Chapter 5 - The Fire Escape
The heart monitor screamed a continuous, flatlining wail as I ripped the IV from my mother’s arm.
“Emmy, what are you doing?” she panicked, clutching her bleeding hand.
“We have to go, Mom. Right now.”
Luca was already at the door, peering through the small rectangular glass window into the hallway.
“Three men just stepped off the elevator,” Luca said, his voice entirely devoid of panic. “Suits. Heavy jackets. They aren't doctors.”
He turned to me.
“Can she walk?”
“I don't know,” I said, wrapping my mother’s frail arm around my shoulder and hoisting her out of the bed. She groaned in pain, her legs trembling violently under her own weight.
“I’ve got her,” Luca said.
He crossed the room in two strides, scooped my sixty-year-old mother into his arms as if she weighed nothing, and carried her toward the window.
“Open it,” he commanded.
I unlatched the heavy hospital window and shoved it up. The freezing November wind blasted into the room.
Outside was an old, rusted iron fire escape.
“Go first,” Luca said. “Guide her feet.”
I climbed out onto the grated metal platform. We were three stories up. The alley below was dark and narrow, littered with dumpsters.
Luca carefully handed my mother through the window. I braced her against the frozen railing.
“Hold on to me, Mom,” I pleaded.
Just as Luca swung his legs over the windowsill to join us, the door to the hospital room was kicked open.
Wood splintered.
I screamed.
A man in a dark coat stood in the doorway, a suppressed pistol raised.
Luca didn't flinch.
While still balancing on the windowsill, Luca raised his own weapon and fired twice.
The deafening roar of his unsilenced gun shattered the quiet hospital wing.
The man in the doorway collapsed backward into the hallway.
“Move! Down the stairs!” Luca shouted, pulling the window shut behind him.
Bullets shattered the glass a split second later, raining sharp fragments down on our coats.
I practically carried my mother down the steep, rusted stairs. My boots slipped on the icy metal.
“I can't,” my mother gasped, clutching her chest as we reached the second-floor landing. “My heart, Emmy. I can't breathe.”
“You have to, Sarah,” Luca said, appearing behind us. He positioned his body between us and the broken window above. “Ten more steps.”
Men were shouting on the third floor. Flashlights cut through the darkness of the alley.
We reached the ground.
“The car is in the front lot,” Luca said, quickly assessing the alley. “They’ll be waiting for us there. We need to go through the laundry exit.”
He led us toward a heavy steel door at the back of the hospital. It was locked from the outside.
Luca raised his gun and shot the locking mechanism.
He kicked the door open, pushing us inside just as a bullet sparked against the brick wall right where my head had been a second earlier.
We were in the hospital’s industrial laundry room. Huge canvas carts filled with dirty linens lined the walls.
“Get in,” Luca ordered, pointing to an empty canvas cart.
“What?” I asked.
“Get your mother in the cart. Cover her with sheets.”
I didn't argue. I helped my mother into the deep, wheeled bin and piled dirty hospital gowns and blankets over her until she was completely hidden.
Luca grabbed the handle of the cart and pushed it at a sprint down the long, fluorescent-lit service hallway.
I ran beside him.
“Where are we going?” I panted.
“The loading dock,” he said.
We burst through double doors onto a concrete loading bay. An idle ambulance was parked at the edge of the ramp, its engine running, the driver standing outside smoking a cigarette.
Luca didn't say a word.
He walked up to the driver, grabbed him by the collar, and slammed the butt of his gun into the man’s temple. The driver dropped unconscious to the asphalt.
“Get her in the back!” Luca yelled.
I pulled my mother out of the cart and practically threw her into the back of the ambulance. I climbed in after her.
Luca jumped into the driver’s seat, threw the ambulance into drive, and slammed on the gas.
We tore out of the loading dock just as two of Bellini’s men sprinted out of the hospital doors, firing wildly at the back doors of the ambulance.
One bullet punched through the metal frame, burying itself in a medical supply cabinet inches from my head.
Luca hit the sirens.
The blaring noise drowned out the gunshots as we sped onto the main highway, weaving frantically through midnight traffic.
I sat on the floor of the ambulance, clutching my mother’s hand. She was pale, her breathing shallow and ragged.
“Mom, stay with me,” I cried, finding a portable oxygen mask and pressing it to her face.
She took a deep breath of the oxygen, her eyes fluttering.
I looked through the small glass window separating the cab from the back.
Luca was staring into the rearview mirror, his face a mask of absolute, terrifying focus.
He had just saved a housemaid and an old nurse at the expense of his own life.
He had started a war.
Forty-five minutes later, Luca pulled the ambulance off a dirt road in the deep woods outside the city limits.
We stopped in front of a small, hidden cabin surrounded by towering pine trees.
“Safe house,” Luca said, turning off the engine.
I helped my mother out. The cold air was jarring, but the silence of the woods was a relief.
As we walked up to the front porch, the cabin door swung open.
Standing in the doorway, holding a steaming mug of tea, was Mrs. Russo.
“You made it,” the old housekeeper smiled gently, stepping aside to let us in.
I stared at her in shock. “How did you get here?”
“Luca called one of his trusted captains to pick me up from the mansion while you were at the hospital,” she said, ushering my shivering mother to a plush armchair near a roaring fireplace.
Luca walked in and locked the heavy deadbolts behind him.
He set his gun on the kitchen table.
“Carlo Bellini has mobilized his men,” Luca said quietly. “My captains are reporting that Bellini’s soldiers have surrounded the mansion. They’re claiming I went crazy and kidnapped his daughter.”
“What?” I gasped. “Vanessa isn't with us!”
“She’s playing the victim,” Mrs. Russo sighed, pouring my mother a cup of tea. “It gives Carlo the excuse he needs to wipe Luca out and take the territory.”
Luca looked at the leather ledger still tucked in his coat.
“I need to get this ledger to the Commission,” Luca said. “The Five Families will execute Carlo themselves if they see proof he murdered a boss. But I can't do it tonight.”
He looked at me. His dark eyes softened for the first time all evening.
“Are you hurt, Emily?”
“No,” I said, though my hands were still shaking.
He stepped closer to me. Close enough that I could smell the gunpowder and expensive cologne on his suit.
Before he could say another word, my mother reached into her hospital gown.
“Emily,” my mother rasped, pulling out a small, tarnished silver object on a chain.
May you like
It was a silver pocket watch.
“I didn't just witness Isabella’s death,” my mother said. “I was in the room the night Antonio died, too.”
