed to exhale before collapsing onto the wet timber decking.
"Get him inside!" I yelled, lifting Dante's legs while Marcus took his shoulders.
We hauled him into the cramped, oil-scented cabin. Marcus ripped Dante’s vest open with trauma shears. The wound was worse than he had admitted: a three-inch shard of structural steel was lodged just beneath his lower left ribcage, rising and falling erratically with each shallow breath.
"He's bleeding into the pleural cavity," Marcus said, his voice flat with clinical urgency. "If I pull this out without a surgical tray, he bleeds out in ninety seconds. If I leave it in, his lung collapses."
"I can do it," I said, my voice eerily steady as adrenaline washed the panic from my blood. Five years of managing Dante’s domestic life had made people forget I completed two years of trauma surgical residency before I ever stepped foot into his corporate empire.
"Mommy?" Mateo’s voice was small, terrified. Marcus knelt beside him, wrapping the boy in a heavy woolen blanket and handing him a cup of hot water.
"Stay with Uncle Marcus, baby. Look at the snow outside, okay? Mommy has to fix Daddy."
I stripped off my ruined coat, washed my hands with high-proof industrial spirit from the barge’s emergency kit, and met Dante’s fevered gaze.
"You're going to feel this," I whispered.
May you like
"Good," Dante wheezed, a faint, agonizing smile touching his lips. "Reminds me... I’m still yours."
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