Chapter 7 - The AftermathThe wailing sirens of private ambulances and unmarked black SUVs echoed through the quiet streets of Brooklyn Heights, cutting through the crisp autumn air.
Paramedics rushed through the shattered front door of the brownstone, scrambling past the broken body of Marcus Vance in the foyer. They found me slumped against the second-floor hallway wall, half-conscious, and immediately went to work, slapping oxygen masks over my face and driving an IV needle into my arm with an antidote cocktail designed for synthetic cardiac poisons.
"He's stabilizing! BP is coming up!" a paramedic shouted over the chaos.
Down the hall, two of my loyal soldiers cuffed Isabella, dragging her feet-first down the stairs. She didn't fight back anymore. Her face was blank, hollowed out by the realization that her twenty-year revenge plot had crumbled in a matter of minutes. Her brother in Zurich had already been intercepted by my advance team ten minutes before our jet even touched European airspace; my children were safe, wrapped in blankets on their way back to New York aboard a secure escort.
As they carried me out on a stretcher toward the waiting ambulance, my eyes scanned the hallway.
Max was sitting calmly by the shattered window, his dark coat gleaming under the flashing red and blue lights of the police cruisers outside.
He didn't bark. He didn't whine. He just watched me go.
"Boss," Vincenzo said, walking up beside the stretcher, his face grim as he handed me a sealed manila folder. "We swept the property. Found all her communications, her offshore routing codes, and her contacts within the Russian syndicate. They're being dealt with as we speak."
"And the kids?" I asked, my voice muffled by the oxygen mask.
"Safe, Boss. Your mother is already at the private hangar waiting to take them in for the night. They don't know anything. They think you had a bad flu."
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I closed my eyes, letting the medical team slide me into the back of the vehicle. The poison was still burning in my veins, but my heart—my real heart—was pumping hard, driven by a cold, renewed fury.
They thought they could break the Vitale empire from the inside. They forgot that monsters don't die easily. They only shed their skin.
