Chapter 11 - The Fight for Bruno’s Life on the Black-Market Operating Table
Dr. Ronald Harris had fled for Palermo, but the Leone family had other debts we could call upon in the dark hours of the morning.
In the back room of an underground veterinary surgical clinic on 14th Street—a place usually reserved for high-stakes racehorses and discreet underworld emergencies—Dr. Sean Campbell worked under the harsh glare of halogen surgical lamps. The air smelled of iodine, cauterized flesh, and the sharp hiss of pure oxygen flowing through a canine ventilator.
Tony and I stood against the tiled wall, our clothes still soaked in mud, river water, and blood.
Bruno was lying on the stainless steel operating table, his massive chest shaved and split down the rib line, surrounded by surgical clamps and clear plastic suction tubes running red with fluid. A digital heart monitor beeped with a slow, erratic rhythm that threatened to flatten out with every passing minute.
"Bullet tore through the middle lobe of the right lung and nicked the internal thoracic artery," Campbell said, his hands moving with the steady, lightning-fast precision of a trauma surgeon who had operated under gunfire in Fallujah. "He lost three pints of blood before you got him through the door. If this dog weighed ninety pounds, he’d already be gone. But he’s a tank. He’s fighting."
Campbell reached in with long titanium forceps, his fingers tightening as he clamped the severed artery. With a soft clink, he dropped a mangled, copper-jacketed .45 caliber slug into a stainless steel basin.
"Artery is secured," Campbell muttered, sweat dripping from the tip of his nose beneath his paper mask. "Starting autologous blood transfusion now. Come on, you big bastard... breathe."
For sixty agonizing seconds, the only sound in the room was the rhythmic hiss-click of the mechanical ventilator and the low hum of the fluorescent lights.
Then, the erratic beeping on the heart monitor began to steady. The line on the screen smoothed out, climbing from forty beats a minute to sixty, then seventy-five. A deep, natural reflex shuddered through Bruno’s heavy frame, and his chest expanded on its own, drawing in a long, shuddering breath of clean oxygen.
Campbell let out a long breath, stepping back from the table and pulling off his bloody rubber gloves.
"He’s stable, Salvatore," the surgeon said, wiping his brow with his forearm. "He’s going to have a hell of a scar, and he won't be chasing down cars anytime soon, but he’s alive. The lung will heal."
I walked over to the table and rested my bare hand against Bruno’s warm, scarred forehead. The dog’s eyelids fluttered, opening just a fraction of an inch. His golden pupil locked onto my face, and the very tip of his tail gave a single, weak tap against the steel table.
"Rest now, soldier," I whispered. "The job is done."
I turned to Tony, whose face was gray with exhaustion but cleared of the murderous tension that had held us all night.
"What about Marco?" I asked.
"He’s locked in the cellar at the compound," Tony replied quietly. "The commission bosses... they found out what happened after we cleared the bombs from the cathedral undercroft. Don Lucchese and the heads of the Five Families are demanding a sit-down at noon. They want Marco handed over to them."
"Tell them no," I said, pulling my coat back over my shoulders.
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Tony blinked in surprise. "Boss? After what Marco did? The commission will want him skinned alive for putting explosives under their chairs."
"Marco isn't theirs to punish," I said, looking down at Bruno’s steady breathing. "Marco Ricci belongs to Mateo and Sofia Vasquez. And today, they are going to get their closure."
