Chapter 2 - Lethal Dosage
The click of the hammer echoed in Elena’s skull louder than the screaming siren.
In that fraction of a second, the world slowed down. She saw the manic twitch in Marco’s jaw. She saw the trembling syringe in Dr. Evans’s hand, the amber needle poised to stab into the intravenous port dangling from Don Vincent’s arm. And through the grip around her wrist, she felt the Don’s pulse—struggling, dying, but intensely alive.
Vincent had no weapons. He was naked from the waist up, wired to useless leads, paralyzed by whatever chemical cocktail Dr. Evans had introduced into his saline drip.
If Elena hesitated, both of them would be incinerated in the estate’s private crematorium before dawn.
"Move!" Marco barked.
Elena didn't move away. She lunged forward.
With her free hand, she snatched a heavy glass bottle of 100-proof surgical disinfectant from the overturned crash cart and hurled it straight into Marco Vance’s face. The thick glass shattered against his bridge, spraying concentrated ethanol into his eyes.
Marco shrieked in agony, dropping his weapon as the burning alcohol seared his corneas. The gun discharged with a deafening roar, the .45-caliber slug blowing a fist-sized crater into the ceiling tiles, raining fiberglass and sparks over the operating table.
"Kill him, Bradley! Stick him now!" Marco screamed, stumbling blindly, rubbing frantically at his eyes.
Dr. Evans lunged toward Vincent with the syringe, his face contorted into a mask of frantic desperation. "Die, you old bastard!"
Vincent’s obsidian eyes flashed. Though his body was heavy with neurotoxins, the Don was a creature forged in violence. Using Elena’s wrist as a fulcrum, he levered his upper torso upward, his free hand shooting out to catch Dr. Evans by the throat.
The physician choked, his windpipe compressed beneath Vincent's massive fingers. Dr. Evans drove the syringe downward, aiming for Vincent’s carotid, but Elena intercepted the doctor's forearm, slamming it against the steel edge of the operating bed.
*Crack!*
The syringe slipped from Evans's numb fingers, tumbling onto the floor. Before it could shatter, Elena stomped her boot heel down on the glass cylinder, crushing the lethal dose into a useless puddle of amber fluid and sharp splinters.
"The keys!" Vincent rasped, his voice raw, his grip slipping from Dr. Evans's throat as the exertion drained the last dregs of his adrenaline. "Elena... coat pocket... master keycard..."
Elena didn't ask questions. She dove into the pocket of Dr. Evans’s white lab coat as the doctor wheezed on the floor, clawing at his crushed larynx. Her fingers found a heavy, black titanium keycard marked with the crest of the Moretti syndicate—the bypass cipher for the bunker’s hydraulic defenses.
Across the room, Marco had wiped enough stinging alcohol from his tear-flooded eyes to spot his fallen pistol. He dropped to his knees, his hands sweeping across the bloody tile floor, searching for the steel frame.
"He's blind for ten seconds!" Elena gasped, grabbing Vincent by his broad, muscular shoulders. "Can you walk?"
"No," Vincent grunted, his teeth bared in a feral grimace. "Curare derivative... motor control shot. Arms work... legs don't."
"Then you lean on me!"
Elena hooked Vincent’s heavy right arm around her neck. She stood barely five-foot-four, but adrenaline surged through her veins like rocket fuel. She braced her core, lifting with her legs, hauling the two-hundred-pound mafia kingpin off the surgical table. Vincent groaned, his bare feet dragging against the floor, but he forced his upper body to stabilize, using his sheer willpower to assist her.
Marco’s fingers wrapped around the butt of his .45. "You're dead! Both of you!"
Elena dragged Vincent toward the rear of the medical suite. Behind the primary drug dispensary stood a non-descript steel utility door disguised as an electrical panel. It wasn't on the mansion’s blueprints. But Elena had spent two years cleaning this bunker; she knew that every speakeasy and bunker built in Chicago during the 1920s had a bootlegger's run.
She slapped the black titanium keycard against the reader.
A green light flashed. The magnetic deadbolts slid back with a dull *thunk*.
Marco fired blindly toward the sound. The bullet splintered the wood of the supply cabinet inches from Elena’s ear, showering her hair with splinters.
"Bradley, get up! Get the guards down here!" Marco screamed, scrambling to his feet, blinking through red, inflamed eyelids as he leveled the weapon toward the opening tunnel.
Elena pulled Vincent through the door, kicked the steel panel shut, and threw the manual mechanical dog-bolt into place from the inside.
*BANG! BANG! BANG!*
Marco’s bullets punched into the heavy plate steel, creating shallow dents, but the door held.
They were enveloped in pitch-black darkness. The air was cold, damp, and smelled of century-old brick, damp earth, and river rot.
Vincent collapsed against Elena, driving her to her knees on the rough stone floor. The Don was shivering violently, his skin freezing to the touch as the synthetic paralytic continued to attack his central nervous system.
"Vincent?" Elena whispered into the darkness, terrified that his heart had finally stopped. "Vincent, stay with me!"
A heavy, calloused hand reached up in the dark, finding her cheek. His thumb brushed away a streak of sweat and blood.
"Good girl," the mafia boss breathed, his deep voice vibrating through the damp brick corridor. "The tunnel... leads two miles east... toward the old rail yards under the river. If we stay... we die. Marco owns... the entire private security detail."
"Why did he do this?" Elena choked out, tears finally breaking past her defenses. "You raised him. You gave him everything."
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Vincent’s laugh was a terrible, wet rattle in the dark. "He wanted... the empire before its time. But an empire built on treason... burns to ash. Help me up, Elena. We have... debts to collect."
***
