Chapter 14 - The Second Exposure
Gabriel's heart rate dropped from thirty-eight to thirty-one before Mara finished attaching the pads.
Sadi stood beside the stretcher with Rosa's protocol open in both hands.
"Tell me what to read."
Mara tore open a medication pack.
"Sequence R, step one."
Sadi found the line.
"Calcium support before anticoagulation."
"Dose?"
Sadi read it.
Mara prepared the syringe.
Gabriel's eyes opened briefly.
"You two sound very confident."
"We are pretending," Sadi said.
"Good."
His eyes closed again.
The monitor alarm changed pitch.
Mara looked at the rhythm.
"Gabriel, stay with me."
No response.
"Gabriel."
His pulse disappeared from the screen.
Sadi stopped breathing.
Mara pressed the shock control.
Gabriel's body jerked against the stretcher.
The ambulance swerved as Enzo took a corner too quickly.
"What happened?" he shouted from the front.
"Drive."
Mara began compressions.
Sadi held the protocol under the overhead light.
The words blurred for one terrible second.
She forced them back into focus.
"Step two says wait ninety seconds after rhythm returns."
Mara did not look up.
"We need a rhythm first."
The monitor remained flat.
Sadi stared at Gabriel's face.
He had been shot, poisoned, hunted, betrayed by his brother, and declared incapable by his uncle in less than six hours.
Dying in the back of a stolen ambulance felt like the final insult.
"Do not do this."
Mara glanced at her.
Sadi did not care how desperate she sounded.
"You still owe me Route Nine."
Mara shocked him again.
The line jumped.
Then another beat appeared.
Then another.
Gabriel gasped.
Sadi's knees nearly gave out.
Mara immediately checked his pulse.
"Weak, but back."
Gabriel opened one eye.
"Route Nine can wait."
Sadi laughed once from pure relief.
"You are insufferable."
"Alive."
"Barely."
Mara pushed the first medication.
"Both of you stop talking."
The ambulance reached the veterinary hospital six minutes later.
Its basement surgical room had not been used in three years.
Mara turned on portable lamps while Enzo and Sadi moved Gabriel onto the table.
The room smelled of bleach, dust, and old animal disinfectant.
Mara examined Gabriel's arm again.
"There is still flow."
Sadi looked at her.
"Meaning?"
"I may be able to save it."
Gabriel heard.
"May."
"Do not start."
Mara prepared the second step from Rosa's protocol.
Sadi stayed near the table.
Enzo guarded the hallway.
"What happened to the first patient?" Sadi asked.
Mara looked up.
"Which first patient?"
"Gabriel at seventeen."
Gabriel's eyes remained closed.
Mara glanced at the old notes.
"Rosa reversed it before the clotting spread."
"Why does he not remember?"
"He was sedated."
Gabriel opened his eyes.
"By who?"
Mara hesitated.
"Harker."
Gabriel stared at the ceiling.
"Of course."
Sadi turned another page in Rosa's file.
A photocopied vehicle manifest had been tucked behind the protocol.
BLACK UTILITY TRUCK 4C.
AUTHORIZED USER: V. FALCONE.
The date matched the night Rosa died.
Sadi felt anger spread through her chest.
"Victor signed out the truck."
Gabriel looked at the page.
"Yes."
Mara continued working.
"That proves access, not driving."
"It proves he lied."
"That is easier to prove."
Sadi kept searching the file.
A small transparent sleeve held three toll photographs.
The first showed the utility truck entering Route Nine at 11:42 p.m.
The second showed it passing a camera near mile marker thirty-seven.
The image was grainy.
Two figures were visible through the windshield.
Sadi brought the photograph beneath the surgical lamp.
"There are two people."
Gabriel looked.
His expression changed.
"Passenger is Victor."
Sadi studied the driver.
Older.
Broad face.
Heavy eyebrows.
She had seen him before.
Not in person.
In the background of an old newspaper photograph showing Matteo outside a courthouse.
Enzo came back into the room.
Sadi held up the image.
"Who is driving?"
Enzo went still.
"Carlo Vescari."
"Who is he?"
"Matteo's security chief at the time."
Sadi looked at Gabriel.
"So Victor was in the truck."
"Yes."
"And Carlo was driving."
"Looks like it."
Sadi searched the final toll photograph.
It had been taken after the collision.
The truck's front corner was crushed.
Victor's face was turned toward the camera.
He was looking directly out the passenger window.
There was no fear in his expression.
No shock.
No panic.
Only calculation.
"He knew what they were doing."
Gabriel said nothing.
Sadi looked at him.
"He was eighteen."
"I know."
"Your brother watched my mother die at eighteen and then let my father help him escape two years later."
Gabriel's jaw tightened.
"I know."
"Do you?"
His eyes met hers.
"I know what it feels like to discover someone you loved was never the person you buried."
The anger in Sadi loosened slightly.
Not because he deserved forgiveness.
Because he understood the shape of the betrayal.
Gabriel kept looking at the toll photograph.
"Victor was eighteen."
Sadi heard the conflict in his voice.
"You keep saying that like it makes him smaller in the picture."
"It makes him eighteen."
"Old enough to know a woman was about to be hurt."
"Yes."
Gabriel set the photograph down.
"And young enough for Matteo to spend years shaping him before that night."
Sadi looked at him.
"Are you defending him?"
"No."
Gabriel's answer came immediately.
"I am trying to understand how my brother became a man who could sit in that truck."
Sadi's anger eased by one degree.
"Understanding is not forgiveness."
"I know."
Enzo looked at the photograph too.
"Victor started working with Matteo when Vittorio changed the succession."
Gabriel shook his head.
"Earlier."
Enzo frowned.
"How much earlier?"
Gabriel closed his eyes briefly.
"When my mother died."
Sadi looked at him.
"You think Matteo used that."
"Victor blamed my father for not saving her."
"Matteo agreed with him."
"Matteo agreed with whatever made Victor easier to control."
Sadi thought of Matteo in the warehouse, calm while describing Tomas's death.
He did not need people to love him.
He needed them to believe their pain had a useful target.
"Did Victor know about Vascorin when you were seventeen?"
Gabriel looked at Enzo.
Enzo shook his head.
"I do not know."
Sadi held up the photograph.
"Then we find out before we decide which part of him was manipulated and which part volunteered."
Gabriel looked at her.
"You make that sound simple."
"It is simple."
She placed the image back inside Rosa's file.
"What he did matters more than the story he tells himself about why."
Gabriel considered that for a long moment.
Then he nodded.
Mara interrupted.
"I need silence for five minutes."
She used ultrasound to guide a catheter into Gabriel's upper arm.
Sadi watched the monitor.
Blood flow appeared as uneven flashes of color.
Mara administered the second drug.
Gabriel's jaw tightened but he did not move.
"Now we wait."
Enzo checked the hallway again.
"We do not have long."
"Nobody ever has long around you people," Mara said.
Sadi's borrowed phone vibrated.
An unknown number.
She answered cautiously.
"Hello?"
A whisper came through.
"Sadi?"
She recognized the voice immediately.
"Lucia."
A sob caught on the other end.
"I am sorry."
Sadi turned away from the table.
"Where are you?"
"Belladonna."
Enzo looked at her sharply.
Sadi put the call on speaker.
"Why are you there?"
Lucia's breathing shook.
"They brought me back."
"Who?"
"The manager and two men I do not know."
Sadi looked at Enzo.
"Are you hurt?"
"No."
"Your brother?"
Lucia began crying harder.
"They have Mateo too."
Sadi closed her eyes.
That explained the false witness statement.
"Listen to me."
"They made me sign it."
"I know."
"I told them you went into the freezer."
"I know."
"You saved me, and I lied."
"Lucia, stop."
Sadi's voice became firm.
"You did what they forced you to do."
"They said they would break Mateo's hands."
Enzo's expression darkened.
Sadi looked at the clock.
"Can you leave?"
"No."
"Can you see an exit?"
"Kitchen corridor."
"Is the freezer near you?"
"Yes."
Sadi remembered Belladonna's layout.
The dry-storage door.
The emergency alley exit.
The old service lift.
"There is a red fire handle beside the wine cage."
"I know."
"Pull it if you hear shooting."
Lucia went silent.
"Shooting?"
Sadi regretted the word.
"If you hear anything dangerous."
Gabriel opened his eyes.
"Ask her who is there."
Sadi did.
Lucia whispered.
"The manager."
"Anyone else?"
A long pause.
"Victor was here."
Gabriel's expression hardened.
"When?"
"Before the shooting."
Everyone froze.
Sadi leaned toward the phone.
"How long before?"
"Maybe twenty minutes."
"Who was he with?"
Lucia's breath caught.
"Enzo."
The room went silent.
Sadi slowly turned toward him.
Lucia continued before anyone could speak.
"I saw Enzo give Victor an envelope."
Enzo's face became unreadable.
Gabriel looked at his oldest adviser.
"What envelope?"
Enzo did not answer.
Lucia suddenly gasped.
A man's voice sounded in the background.
"Who are you talking to?"
The line went dead.
Sadi lowered the phone.
May you like
Gabriel's eyes never left Enzo.
"What envelope?"
