Chapter 9 - Danger in the Shadows
The surgical waiting room of Northwestern Memorial Hospital smelled of antiseptic, industrial floor wax, and dread.
Anna sat in the corner, her midnight-blue dress ruined, stiff with dried blood. Her hands were raw from scrubbing them in the bathroom sink, but she could still see the red beneath her fingernails.
Leo was fast asleep on a vinyl recliner nearby, wrapped in Julian’s dry suit jacket, an exhausted toddler whose tears had finally run out.
Julian walked back into the room, holding two paper cups of terrible hospital coffee. He handed one to Anna and sat beside her.
"Sophia is dead," Julian said quietly. "She died en route to the county trauma center. The Cook County State's Attorney has already ruled the shooting justifiable homicide by tactical response."
Anna stared down at the black coffee. Her hands were trembling.
"And Vincent?" she whispered.
"The second bullet shattered his left scapula, but it missed the heart by less than two centimeters," Julian answered. "The first bullet caused massive trauma to his left lung. He lost four units of blood on the way here. They’ve been in surgery for six hours."
Anna closed her eyes.
She remembered the sound of that gunshot. She remembered the sheer weight of him crashing over her, absorbing the impact that had been meant for her heart.
*I didn't let go this time.*
For three years, she had hated him with a religious fervor. She had used that hatred as fuel to wake up in cold hospital beds, to learn how to raise an infant alone, to claw her way to the head of a global empire. She had convinced herself that Vincent Moretti was a monster—a selfish, arrogant creature who saw her only as an ornament.
But a monster doesn't throw himself in front of a hollow-point bullet for the woman who swore she would destroy him.
"You don't have to forgive him, Anna," Julian said gently, as if reading the war raging inside her soul. "Saving your life doesn't automatically erase the past. But you can't deny what he did out there today."
The double doors of the surgical suite swung open.
A senior surgeon in bloody scrubs walked out, pulling off his surgical cap. He looked exhausted, lines of strain etched deep into his forehead.
Anna stood up immediately, her heart in her throat. "Doctor?"
"He’s alive, Mrs. Moretti," the surgeon said.
The title slipped out naturally, and for the first time in three years, Anna didn't bother to correct it.
"We repaired the pulmonary artery and removed the fragments from his shoulder," the surgeon continued. "He’s in critical condition, and we’re keeping him in a medically induced coma for the next twenty-four hours to let the lung heal without stress. But he’s strong. Remarkably strong. If he makes it through the night without an infection, he’s going to survive."
A shuddering breath escaped Anna’s lips. She leaned back against the wall, her knees threatening to buckle.
"Can I see him?" she asked.
"Only immediate family," the doctor said.
Julian smiled faintly, reached over, and gently squeezed Anna’s arm. "Go. I’ll stay here with Leo."
Anna nodded. She walked down the quiet, dimly lit corridor of the Intensive Care Unit, the rhythmic *beep-beep-beep* of monitors growing louder with every step.
Room 412.
Vincent lay in the center of the mechanical bed, surrounded by an array of monitors, IV drips, and a ventilator hissing rhythmically in his throat. His skin was pale as paper, his lips dry and cracked. The violent, untouchable titan of Chicago was reduced to fragile flesh and bone.
Anna walked slowly to the side of the bed.
She looked down at his right hand—the hand that had held hers on that burning jet, the hand that had let go, the hand that had pushed her out of the path of a bullet today.
Slowly, carefully, Anna reached out. Her fingers intertwined with his cold, limp hand.
"You idiot," she whispered, tears slipping silently down her cheeks. "You stubborn, reckless idiot."
The monitor spiked slightly, the heart rate jumping from sixty-four to seventy-two.
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Anna didn't let go. She pulled a chair close to the bed, sat down in her bloodstained dress, and rested her forehead against the edge of the mattress, her fingers locked around his, holding watch in the dark.
***
