Chapter 8 - The Sound of Steel
Liam didn't panic. The moment the threat materialized, the wounded, recovering patient vanished, replaced instantly by the ruthless mafia commander.
"Leo!" Liam barked, his voice booming across the room.
Leo appeared from the hallway, carrying a heavy tactical chest rig and a short-barreled automatic rifle. He tossed the rig onto the bed.
"Clara, get into the safe room behind the walk-in closet," Liam ordered sharply, using the crutches to pivot toward the bed. "Lock the door from the inside. Do not open it for anyone except me or Leo. Understood?"
"I'm not leaving you here!" I shouted over the sound of automatic gunfire suddenly erupting on the lawn downstairs. The sharp pop-pop-pop of rifles shattered the afternoon silence, followed by the heavy thud of glass breaking on the ground floor.
"You are going into the safe room!" Liam roared, setting his crutches aside and sitting on the edge of the bed to strap the chest rig over his black T-shirt. He pulled a heavy semi-automatic pistol from the nightstand drawer, racked the slide with a lethal, metallic clack, and looked up at me. "I can fight forty men, Clara. But I cannot fight them if I'm worrying about a bullet hitting you."
I looked at the gun in his hand, then at Viktor, who was taking up a defensive position beside the reinforced doorway.
The sounds of violence were moving rapidly up the grand staircase—heavy boots, shouted orders in Italian, and the terrifying, metallic impact of combat boots hitting marble.
"Three minutes," I said, my heart hammering in my chest like a trapped bird. "If you aren't back in three minutes, I'm coming out with a scalpel."
Liam let out a dark, breathless laugh, his eyes burning with a fierce, terrifying pride. "Go, Nurse."
I ran into the massive walk-in closet, pushed aside a row of heavy wool coats, and pressed the hidden button on the wall panel Leo had shown me days earlier. A heavy steel door slid open with a soft hydraulic hiss.
I stepped inside the small, brightly lit concrete bunker, pulled the door shut, and listened as the heavy electronic bolts locked into place.
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Outside, the world exploded into noise.
The muffled roar of gunfire echoed through the heavy steel door. I sat on the floor, my knees pulled up to my chest, my stethoscope gripped tightly in my trembling hands, praying to a God I hadn't spoken to in years to keep the man in the next room alive.
