Chapter 6: The Blood Test
Nico drove faster.
Rainwater sprayed from the ambulance tires as the vehicle turned onto the highway.
The countdown continued.
Twenty-five minutes.
Elena kept her pistol pointed at Victoria.
Marcus lay on the stretcher while Maya worked to control the bleeding.
“Start explaining,” Vincent said.
Victoria looked at the remote.
“The north hospital was abandoned twelve years ago. Dominic converted part of the basement into a private holding site.”
“For Isabella,” Elena said.
“And others.”
“What others?”
“People whose deaths would have created questions.”
Nico glanced through the mirror.
“You’re saying the Torino family has been keeping prisoners?”
“Dominic has.”
“You knew.”
“Yes.”
The word carried no defense.
Vincent had authorized secret detention sites in the past. Rival soldiers, informants, and thieves had been held until their futures were decided.
But Isabella was family.
She had spent twenty-five years inside a room because her existence threatened Dominic’s lies.
“How many people?” Vincent asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Estimate.”
“Seven when I last entered.”
Elena’s face hardened.
“When was that?”
“Six months ago.”
“The photograph.”
“Yes.”
“You stood behind my mother with a syringe.”
“It contained a sedative. Isabella had attacked a nurse after hearing your name.”
Vincent looked away.
Whether Isabella blamed him correctly or not, his decisions had helped create the night she lost everything.
The countdown reached twenty-three minutes.
“What activates the explosives?” Elena asked.
“The remote sends a signal to the facility. Once armed, only Dominic’s biometric code can cancel it.”
“Can the signal be blocked?”
“Possibly, but the hospital uses a wired backup.”
Nico said, “Dr. Chen’s clinic is eight minutes ahead.”
“We’re not going there,” Elena replied.
“Marcus will die if we continue north,” Maya said.
“My mother will die if we don’t.”
Marcus reached for Maya’s wrist.
“Keep driving north.”
Victoria leaned toward him.
“No.”
Marcus looked at her.
“You don’t get to decide.”
“You’re my son.”
“For less than an hour.”
“You have always been my son.”
“You watched me love another woman as my mother.”
Victoria’s expression twisted.
“I loved you in the only way I could.”
“From across the dinner table?”
“I kept Dominic from killing you.”
“Then why did he shoot me?”
Victoria had no answer.
Marcus released Maya’s wrist.
“Keep driving.”
Maya looked toward Vincent.
“It’s your decision.”
Vincent had made thousands of decisions that placed lives on opposite sides of a scale.
He had always chosen according to value.
A soldier over an informant.
A judge over a witness.
A family member over an outsider.
This choice felt different because the people involved had spent the night trying to kill, expose, or save one another.
“Stop beneath the interstate bridge,” Vincent ordered.
Nico looked confused.
“What?”
“There’s a Torino emergency vehicle station under the east bridge. It has medical equipment and a second car.”
“You think it’s still secure?”
“No. But we need to divide.”
They reached the bridge four minutes later.
An unmarked garage was built into the concrete support. Vincent entered an access code.
The door opened.
Inside were two black SUVs, weapons, cash, and emergency medical supplies.
Maya examined the equipment.
“I can perform temporary surgery here, but I need someone to assist.”
Victoria stepped forward.
“I will.”
“You don’t have medical training.”
“I spent years visiting Saint Agnes. I know how to follow instructions.”
Marcus tried to object.
Maya silenced him.
“You can argue after I stop your internal bleeding.”
Vincent gave Nico the keys to an SUV.
“You stay with them.”
Nico shook his head.
“I should go with you.”
“You’re injured.”
“So are half the people here.”
“You are the only man I still trust with a vehicle and a weapon.”
The statement stopped Nico’s argument.
Elena transferred the hospital location to the second SUV’s navigation system.
The countdown showed seventeen minutes.
Victoria caught Vincent’s arm before he entered the vehicle.
“Dominic may have changed the layout.”
“Then tell us what you remember.”
“There’s a service entrance on the west side. The basement corridor ends at a locked red door. Isabella’s room was beyond it.”
“What about the other prisoners?”
“Two rooms east, three west.”
Elena opened the passenger door.
“We bring everyone out.”
Vincent nodded.
Victoria gave him the remote.
“The explosives were placed inside the old boiler tunnels. If you can reach the control room, there may be a manual override.”
“Where?”
“Beneath the central stairwell.”
Marcus spoke from the medical table.
“Don’t trust the map.”
Elena looked toward him.
“What do you know?”
Marcus struggled to remain conscious.
“Tony visited the hospital last month. He said Dominic built a new tunnel from the boiler room to the forest.”
“A way out,” Vincent said.
“Or a way in.”
Maya prepared an injection.
“You’re done talking.”
Marcus looked at Elena.
“The man who killed Daniel Rossi was Tony.”
“How do you know?”
“I followed him.”
“You saw it?”
“I saw Tony’s car hit Daniel. I tried to reach the scene, but Dominic’s men arrived first.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know you then.”
“You knew enough to investigate my father.”
“I was investigating Dominic.”
Elena’s anger did not disappear, but uncertainty entered it.
Marcus had spent years serving the conspiracy. Yet he had also apparently been searching for its limits.
Vincent closed the garage door and drove north with Elena.
The highway emptied as they left the city.
The hospital appeared beyond a line of dead trees.
It was a massive brick building with shattered upper windows and a collapsed east wing. No lights were visible.
The countdown showed nine minutes.
Vincent drove through a chain-link gate and circled toward the west side.
A security camera turned toward them.
“So much for abandoned,” Elena said.
The service door was locked.
Vincent fired into the mechanism and kicked it open.
They entered a narrow hallway smelling of mold and disinfectant.
Emergency lights glowed near the floor.
Someone had restored electricity to the basement.
Elena checked the remote signal.
Seven minutes.
They descended a concrete staircase.
A guard stepped from behind a doorway.
Elena struck his wrist, redirected his weapon, and drove him into the wall. Vincent caught the rifle before it hit the floor.
The guard wore no insignia.
“Where’s Isabella?” Vincent asked.
The man remained silent.
Elena pressed the pistol beneath his chin.
“My mother.”
“Red corridor.”
“Explosives?”
“Boiler tunnels.”
“Manual override?”
The guard looked toward Vincent.
“Dominic removed it.”
The countdown reached six minutes.
Vincent knocked the guard unconscious and took his access card.
They hurried into the red corridor.
Metal doors lined both sides.
Voices called from behind them.
Vincent opened the first room.
An elderly man sat chained to a bed.
He blinked against the hallway light.
“Who are you?” Elena asked.
The man’s cracked lips moved.
“Judge Harris.”
Vincent recognized the name.
Judge Nathaniel Harris had disappeared eighteen years earlier after refusing to dismiss a federal case against Torino Construction.
Vincent had always assumed a rival family killed him.
Dominic had apparently kept him alive.
“We’ll come back,” Elena promised.
The second room contained a former accountant Vincent believed had fled to Canada.
The third held a woman who had once worked for the district attorney.
Every prisoner represented a secret Dominic had hidden from the entire organization.
The countdown showed four minutes.
They reached the locked red door.
The access card failed.
Vincent fired into the hinges.
Elena helped kick the door inward.
The room beyond was empty.
A restraint hung from a chair.
The cup from Dominic’s video sat on the table.
Elena searched the room.
“She was here.”
Vincent noticed fresh wheel marks in the dust leading toward a second doorway.
They followed.
The passage ended at the central stairwell.
A freight elevator stood open.
The indicator showed B3.
The boiler tunnels.
Three minutes.
They entered the elevator.
The doors closed.
As it descended, Elena opened the envelope they had found with the recorder.
Inside was a short letter in Isabella’s handwriting.
My Sofia,
If you are reading this, the people who buried our family’s truth have failed to bury you.
Do not let the Torino name decide who you become.
Your father believed Vincent could still choose differently. I did not share his faith, but Luca knew his brother better than I did.
The elevator reached B3.
The doors opened onto a maze of pipes and machinery.
The remote showed ninety seconds.
Vincent searched for a control panel.
Elena read the final line of the letter.
The roses will lead you to the blood room. Only the blood of the brothers can open it.
“Blood room?” she asked.
A series of painted roses marked one of the pipes.
They followed it.
The markings led to a steel chamber hidden behind an old boiler.
A biometric reader glowed beside the door.
Two hand-shaped plates were mounted beneath it.
One labeled V.
The other L.
Vincent placed his palm against the first plate.
“Elena.”
She pressed her hand to the second.
Small needles pierced their skin.
The machine analyzed their blood.
The remote showed forty seconds.
A green light appeared.
The door opened.
Inside was not an explosive control panel.
It was a laboratory.
Refrigerated storage units lined the walls. Files, blood samples, and sealed medical records filled metal shelves.
Elena found a folder bearing her birth name.
SOFIA ISABELLA TORINO.
Inside was a DNA report comparing her blood to Luca’s preserved sample.
Probability of paternity: 99.99%.
Proof she was the heir.
Vincent found another file.
MARCUS ADRIAN TORINO.
The report compared Marcus to Victoria and Dominic.
Probability of maternity: 99.98%.
Probability of paternity: 99.97%.
The countdown reached twenty seconds.
Elena searched the room.
“There’s no override!”
Vincent noticed a cable running from the biometric machine into the wall.
He ripped open the panel.
Three wires led toward the boiler network.
Elena followed the labels.
“Detonation circuit.”
“Which wire?”
“They’re all the same color.”
Ten seconds.
Vincent pulled out his knife.
Elena grabbed his wrist.
“Wait.”
She opened Marcus’s file.
A handwritten note was attached to the DNA report.
AUTHORIZED OVERRIDE SUBJECT: M.A.T.
“Marcus’s blood can stop it,” she said.
“He’s thirty miles away.”
The countdown reached five.
Elena looked at the remote.
A biometric sensor was built into its side.
She pressed the blood-stained page from Marcus’s medical file against it.
Nothing happened.
Three seconds.
Vincent cut all three wires.
The hospital went dark.
Silence.
No explosion.
Elena released her breath.
Then emergency lights flickered back on.
The remote screen displayed a new message.
DETONATION TRANSFERRED.
LOCATION: EAST BRIDGE GARAGE.
Vincent stared at the words.
That was where they had left Marcus, Victoria, Nico, and Dr. Chen.
May you like
The countdown reset.
Two minutes.
