Chapter 6 - The Secondary Trigger
The high-pitched whine rose in frequency, a piercing, synthetic shriek that vibrated in the fillings of our teeth. Marco dropped to one knee against the Persian rug, his breath catching in his throat, his face instantly draining to a sickly, ash-gray pallor.
"Marco!" I screamed, dropping to the floor beside him, ripping my medical bag open with frantic fingers.
Victor stood calmly by the doorway, pocketing the small remote control, a triumphant sneer twisting his features. "You always were too smart for your own good, nurse. But you're about six minutes too late."
"What... what did you do?" I gasped, tearing open my stethoscope and pressing the cold bell against Marco’s chest.
The rhythm was chaotic, erratic, fluttering wildly like a trapped bird against his ribs. The implanted defibrillator was attempting to fire, but the powerful localized electromagnetic pulse Victor had triggered through the hidden wall transmitters was completely jamming the device’s internal circuitry.
"It's not just the chair," I muttered, looking around the room in sheer panic. "He’s got an EMP emitter wired into the entire study!"
Marco grabbed my wrist, his fingers digging in with desperate, agonizing strength. "Laura... my chest... I can't..."
"Stay with me, Marco! Look at me!" I shouted, pulling out a manual pocket resuscitator and prepping an emergency IV line. "David! DAVID!"
Heavy boots thundered down the hallway. The study door burst open, and David rushed in, his Sig Sauer drawn, followed by two armed guards. They took in the scene in a fraction of a second—Marco collapsing on the floor, me frantically working over him, and Victor standing by the door holding an empty whiskey glass.
"Drop him," David roared, leveling his pistol straight at Victor’s chest.
Victor didn't even blink. He slowly raised his hands, the crystal tumbler shattering against the floorboards as it slipped from his fingers. "Go ahead, captain. Shoot me. But if I die tonight, the kill-switch code for the signal jammer locking your boss's pacemaker goes out to every federal prosecutor and rival syndicate in the Tri-State area. Within an hour, the entire Bellini empire goes up in flames."
David hesitated, his finger trembling against the trigger. In the world of organized crime, collateral was everything.
"Don't... don't listen to him," Marco managed to gasp out, blood vessels popping in his eyes as the arrhythmia threatened to plunge him into full cardiac arrest. "Take... take him down..."
"Sir, if I shoot him and he’s bluffing about the code, you die on this floor," David said, sweat pouring down his forehead as he torn between saving his boss and executing a traitor.
"He's not bluffing," I said, my hands flying over Marco's chest as I checked his carotid pulse—thready, rapid, dangerously faint. "The signal frequency is overriding the pacemaker's failsafe mode. If we don't get him out of this room right now, he goes into ventricular fibrillation within sixty seconds!"
"Then move him!" David shouted.
"I can't just move him! The jammer field covers the entire east wing!" I yelled back. "We have to break the signal source!"
Victor laughed—a cold, arrogant sound that echoed off the mahogany bookshelves. "You can't break what you can't find, my dear. The transmitter is embedded inside the main foundation wall behind the chimney stack. By the time your men tear through three feet of reinforced concrete, Marco will already be meeting his father."
I looked at Marco. His eyes were rolling back, his breathing turning shallow and rattling. The man who half of Chicago feared, the untouchable mafia boss, was dying on a dusty rug because of a machine hidden behind a brick wall.
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I couldn't let him die.
I grabbed my heavy steel-framed medical bag by the handle, spun around, and hurled it with every ounce of strength I had straight at the decorative marble fireplace mantel.
