Chapter 6 - Blood and Concrete
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"Let go of my hand," Tessa whispered, keeping her voice low so Chloe wouldn't hear across the room, even as her heart hammered wildly against her ribs. "Your family killed my father to cover up a federal prosecutor buried under Arthur Sterling’s building!"
Roman didn't tighten his grip on her injured hand, nor did he take the thumb drive away from her. Instead, he guided her out through the connecting glass door into the empty adjacent consultation room so the nurse and Chloe couldn't hear them, and shut the door.
"Look at me, Tessa," Roman commanded quietly.
"So you can shoot me too and dump me in the river with those three people your men just took downstairs?!" Tears of rage and betrayal burned in her hazel eyes as she glared up at him, trapped between the consultation table and his broad chest. "Is that why you stood up for me in the dining room tonight?! Because you already knew who Frank Cole’s daughter was and wanted me to lead you straight to the drive?!"
"If I knew you had that drive two hours ago, do you think I would have let you work for six months scrubbing toilets on the fourteenth floor of my hotel?" Roman’s voice dropped to a rough, fierce growl as he braced both hands on the table on either side of her hips, leaning down until his gunmetal eyes were level with hers. "Until you said your father’s name in front of twenty men at my dinner table tonight, I didn't know you existed!"
"The note says your cousin Victor Vance oversaw the concrete pour on Pier 4!"
"My cousin Victor has been trying to take my seat at the head of this family since my father died five years ago," Roman said, his jaw clenching until a muscle jumped beneath his skin. "Three months ago, when the federal prosecutor investigating the South Branch port leases vanished, Victor swore to me on his mother’s grave that the Russians had taken the prosecutor out—and he used the heat from the FBI investigation to try to convince the captains that I was losing control of the city!"
Tessa blinked, her mind racing as she stared into Roman’s intense, unflinching gaze.
"Wait..." she breathed. "If your cousin Victor secretly partnered with Arthur Sterling to murder that federal prosecutor and bury him inside the foundation of Sterling’s casino tower—"
"Then Victor and Sterling were planning to win the two-billion-dollar casino license together on Friday, cut me out of the downtown loop, and if anyone ever found that prosecutor’s body in the concrete later, tip off the FBI that I ordered the hit!" Roman’s eyes flashed with lethal comprehension. "That’s why the burner phone on that Milwaukee fixer downstairs didn't have Arthur Sterling’s number on it. Arthur was too panicked after I threatened him at dinner to send a cleanup crew to a hospital—he called Victor to tell him Frank Cole’s daughter was working in my hotel! And Victor sent the fixer here tonight to grab Chloe and the drive before I found out what they did!"
Suddenly, the hospital consultation room didn't feel safe anymore.
If Roman’s own cousin, Victor Vance—a made capo in the Vane syndicate who knew every protocol, every radio frequency, and every soldier on Roman’s payroll—was the one who had sent the Milwaukee fixer to Mercy General tonight...
"Roman," Tessa whispered, the blood draining from her face. "Which four guards did Matteo send up here to guard Chloe’s door ten minutes ago?"
"The South Side crew," Roman said—and stopped dead.
Victor Vance ran the South Side crew.
At that exact fraction of a second, through the frosted wire glass of the consultation room door, Tessa saw two of the "protective" South Side guards standing outside Chloe’s room suddenly draw suppressed 9mm pistols from their coats—aiming not down the hallway toward the elevators, but turning right toward Matteo, who had just stepped out of the stairwell after handing off the prisoners!
"MATTEO, DOWN!" Roman roared, drawing his Heckler & Koch and firing twice straight through the wire-glass window of the consultation room door!
CRASH! BANG! BANG!
Safety glass exploded outward into the ICU corridor. Roman’s first bullet took the lead South Side traitor through the shoulder just as the man fired at Matteo—knocking the traitor’s shot wide so it grazed Matteo’s Kevlar vest instead of his head—while Roman’s second round dropped the second turncoat flat onto the linoleum!
Down at the far end of the fifth-floor corridor, the heavy fire doors of the east stairwell burst open, and six more of Victor Vance’s heavily armed South Side soldiers charged onto the pediatric ward carrying compact submachine guns!
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"They’re coming for the room!" Tessa cried, diving back through the connecting door into Room 512 where Chloe was waking up screaming at the sound of gunfire!
"Unplug her bed from the wall and switch the cardiac pump to transport battery—now!" Roman commanded, standing in the doorway of Room 512 with his pistol in his right hand and a spare Glock snatched from the dead traitor’s belt in his left, laying down a blistering wall of suppressive fire down the corridor alongside a bleeding Matteo!
