Chapter 6 - The Tremor in the Dark
The cold inside the room felt suddenly unbearable, as though the walls were contracting, squeezing the air out of Matilda’s lungs. She stepped back toward the head of the table, her eyes darting between the frosted silhouette outside the door and Gabriel’s unmoving form. She needed a weapon, a strategy, a miracle. On the surgical tray beside her lay scalpels, clamps, and stainless-steel scissors, but what could a five-foot-four maid do against an armed underboss and his enforcers? If Carmine walked through that door and saw that Gabriel was still warm, the outcome was predetermined.
Then, something happened that made Matilda’s breath freeze in her throat.
On the narrow steel slab, Gabriel’s right hand was resting palm-down against the thin white sheet. His fingers, long, rough, and calloused from a lifetime of handling firearms and steering wheels, were pale as tallow. But as the sound of the doctor’s footsteps approached the glass, the index finger of that hand gave a sudden, violent twitch.
Matilda’s eyes snapped to his hand. She held her breath, unable to believe what she was seeing.
It was not a tremor of cold. It was a deliberate, agonizing effort of will. Gabriel’s knuckles tightened, the tendons along his thick forearm standing out beneath the skin like taut steel cables. A faint, shuddering breath escaped his parted lips—so quiet it was almost indistinguishable from the hum of the air ducts, but it was there. His chest expanded by a fraction of an inch against the white medical bandages.
The paralytic was wearing off. The sheer physical constitution of the man, combined with his legendary endurance, was burning through the poison far faster than the conspirators had calculated. His consciousness was clawing its way back to the surface of the dark lake where they had drowned him.
No, Matilda thought, panic screaming in her skull. Not now. If they see him move, they’ll kill him!
If Gabriel opened his eyes, if he groaned, if he tried to fight before his strength had fully returned, Carmine would draw the suppressed pistol tucked inside his coat and put two rounds into his temple before Gabriel could even lift his head from the pillow. In his paralyzed state, Gabriel could not fight. He was a lion trapped in iron chains, completely at the mercy of the hyenas circling his den.
Matilda acted on pure instinct. She leaned over his body, covering his broad, bare chest with her own torso, using her black dress and the folds of her white apron to obscure his movements. She reached out with her trembling right hand and slipped her small fingers over his spasming ones, pressing his hand flat against the cold surface of the examination table.
She leaned her face close to his ear, her lips almost grazing his dark stubble, her disheveled chestnut hair falling like a curtain around their faces to block the view from the glass door.
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"Please," she whispered, her voice a desperate, pleading thread of sound that barely carried across the inches between them. "Please... don't move. Don't open your eyes. They're right outside."
Gabriel’s face remained still, his heavy eyelids sealed shut against the light. But beneath her trembling palm, she could feel the furious, violent power coursing through his nerves—a caged animal struggling against the chemical poison that bound him.
