Chapter 4 - The Shadow Doctor
The cellar erupted in dust, splintered oak, and the sharp crack of Marco Bruno’s suppressed gun firing wildly into the air as he was buried beneath the rubble.
“Sophia! Now!” Lorenzo roared.
Sophia didn’t hesitate. Grabbed Emma with one arm, she sprinted through the swirling dust, ducking past the groaning pile of logs where Marco was pinned, struggling to free his trapped legs. She grabbed a heavy brass candleholder from an antique shelf and brought it down hard on Marco’s wrist, forcing him to drop the silenced pistol.
Lorenzo snapped the remaining bindings on his right wrist, stood up on trembling legs, and picked up the dropped gun from the floor. He stepped over the groaning traitor and racked the slide.
“Where is Dr. Ricci?” Lorenzo demanded, his face covered in soot and dried blood.
“He should be arriving at the side gate any second,” Sophia panted, checking Emma for injuries. The little girl was surprisingly calm, her bright eyes fixed on the ruined cellar.
“We can’t use the main house,” Lorenzo said, leaning against the stone wall to steady himself. “Vincent’s men have every floor locked down. We go through the old coal tunnel to the caretaker’s cottage.”
Before they could move, the narrow side window near the ceiling rattled, and a knocking sequence—three fast, two slow—echoed through the glass.
Dr. Enzo Ricci, seventy years old, with a medical bag slung over his shoulder and a pair of thick spectacles resting on his nose, dropped down through the coal hatch into the dust-filled room.
“Santo Cielo, Lorenzo!” the old doctor gasped, taking in the blood, the fallen timbers, and the pinned lieutenant. “You look like you’ve been through a meat grinder!”
“Save the commentary, Enzo,” Lorenzo growled, sliding down into a wooden crate as his legs gave out. “Fix my ribs and clear my head. I have a meeting at noon.”
Dr. Ricci worked with rapid, surgical precision. For thirty frantic minutes in the dark cellar, under the faint light of a pocket flashlight held by Sophia, the doctor stitched the deep laceration on Lorenzo’s scalp, set two fractured ribs with tight medical wraps, and administered a powerful dose of adrenaline to counteract the blood loss.
Throughout the ordeal, little Emma sat on a crate nearby, watching quietly. When Lorenzo groaned in pain during the stitching, Emma reached forward and placed her tiny, blood-stained hand over his shoe.
“Don’t cry, Uncle Lorenzo,” she whispered softly. “The bad men will go away.”
Lorenzo stopped groaning. He looked down at the toddler, his fierce, hardened eyes softening into something gentle, a warmth that no mobster in New York had ever seen him exhibit.
“They will, piccola,” Lorenzo promised, touching her small face with his thumb. “Because of you, they will.”
Dr. Ricci pulled the micro-SD card out from the shattered pocket watch on the floor and inserted it into a rugged medical tablet he carried. The screen lit up, displaying clear audio and video waveforms recorded earlier that morning.
On the screen, Vincent Romano’s face appeared in crisp detail. He was speaking to an undercover Federal prosecutor and two rival syndicate leaders, laying out a plan to execute Lorenzo, frame Sophia for leaking family secrets, and sell off the family’s legitimate shipping businesses for personal profit.
“This is absolute poison,” Dr. Ricci whispered, horrified. “If the capos see this at the roundtable, Vincent won’t just be deposed—he’ll be ripped apart by his own men.”
“They will see it,” Lorenzo said, rising slowly to his feet, pulling a fresh coat over his bandaged chest. “And they will see who saved the DeLuca family.”
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Suddenly, the heavy iron cellar door at the top of the main hallway shuddered under a series of heavy blows.
“Paulie,” Sophia whispered, fear returning to her voice. “He knows something is wrong.”
