The grip around my wrist was not the feeble, uncoordinated twitch of a dying man. It was absolute. It was steel forged in ice.

Lorenzo’s dark eyes, injected with broken red capillaries from the paralytic toxin, locked onto mine. His chest expanded on a harsh, ragged gasp that sounded like tearing silk. The cold radiating off his skin was agonizing against my own feverish warmth, but I didn't pull away. I couldn't.

"Do... not... scream," Lorenzo rasped, his voice a shattered whisper. The paralytic still held his tongue mostly hostage, but his eyes were blazing with a terrifying, lucid intellect.

"Lorenzo..." The name escaped my lips before I could check myself. I had never called him by his first name. To me, he had always been Mr. Moretti, the god of the Chicago underground who had once saved me from a drunken predator in a dark pantry.

He swallowed hard, his throat clicking. "They think... I'm dead?"

"Yes," I whispered, tears of sheer shock blurring my vision. "Dante. The doctors. Everyone. They said the bullets were poisoned. They lowered the temperature in here to preserve your body for the undertaker. Lorenzo, Dante is upstairs right now dividing your empire. He's declaring war."

A sinister, glacial calm settled over Lorenzo’s pale features. The realization hit him, but it didn't break him. It fueled him. The paralytic had slowed his heart rate down to a near-absolute standstill—so slow that the standard monitors couldn't detect the microscopic electrical impulses. The freezing temperature of the room had preserved his brain, while my body heat, pressed against his chest for four hours, had acted as an organic defibrillator, gently warming his core back to life.

"Dante..." Lorenzo murmured. His grip on my wrist tightened, pulling me closer until his freezing lips almost brushed my ear. "The traitor... isn't just Dante. He couldn't... execute this alone. The doctors... Caldwell."

My heart plummeted. Dr. Caldwell. The chief medical officer who had declared him dead at 11:42 p.m.

Suddenly, heavy boots echoed down the concrete hallway outside the medical wing.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

Lorenzo’s eyes snapped to the reinforced glass doors. His body was still 90% paralyzed; he couldn't stand, let alone fight. If anyone walked through that door and saw the dead boss breathing, a single pillow over his face would finish Caldwell's job.

"Hide," Lorenzo commanded, his voice growing stronger as his adrenaline began to fight off the neurotoxin.

"I'm not leaving you!" I whispered fiercely.

"Under... the table," he forced out. "Now, Miss Bell. Trust me."

I scrambled off the high stainless-steel operating table, my knees scraping against the ice-cold tile. I squeezed beneath the metallic base, dragging the hanging white bedsheet down just enough to cover my shadow, leaving a sliver of sight through a tear in the hem.

The heavy electronic lock clicked. The heavy doors swung open.

Dr. Harrison Caldwell walked in, holding a heavy silver syringe. Behind him stood Dante Voss, wearing Lorenzo's customized Italian leather coat—the coat he hadn't even waited to burn before claiming.

"Are you sure the toxin dissipated?" Dante asked, his voice echoing off the sterile walls. "I don't need him waking up in the coffin, Harrison. The Moretti loyalists are already suspicious."

"Relax, Dante," Caldwell said smoothly, flicking the side of the syringe. "The paralytic I used shuts down autonomic functions completely within twenty minutes. Even if by some cosmic anomaly his heart tried to restart, this dose of potassium chloride will guarantee cardiac arrest. It’s purely a formality before the undertaker arrives at seven."

From my hiding spot beneath the table, my hand flew to my mouth to stifle a gasp. Caldwell wasn't just incompetent; he was the executioner.

Caldwell stepped up to the table. He reached out to pull back the sheet.

I held my breath, my chest agonizingly tight. On the table above me, Lorenzo lay completely still. He had forced his body into absolute stillness, suppressing his agonizing need to breathe.

Caldwell raised the needle, aiming directly for the IV port in Lorenzo's neck.

If that needle hits his vein, he dies for real.

I looked around frantically under the table. Beside my right foot was a heavy, stainless-steel basin filled with discarded scalpel handles and bloody sponges.

I didn't think. I acted.

I slammed my foot into the basin.

CLANG!

The metallic explosion echoed violently in the silent room.

"What the hell was that?!" Dante barked, pulling a silenced 9mm from his coat.

"Someone's in here!" Caldwell dropped the syringe as it rolled off the edge of the tray, shattering on the tile just inches from my face.

Dante advanced toward the table, his gun pointed straight at the floor. He bent down, his hand reaching for the edge of the sheet to pull it back and expose me.

"Come out, little mouse," Dante sneered. "Or I put a bullet through whatever is breathing under there."

He yanked the sheet up.

Our eyes met. Dante grinned, recognizing the timid, plain maid who usually cleaned his ash trays. "Clara? What the fuck are you doing under a corpse's bed?"

"I... I came to get the dirty linens, sir!" I sobbed, faking hysterical terror. "I dropped my keys! Please don't shoot me!"

Dante scoffed, lowering his gun slightly. "Stupid, useless girl. Get out from under there before I—"

He never finished the sentence.

From the top of the operating table, a hand wrapped in thick white bandages shot down like a striking viper. Lorenzo’s fingers clamped around Dante’s throat with terrifying, inhuman force.