Chapter 4 - The Siege of St. Catherine’s“They’re here,” Dominic whispered, his eyes snapping wide open. The adrenaline surged through his system, temporarily overriding the agonizing pain in his ribs.
He tried to sit up, but Grace pushed him firmly back onto the mattress.
“Stay down! If you move, you’ll hemorrhage,” Grace hissed, her eyes darting frantically around the abandoned ward. There was only one door in and out, and the window looked down six stories into a concrete alleyway. “How did they find us so fast?”
“Vance didn't leak our location,” Dominic said, his jaw tightening into a hard line of realization. “Vanessa’s father has a biometric tracker embedded in the security network of every major hospital in Manhattan. The moment my heart rate monitor reconnected to the central grid downstairs, they traced the signal.”
“We’re trapped,” Leo whimpered, clutching his black cross so tightly his knuckles turned white.
Grace’s mind raced. As a nurse, she knew every inch of this building—every ventilation shaft, every service elevator, every supply closet. But moving a critically injured mafia boss and a terrified six-year-old through a hospital swarming with Arthur Bellini’s hitmen was suicide.
Unless...
“The laundry chutes,” Grace said suddenly, snapping her fingers.
Dominic looked at her skeptically. “The laundry chutes?”
“They’re wide enough for a child, and the industrial service shaft drops straight down into the basement loading dock where the garbage compactors are,” Grace explained rapidly, grabbing a pile of clean cotton hospital sheets from a supply cart. “We drop Leo first. Then we follow.”
“And me?” Dominic asked, his voice dark. “I can't squeeze through a metal tube in my condition.”
“You’re not going down the chute,” Grace said, her tone leaving no room for argument. She reached into her pocket, pulling out a spare set of master keys she’d stolen from the nursing station a year ago. “You’re going to walk out the front entrance like the terrifying bastard you are, and you’re going to draw their fire while I get Leo to safety.”
Dominic stared at her as if she had lost her mind. “Are you out of your psychotic mind? You want me to walk into a firing squad of twenty professional assassins while you sneak away?”
“Do you have a better plan, Mr. Moretti?” Grace challenged, stepping right up to his bed, her blue-gray eyes flashing with a fierce, defiant intelligence that completely matched his own. “Because if we stay here, we all die in the next three minutes. If you distract them, we might all survive.”
Before Dominic could argue, the heavy glass door of Ward 4B shattered into a million glittering shards.
The sound of gunfire ripped through the quiet hallway. A bullet punched clean through the drywall inches above Dominic’s head, showering the bed in plaster dust.
“Move!” Grace shouted.
She scooped Leo up in her arms, rushing toward the industrial laundry hatch in the corner of the room. Without a second thought, she opened the heavy steel door, kissed the top of Leo’s head, and slid him safely into the vertical fabric chute.
“Hold onto the sides, Leo! I’ll catch you at the bottom!” she yelled down into the darkness, hearing the boy’s muffled cry as he slid away.
Grace whipped around.
Dominic Moretti was already standing.
He had ripped the remaining IV lines from his arms, blood spraying freely across the white sheets. In his right hand, he held a heavy steel oxygen tank he had wrenched off the wall mount. His face was a mask of cold, unmitigated fury—the face of a man who ruled the underworld with an iron fist.
“Stay behind me,” Dominic growled, his voice vibrating with lethal intent.
The door to the ward blew open completely. Three men in black tactical gear, carrying suppressed submachine guns, poured into the room.
Dominic didn't hesitate. With a roar that echoed off the concrete walls, he hurled the heavy steel oxygen tank directly at the lead assassin, crushing his chest and sending him crashing backward into his teammates.
Before the other two could recover, Dominic closed the distance with terrifying speed, his hands wrapping around the second assassin's throat with bone-crushing force.
Grace watched in stunned silence as the myth of Dominic Moretti played out in real life—brutal, efficient, and utterly merciless.
Within ten seconds, all three hitmen were unconscious on the floor.
Dominic stood over them, his chest heaving, blood soaking through his bandages and dripping onto his hospital pants. He turned his cold, gray eyes toward Grace, wiping a streak of blood from his cheek.
“Still think I need to hide in a laundry chute?” Dominic asked, his voice dangerously low.
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Grace swallowed hard, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She looked at the fallen assassins, then back at the man who had just torn through them with half his internal organs hanging by a thread.
“No,” Grace whispered, her voice steadying. “Let’s go see Vanessa.”
