Chapter 8 - The Grip of the Fallen King
The door swung fully open, bouncing slightly against its rubber stop. Carmine stepped into the room first, his heavy black overcoat unbuttoned to reveal the dark tailored suit beneath, his hands resting casually near the pockets where his weapon was concealed. His dark eyes flicked around the sterile room, assessing the instruments, the monitors, and finally settling upon the narrow steel table with an expression of cold, disdainful annoyance. Behind him, Dr. Vance stepped through the doorway, his boots squeaking nervously on the linoleum, the black body bag hanging between his hands like a shroud.
"I gave orders that this room was to be sealed," Carmine said, his voice echoing off the tile walls. He did not look at Gabriel’s face; he looked at Matilda, his gaze raking over her disheveled chestnut hair, her tear-stained cheeks, and her trembling shoulders with absolute contempt. "Get away from him, girl. A maid has no business touching a boss’s body. Clear out before I have the guards throw you down the furnace chute."
Matilda slowly lifted her face from Gabriel’s chest, her brown eyes wide, swimming with tears that caught the blue-white glare of the overhead light. She looked every bit the shattered, innocent servant girl—vulnerable, terrified, and helpless.
"Please, Mr. Carmine," she choked out, her voice quivering with a fragile, desperate cadence. "I... I just wanted to say goodbye. He was always good to me. He protected me when no one else would. Please... just give me a minute."
Dr. Vance shifted uncomfortably behind Carmine, his face pale under his silver beard. "Carmine, let her go. She’s just a housemaid. Let’s get this over with quickly. The transport—"
"Shut up," Carmine snapped without turning around. He took two heavy strides forward, closing the distance between the door and the examination table. His towering frame cast a long, oppressive shadow across the stainless-steel slab, blocking the light from Gabriel’s face. "The boss is dead, Matilda. Your protector is meat on a table. Move before I lose my patience."
He reached out his gloved hand, reaching toward Matilda’s arm to drag her away from the table.
And at that precise, terrifying fraction of a second, beneath the heavy folds of the white sheet, something shifted.
It began as a subtle tightening, a sudden surge of heat radiating through the pale, calloused fingers beneath Matilda’s palm. Then, before she could even process the sensation, Gabriel’s hand moved.
His long, thick fingers did not merely twitch; they curled upward, sliding deliberately between hers, locking into the spaces between her fingers with a terrifying, bone-crushing strength.
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Matilda’s breath locked in her throat. She nearly cried out, her eyes widening in sheer, unadulterated shock. The grip was not a reflexive spasm of dying nerves. It was calculated. It was powerful. It was the crushing, possessive grip of Gabriel Falcone, holding her hand with an iron certainty that defied everything the medical world knew of poison and death.
Yet, as she looked down at him in frozen disbelief, Gabriel’s face did not move. His eyes remained shut, his thick dark eyelashes resting motionless against his pale cheeks. His lips did not part; his chest showed no sudden heave of respiration. To Carmine, standing barely two feet away, the boss was still a lifeless corpse resting on a cold steel slab. But beneath the linen, hidden from the treacherous underboss’s eyes, the dead king had taken hold of his maid, and he was not letting go.
