Chapter 5 - THE GILDED CAGE
The master bedroom hadn't changed.
The heavy velvet drapes.
The fireplace carved from dark Italian marble.
The king-sized bed with the Egyptian cotton sheets she had picked out four years ago.
Even the silver brush on the vanity sat in the exact spot she had left it.
Sloan laid her down on the mattress as gently as if she were made of thin porcelain.
Del scrambled backward, pulling the pillows against her chest.
Her heart rattled against her ribs.
“Don't do this, Sloan.”
Sloan stood at the foot of the bed, peeling off his ruined, bloody dress shirt.
The scar tissue across his broad chest told the history of a decade of underworld wars.
On his left shoulder, the fresh bullet furrow seeped dark red.
He picked up a white hand towel from the adjoining bath, pressing it to the wound without a flinch.
“Do what, Delphine?”
“Act like you can drag me back into your life like a piece of stolen luggage.”
Sloan walked to the heavy French doors leading to the balcony.
He turned the brass key in the deadbolt.
Click.
He pulled the key free and dropped it into his trouser pocket.
“You took my heir, Del.”
He turned around, his eyes cold and dark.
“You took the only good thing that ever belonged to me, and you hid him in a basement in South Boston.”
“Because your world is poison!” Del yelled, her voice breaking.
She threw the pillow aside and stood up.
Her pregnant belly strained against the thin fabric of her uniform shirt.
“Look at this house, Sloan! Look at your family! Someone inside those gates tried to choke Cora to death tonight! Your mother smiled at me for two years while wishing I would die in a ditch! And Elena Vance was standing in your hallway like she already owned your bed!”
Sloan closed the distance between them in two long strides.
He towered over her, his chest heaving, his scent—cedarwood, expensive tobacco, and copper—wrapping around her senses.
“Elena Vance never slept in this room,” Sloan snarled.
“I don't care!”
“Nobody slept in this bed after you left!”
The shout shook the crystal chandelier above them.
Del froze.
Sloan’s breath came fast and hot against her forehead.
“I tore this city apart looking for you,” he said, his voice dropping into a ragged, desperate whisper. “I thought the Morettis took you. I thought you were lying in a landfill outside Providence. I didn't sleep for eight months, Del. Not eight hours. Not eight minutes.”
He reached out.
His fingertips brushed the curve of her jaw, trembling slightly.
“And you were serving chowder to dockworkers three miles from my office.”
Del swallowed hard, fighting the traitorous warmth his touch sparked along her skin.
“I was surviving,” she whispered.
“You were starving,” he countered, his thumb tracing the shadow beneath her eyes. “Look at your hands. Look at your wrists. You worked double shifts while carrying my son.”
A sudden knock rattled the bedroom door.
Three sharp raps.
Bishop’s voice sounded through the heavy wood.
“Boss. We have a situation in the medical wing.”
Sloan didn't look away from Delphine.
“What is it?”
“Dr. Castiglione was just ambushed on Route 3. They ran his car into the river.”
Del gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.
Castiglione was the Marchetti family’s personal trauma surgeon.
The only doctor trusted with the family’s secret medical histories.
“Is he alive?” Sloan barked.
“No, sir,” Bishop answered. “And Cora’s oxygen saturation is dropping again. The secondary airway edema is returning. We don't have a physician on the grounds.”
Sloan cursed viciously, kicking a wooden chair across the rug.
Del didn't hesitate.
Her nurse instincts snapped back into place like an electric shock.
“Biphasic anaphylactic shock,” Del said rapidly. “The second wave hits four to eight hours after the first. If her throat swells shut again, she’ll suffer brain damage in four minutes.”
Sloan spun around to face her.
His eyes were wild.
“Can you intubate her?”
“I don't have a surgical kit!”
“The infirmary downstairs has a full field hospital setup,” Sloan said, grabbing his fresh shirt from the wardrobe. “Everything you need.”
Del stepped toward the door.
“Then stop locking doors and get me to your sister!”
They raced down the west corridor to the private medical wing on the ground floor.
Two armed guards stood outside the double glass doors.
Inside, Cora lay on a hospital bed, thrashing weakly.
The cardiac monitor wailed a frantic, high-pitched rhythm: BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP.
Her oxygen monitor flashed a terrifying red: 78%.
Elena Vance stood in the corner of the room, her arms crossed, watching the dying girl with a cold, detached curiosity.
Beside Elena stood her personal bodyguard, a mountain of a man named Greco.
Del shoved past them both, grabbing a sterile laryngoscope blade from the tray.
“Get away from her!” Elena ordered, stepping into Del’s path. “You’re a disgraced nurse who lost her license three years ago! You touch that girl and I’ll have you arrested for murder!”
Del didn't even slow down.
With one swift, brutal motion, Del used the heavy stainless-steel laryngoscope handle to strike Elena’s collarbone.
Elena shrieked, stumbling backward into Greco.
“Touch me again,” Del hissed over her shoulder, “and I’ll puncture your carotid artery with a sixteen-gauge needle.”
Del turned to the bed.
Cora was turning blue.
Her jaw was locked tight in a spasm of hypoxia.
Del grabbed an endotracheal tube and a syringe of paralytic medication.
“Sloan! Hold her head back at a ninety-degree angle! Now!”
Sloan gripped Cora’s temples, locking her skull in place with iron strength.
Del pried Cora’s teeth apart, sliding the cold metal blade over her tongue.
The vocal cords were nearly swollen shut—a pinprick hole in a sea of inflamed red tissue.
“I can't see the passage,” Del muttered, sweat beading on her forehead.
The monitor dropped: 71%.
Cora’s heart rhythm broke into ventricular fibrillation.
Del took a breath.
She trusted her hands.
She guided the clear plastic tube blind, relying on muscle memory honed over thousands of midnight emergencies.
She felt the distinct pop as the tube slipped past the vocal cords into the trachea.
She squeezed the bag valve mask.
Whoosh.
Cora’s chest rose.
Both lungs expanded symmetrically.
The monitor beeped steadily.
82%... 89%... 95%.
The heart rate slowed from a frantic flutter back into normal sinus rhythm.
Del slumped against the metal gurney, her breath coming in ragged gasps, her hand cradling her swollen stomach.
Behind her, the click of a gun hammer cocking echoed in the small room.
Del froze.
Greco, Elena’s bodyguard, was holding a suppressed nine-millimeter pistol directly against the back of Sloan’s head.
And Elena was smiling.
May you like
“Good work, nurse,” Elena purred, pulling a pair of surgical gloves from her pocket. “Now step away from the bed so Greco can finish both Marchettis at once.”
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