Chapter 25 - Van
Sixteen hours of surgery, and all I can think about is her goddamn coffee humming.
My hands move through the post-surgical routine on autopilot—scrubbing until my skin burns pink, documenting patient charts, checking on trauma victims who'll heal clean. The trauma bay finally quiets, machines beeping their steady rhythms. Everything's felt wrong since I sent her away.
She's safe in New York by now, wrapped in family protection where she belongs. Away from me, from the violence that shadows men like me.
My chest feels scraped clean from the inside. Like I've performed surgery without anesthesia, removed something vital, and can't stop the hemorrhaging.
The parking garage stretches empty at this hour, oil stains on concrete creating abstract patterns under flickering fluorescents. My footsteps echo off walls tagged with faded graffiti. Exhausted doesn't begin to cover it.
I'm thinking about the way she arched her back when I bound her wrists with medical tape. The particular shade of green her eyes turned when she whispered "Sir." The weight of her in my bed, how she made my sterile apartment feel like something worth coming home to.
My phone buzzes. Emergency callback from the trauma bay.
"Dr. Reyes, we need you back immediately. Multi-vehicle accident coming in, victims critical. Highway pile-up, at least six cars involved."
I turn back toward the hospital entrance. Lives on the line always take priority.
The medical team waiting by the service elevator looks professional—scrubs in the right shade of surgical green, credentials clipped to pockets. But their eyes are too steady. No exhaustion from a sixteen-hour shift. No adrenaline spike from incoming trauma.
"Dr. Reyes?" The lead physician approaches, his walk too smooth. He's holding a syringe, clear liquid catching the light. "We need to get you prepped for emergency surgery. Lucia Torrino sends her regards."
The needle finds my neck before my exhausted reflexes catch up.
Sedative floods my system like ice water in my veins. Vision fracturing at the edges, legs suddenly made of wet cement. My surgeon's hands lie useless as they guide my collapsing body onto a gurney.
"Careful with him," one says, adjusting the straps. "Lucia wants him conscious for the main event."
Through the chemical haze, Lucia Torrino steps from behind a concrete pillar. She's wearing surgical scrubs that have never seen an OR, strategic blood spatters painted on.
"Hello, Van." Her south side Chicago accent turns consonants into weapons. "Did you really think Vinny's death would go unanswered? That sending your little plaything away would protect either of you?"
The gurney wheels squeak against the floor. Every fluorescent burns into my retinas like surgical lamps. Lucia's voice follows me into darkness: "Give my regards to your nightmares, Doctor."
I wake strapped to a surgical table, and for three seconds I think I'm back in Afghanistan.
Medical restraints cut into my wrists where rope burns left permanent scars. Industrial disinfectant mixed with rust and old blood fills my nostrils. The metal beneath me carries that specific cold that seeps through skin and settles in bones.
The abandoned medical facility stretches around me. Rusted equipment. Broken monitors with screens like dead eyes. Surgical lights flickering between too bright and complete darkness, creating a strobe effect that makes reality unstable.
Lucia stands over me wearing blood-stained scrubs—old blood, brown at the edges, layered. She adjusts the restraints with practiced efficiency.
"Welcome to your second tour of duty, Doctor." She runs a finger along surgical instruments on a tray—scalpels, forceps, bone saws. All clean, sharp, waiting. "I've prepared something special."
My wrists burn as I test the restraints. Two exits, both with shadows suggesting guards. Medical equipment repurposed. The setup identical to that concrete room in Afghanistan.
One thought anchors me: Carmela needs me to survive this.
Lucia wheels in mannequins dressed as wounded soldiers, positioned on makeshift gurneys around my table. Fake blood pooling in realistic patterns, limbs bent at angles suggesting compound fractures, faces turned toward me. She's even added name tags.
"Let's see if you can save them this time." She pulls out a knife—not medical, something meant for violence. "I ask questions about the Rosetti family. You answer, patients live."
She approaches the first mannequin. "Tell me about the Rosetti family's Chicago business interests. Routes, contacts, which cops they own."
The blade slashes plastic. Red corn syrup splashes across the mannequin's throat, dripping onto the floor. One drop every 0.8 seconds. My hands twitch against restraints, muscle memory reaching for gauze that isn't there.
Private Sanchez's face flashes—nineteen years old, gap-toothed smile fading as blood loss took him while my chained hands couldn't reach the clamps.
Then Sanchez blurs into dark curls catching morning light through my bedroom window. The scent of basil from terra cotta pots she lined on my windowsill. Her off-key humming of "Brown Eyed Girl" while delicate fingers pinched yellow leaves. Her head on my chest as she slept, trusting me completely.
"Information about their suppliers," Lucia demands, moving to the second mannequin. "Family secrets. Financial records."
I close my eyes. Behind my lids, Carmela's face appears. The way she fit against me. The trust in her eyes when she let me bind her.
Mine. She chose to be mine, and I threw her away.
"Shame you couldn't save him," Lucia whispers, leaning close. Expensive perfume trying to mask old blood. She tightens the restraints until my wrists burn fresh fire on old scars.
Carmela's laugh fills my mind—that bright sound that made my apartment's walls seem less like a fortress.
"Tell me about their financial networks." Lucia thrusts her knife into another mannequin, stuffing spilling out in red clumps. "Offshore accounts, money laundering. Give me something useful or I start working on you directly."
Carmela's eyes in those moments of surrender—pupils dilating as she gave me control. She saw the broken soldier but chose the man instead.
"No."
Lucia slams the scalpel down, the clatter echoing. She reaches for pliers, rusty hinges squeaking as she tests them near my face. Something in my expression makes her pause.
"You're being foolish." She paces around the table. "She's just a spoiled brat playing at rebellion. She'll forget you the moment daddy introduces her to someone appropriate. Someone whole. Someone who doesn't wake up screaming."
Wrong. Carmela didn't choose easy. She chose me. Saw worth where everyone else saw wreckage.
"You can hurt me all you want. I'm not telling you anything."
Lucia's control snaps. She turns the knife on me—shallow cuts for maximum pain, minimal blood loss. Demands I explain how to suture each wound before attempting it herself with clumsy stitches that pull and tear.
Time blurs. She stages elaborate scenarios—IVs of saline and adrenaline to keep me conscious, fake emergencies requiring triage decisions, casualties cycling through at breakneck pace.
Charts shoved in my face. Every hesitation punished with ice water, electric shocks, games that would break someone who hadn't already been shattered and rebuilt.
New grotesque tableaus appear: mannequins arranged to mirror real memories, fake monitors wailing familiar alarms, mannequins flayed open to reveal hollow insides.
But I've already been broken. Already been rebuilt. This time, I have something I didn't have in Afghanistan.
The edges of reality blur like watercolors in rain. I cling to one constant: Carmela's voice saying my name. Her hand in mine. The way she looked at me like I was worth saving.
Lucia circles again, switching tactics. Soft words about her losses, tears for Vinny, confessions about growing up in violence.
Her words bounce off my walls.
"She came to your apartment that first night," Lucia tries. "Threw herself at the first dangerous man she met. That's not love, Van. That's daddy issues."
But I remember how Carmela saw through my gruff exterior from that first moment. Didn't run when she found my hidden room. Walked into my darkness and brought her sunshine with her.
Physical and psychological pain merge. I catalog facts through the haze: twelve steps to the nearest exit, two guards at six-foot-two and six-foot-four, Lucia checking her phone every seventeen minutes. My body is restrained, my mind compromised—but my heart is clear.
Carmela's memory is the only part Lucia can't dissect.
I was wrong to send her away. She made her decision knowing who I am—the soldier, the surgeon, the damaged man who needs control. And she chose all of it.
The way she whispered "I choose you" while I bound her wrists. The strength underneath her smiles facing down Torrino threats. Her steady hands during medical emergencies.
"I'll die before I betray them," I tell Lucia, voice hoarse but certain. "And when I get out of here—when, not if—I'm going to find the woman I love and never let her leave again."
The rage that transforms Lucia's face is beautiful—a predator realizing their prey has teeth.