Chapter 2 - Blood on the Linoleum
The silence shattered the instant the assassin’s back hit the plaster.
The man was already recovering, his feral instincts taking over as he rolled onto his knees and lunged toward the dropped firearm. The suppressed pistol lay gleaning beneath the low green light of the medical monitor, inches from the ruffled edge of the bed skirt.
He never touched it.
A hand—heavy, calloused, and moving with the terrifying velocity of an uncoiling viper—clamped around the assassin’s throat.
Vincent Costa was no longer lying down.
Three days of chemically induced paralysis and forced stillness melted into pure, murderous adrenaline. The IV needles ripped violently from the crook of Vincent’s elbow, blood spraying in a fine, dark arc across the crisp white sheets, but he didn’t even flinch. His bare feet hit the floorboards with a dull, absolute thud.
The hitman’s eyes bulged. He opened his mouth to gasp, to scream, to understand how a comatose vegetable had just seized him with the grip of an industrial vice.
Vincent didn't give him the chance to think.
With a brutal twist of his torso, Vincent hauled the man off his feet and drove his skull directly down onto the edge of the bedside table. The sound of wood splintering and bone cracking echoed through the sterile room like dry kindling snapping in winter.
The hitman went limp instantly, but Vincent’s rage was a furnace that had been stoking for seventy-two hours. He took the man’s tactical vest in both fists, spun him, and slammed him spine-first onto the linoleum floor. Dropping his knee into the man’s sternum with the weight of a falling boulder, Vincent pinned him flat. The man’s breath left him in a wet, rattling gasp.
Vincent snatched the fallen pistol from the floor. He racked the slide with one hand against his thigh, jammed the warm steel of the suppressor into the assassin’s left eye socket, and leaned down until his mouth brushed the killer’s ear.
“Who opened the gate?” Vincent whispered.
His voice was a gravelly ruin from disuse, but the cold promise behind it was sharp enough to sever bone.
The hitman shuddered beneath him, coughing pink foam over his split lips. “Go to hell, Costa…”
Vincent didn’t waste words. He shifted the muzzle down two inches and pulled the trigger.
The muffled *phut* of the suppressed shot was barely louder than a heavy book dropping on carpet. The bullet took off the hitman’s kneecap. The man opened his mouth to howl in agony, but Vincent shoved his free hand into the man’s throat, cutting off the scream before it could clear his vocal cords.
“You have three seconds,” Vincent said, his dark eyes devoid of any human warmth. “Who sent you? Was it Lorenzo, or did Camila negotiate the contract herself?”
The assassin’s face was slick with sweat and terror. He looked into Vincent’s eyes and realized what the rest of the underworld had forgotten: Vincent Costa had not inherited an empire. He had butchered his way to the top of it.
“Both,” the man choked out, tears of agony cutting tracks through the grime on his cheeks. “Lorenzo gave the codes. The woman… the woman promised fifty thousand extra if I made it look like… like heart failure. She wanted you dead before dawn.”
Vincent stared down at him for a second longer. A cold, surgical detachment settled over his features.
“Thank you,” Vincent murmured.
*Phut.*
The hitman went utterly still.
The room plunged back into silence, broken only by the frantic, rapid beeping of the mangled heart monitor whose wires dangled uselessly from the wall. The metallic stench of fresh blood fought with the smell of cheap lavender soap and burnt circuits.
Vincent slowly rose to his feet. His legs trembled slightly—the lingering effects of Matteo’s localized sedatives fighting against the sudden surge of adrenaline—but he forced his spine straight. He wiped a streak of sweat from his forehead with the back of a bloody forearm.
Then, he remembered.
Vincent turned around.
Tessa was curled against the baseboard by the bathroom door. Her face was as white as the hospital linen. A crimson cut bled sluggishly down the side of her chin, and she was clutching her bruised ribs, her chest heaving with terrified, shallow breaths. Her brown eyes, wide and dilated with shock, were locked on him.
She wasn't looking at a helpless patient anymore.
She was looking at the devil.
Vincent lowered the weapon slightly, his breath steadying. He took a single step toward her.
“Stay back!” she gasped, scrambling backward until her shoulders hit the wall. She raised a trembling hand, her knuckles skinned and bloody from hitting the assassin. “Stay away from me!”
“You’re hurt,” Vincent said. His voice was lower now, trying to find its natural baritone.
“You… you were awake,” she stammered, horror dawning across her features. “You were awake the whole time. When your fiancée was here. When… when I washed you. When I talked about Leo.”
“I was,” Vincent admitted plainly.
Tessa let out a ragged sob, half-furious and half-terrified. “You let me babble like an idiot. You let that bastard almost break my ribs! You played possum while I threw myself into a gun!”
“I was paralyzed by drugs, Tessa. If I had moved five seconds earlier, he would have shot you through the chest before I could cross the room.” Vincent tossed the pistol onto the bed and extended an open hand toward her. “I didn’t plan for you to be here. But you saved my life.”
Tessa stared at his outstretched hand. It was large, scarred, and covered in another man’s blood.
“I don’t want your gratitude,” she whispered, her voice shaking violently as she fought to keep her dignity intact. “I know what you do to people. I’ve seen the news. I’ve seen what your thugs did to my family. Just… let me walk out of here. I won’t say anything. I swear to God, I won’t say a word.”
Vincent looked down at her. In his world, witnesses didn't walk out of rooms that contained dead hitmen. In his world, loose ends were burned, buried, or fed to the bottom of the Atlantic. Camila would have had this girl silenced within an hour. Lorenzo would have done it without blinking.
Yet, this woman—exhausted, underpaid, and nursing a righteous hatred for his very existence—had swung a cast-iron pole at an armed killer to protect a man she despised.
The door to the corridor suddenly clicked.
Vincent moved instantly, stepping between Tessa and the entrance, his hand dropping back to the grip of the pistol on the bed.
The door swung open, and Dr. Matteo burst into the room carrying a black medical bag, his face pale with panic. “Vincent! I heard an alarm trip on the secondary bypass—sweet mother of God.”
Matteo stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes darting from the lifeless body on the floor to the shattered EKG machine, and finally to Vincent standing tall, covered in blood, holding a silenced firearm.
“Matteo,” Vincent said coldly.
“Vincent, you’re up—the relaxant shouldn't have worn off for another two hours—”
“We have a problem,” Vincent cut him off, nodding toward the corpse. “The underboss and my fiancée have moved up their timeline. And we have a witness who just kept me from catching a bullet in my sleep.”
Matteo looked past Vincent to Tessa, who was trembling against the wall, clutching her ribs.
“Who is she?” Matteo whispered, reaching into his coat for a burner phone. “Do you want me to call the cleanup crew?”
“No,” Vincent said firmly. His eyes remained locked on Tessa’s terrified, defiantly blazing face. “No cleanup crew. If Lorenzo’s men see the body being moved, they’ll know the hit failed. We play by my rules now.”
Vincent walked over to Tessa, ignoring her flinch, and knelt until he was eye-level with her.
“You wanted to walk out that door,” Vincent said softly. “If you do, Lorenzo’s men will kill you in the hallway to cover their tracks. Your brother Leo won’t just be depressed in Cleveland, Tessa. He’ll be burying his sister.”
A tear spilled over her bruised cheek, but her jaw clenched tight. “Then what do you want from me?”
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“I want you to stay alive,” Vincent said. “And right now, the only safe place in this city is behind me.”
***
