Chapter 3 - The Ghost of a Pulse
Panic and wonder crashed through Matilda’s mind with the force of an avalanche. She sat up on her knees, the metal edge of the examination table cutting sharply into her thighs through her black skirt. Her hands trembled so violently she could barely keep them steady as she leaned back over him, pressing two fingers directly into the groove beneath Gabriel’s jawline, searching for the carotid artery.
His skin was freezing, like marble left out in a December squall. For several agonizing seconds, she felt nothing but the icy smoothness of his neck. Her breath came in shallow, panicked gasps. Was she losing her mind? Had grief driven her into hysteria? She closed her eyes, biting her lower lip until she tasted copper, and pressed her fingers slightly deeper against the tense cord of his muscle.
Thump.
A dull, sluggish surge rolled against the pads of her index and middle fingers. It took nearly five seconds for the next one to follow, a faint, struggling wave of blood being forced through constricted vessels by a heart operating on the absolute periphery of survival.
"Gabriel," she breathed, the name slipping from her lips in a desperate, forbidden whisper. She had never spoken his first name aloud in his presence; to a maid, he was always Signore Falcone or Mr. Falcone. But here, suspended between life and oblivion, all titles dissolved into dust. "You're alive. Oh God, you're alive."
The realization did not bring relief; it brought a wave of sheer, paralyzing terror. If Gabriel was alive, then the doctors had made an impossible error—or something far more sinister had occurred in this room. She remembered the strange haste with which the medical team had cleared out, the hurried whispers between the lead physician and the security detail, the way they had switched off the telemetry machines before his body had even lost its residual warmth. They had treated his death not as a tragedy to be fought, but as an inevitable outcome that needed to be finalized.
Her gaze darted wildly across the small examination room. To her left, mounted on the wall directly above the stainless-steel prep counter, was the crimson faceplate of the emergency medical call button. Below it, an intercom switch was wired directly to the estate’s private guardhouse and the medical staff’s living quarters in the east wing. If she pressed it, an alarm would sound, summon the nurses, and bring defibrillators and epinephrine rushing back into the room. They could restart his vitals, administer counter-agents, and put him on a ventilator before this fragile, stuttering rhythm gave out completely.
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Matilda reached out her hand. Her fingers, small and trembling, stretched across the cold space toward the red plastic switch. She had to save him. Gabriel was the only man who had looked at her with kindness in a house built on blood and terror; he had protected her when no one else would, and now she was the only creature on earth standing between him and the void.
Her fingertips hovered less than an inch from the smooth surface of the button. All she had to do was press down. All she had to do was scream for help.
