Chapter 22 - BLOOD IN THE BUNKER
The bunker smelled of stale air, polished brass, and the copper tang of mortal danger. Emergency red lighting bathed the subterranean room in a sinister crimson glow. Crates of munitions lined the far wall, while a sleek communication console flickered with static in the center.
"Luca! Stay with me, look at me!" Elena fell to her knees beside him, her hands frantically tearing at the buttons of his tactical vest and shirt.
The bullet had entered just below his right shoulder blade, tearing through muscle and lodging dangerously close to his ribcage. Blood bubbled from the wound with sickening persistence. Every breath he drew was shallow, rattling like dried leaves in an autumn gale.
"Elena..." His eyelids fluttered open, dark eyes cloudy with pain and shock. He reached up, his fingers weakly brushing against her chin before falling limp against the concrete. "Should have... left me out there. You'd have had... more time."
"Shut up," she sobbed, ripping open a military-grade trauma kit mounted on the wall. "You don't get to command me right now. You don't get to die in front of me after everything you did to protect me."
Her hands shook violently as she pulled out sterile gauze, hemostatic powder, and surgical clamps. For four days, she had tended to his minor cuts and changed his dressings with quiet reverence, always mindful of the invisible wall between master and maid. But this was different. This was life slipping through her fingers like water.
She ripped his shirt completely away, exposing his broad, scarred chest and the violent, gaping tear near his shoulder.
"This is going to hurt," she warned, tears spilling freely down her face.
"I've felt worse from prettier women," he managed to rasp, a faint, ghostlike smirk touching his pale lips before grimacing in pure torment.
Elena poured the hemostatic powder directly into the wound. Luca’s spine arched off the floor with a strangled, agonized roar, his hands clawing at the concrete until his knuckles turned white. The chemical agent burned like liquid fire as it accelerated clotting. Elena pressed a thick pad of sterile gauze directly over the entry wound, throwing the full force of her body down onto her palms to stem the tide of blood.
"Keep your eyes open, Luca. Don't you dare close them!" she ordered, her voice cracking with desperation.
His gaze locked onto hers. Even drenched in sweat, his skin pasty from hypovolemic shock, there was an unbearable intensity in those dark irises. He reached up with his uninjured hand, his fingers curling tightly around her wrist.
"Why do you care?" he whispered, his chest heaving under her hands. "I'm a monster, Elena. I run an empire built on corpses and fear. I slammed my fist into a wall just because you touched me... and yet you stay."
"Because you didn't hurt me," she replied, pressing harder to stop the bleeding, feeling the violent hammering of his heart against her palms. "Because when the world fell apart, you threw yourself in front of bullets meant for me. Monsters don't do that, Luca."
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From the other side of the reinforced blast door, a muffled metallic grinding began. The high-pitched whine of an industrial thermal torch cut through the silence. Enzo’s men were trying to cut through the hinges.
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