Chapter 33 Adrian
Adrian
Mount Sinai Hospital smells like antiseptic and death.
The emergency entrance is chaos. Cops. EMTs. Hospital staff. All moving with practiced urgency. Someone is screaming. A child, maybe. Or someone's wife. I don't look.
Frankly, I don't care.
I push through the doors, and a nurse tries to stop me.
"Sir, you can't—"
I don't slow down. "Leo Conti. Where is he?"
"Sir, I need you to—"
"Where. Is. He?"
Something in my voice makes her step back. "Fourth floor. Surgical wing. But he's—"
I'm already moving. I wish someone would stop me. I'm so on edge that I need to smash someone's face in, but I don't.
I don't have time for emotional displacement, and fortunately, everyone gives me a wide berth as I make my way to the last man to see my wife.
A doctor is standing outside a room, reviewing a chart. He looks up as I approach.
"Leo Conti," I say. "Where is he?"
"Are you family?"
"I'm his brother." The lie is told before I even think about it. "Where is he?"
The doctor's expression shifts. "He's stable for now. But he has a subdural hematoma. A brain bleed. We need to operate immediately to relieve the pressure."
"Is he awake?"
The doctor nods. "I understand—"
"I need to speak with him."
The doctor looks like he's going to tell me no, but something he sees in my face must have stopped him.
"You have five minutes. Then we take him to surgery."
He steps aside. I enter the room.
Leo is on the bed, pale. There's a bandage wrapped around his head, already soaked through with blood. His eyes are half-closed, unfocused.
One of his eyes is filled with blood, and I swallow the copper taste that invades my tongue as I see him.
He hasn't looked this bad since he returned from Fallujah.
"Leo..."
I'm not sure if he's able to focus, but I see recognition in his eyes, and I release a heavy breath.
"Adrian." His voice is weak. Slurred. "I'm sorry."
Until this moment, I didn't know what I was going to say. I trusted Leo with the two people most precious to me, and now, they are gone.
I'd considered killing him—briefly—but never seriously.
Now, watching him, I feel like a piece of iron has taken residence in my stomach.
"Don't."
"She—" He coughs, wincing. "She saved me."
I close my eyes. This isn't easy. Leo is gravely injured, but he still failed, and it cost me. "What happened? Do you remember?"
"Garden. Explosions. Front and back." Each word costs him. "Gabe came through. Had men. Something hit me."
From what the police told me, they blew a wrought iron gate to hell. I suspect Leo got hit with shrapnel, either from the grenade, the fountain that exploded, or the gate. I pray to God, Sera did not.
"And Sera?" Her name is heavy on my tongue as I hold a breath.
His eyes close. "Told him she'd go willingly. If he let me live."
My chest tightens. She should have run. My stupid little wife. "Go on."
"He gave her a syringe. Told her to inject herself. To prove she wasn't lying." Leo's breathing is ragged. "She did it. Without hesitation. Just... did it. To save me."
I can see it. Sera. Thirty-three weeks pregnant. Scared but determined. Choosing someone else's life over her own safety.
Over our son's safety.
To save Leo.
She is the kind of person who would do just that.
"I should have stopped her," Leo says. His eyes are heavy from pain meds. "Should have fought harder. Should have died before I let them take her."
"Then, she'd be gone, and you'd be dead."
"I failed you." His hand reaches out, grabbing my arm weakly. "I failed her. I should die for this, Adrian. I should—"
"You're my brother." My voice is ice. Final. "You're going to heal. You're going to live. And when you're better, you're going to help me find the people who did this." I lean closer. "You don't get to die, Leo. You get to survive. Understand?"
He stares at me. Then nods weakly.
The doctor appears in the doorway. "We need to take him now."
Nurses rush in. They're already prepping him, unhooking monitors, wheeling the bed toward the door.
"Adrian—" Leo's voice is fading.
"Heal," I tell him. "That's an order."
They wheel him out. Down the hall. Through double doors that close with a finality that makes my jaw clench.
He'd better survive.
Because I'm going to kick his ass.
I stand there in the empty room, staring at the blood on the sheets. Leo, a man who'd seen war, was almost undone by Gabriel, a low-level piece of shit. It makes me even angrier.
My phone rings. Luc.
"Where are you?" I answer.
"Pulling up now. I have something."
"Meet me on four. Surgical wing."
Two minutes later, Luc appears. He looks like I feel. Desperate. Furious. Ready to kill.
"What is it?" It's time to get down to business.
"Gabriel dropped his phone. Probably during the attack. We pulled the data." He hands me a tablet. "Phone pings, surveillance footage from street cameras. We've been triangulating his possible locations."
I scan the screen. There are red dots everywhere. Hundreds of them.
"How many?"
"Six hundred and twelve potential locations across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens." Luc's voice is tight. "He's been moving constantly. Never staying in one place long. We can start checking them systematically, but—"
"But it'll take too long." I hand the tablet back. "He could move her before we get there. He could—" I don't finish the sentence.
Could hurt her. Could kill her. Could do anything.
What the fuck is he even planning? Alexei doesn't want Sera and neither do the feds.
"We need to narrow it down," Luc says. "Think. Where would Gabriel go? What places mean something to him?"
I want to answer. Want to have some insight into Gabriel Romano's pathetic, desperate mind.
But I don't.
I barely know the man. I've spent months hunting him, but I don't understand him. Don't know his habits. His patterns. His safe places.
And I don't know Sera well enough either. Not the Sera who existed before me. The one who had a life in this city. Friends. Routines. Places she felt safe.
"I don't know," I admit. The words taste like failure.
Footsteps behind us. I turn to see Alexei approaching with two of his men.
"Any news?" he asks.
"Nothing useful. Six hundred possible locations. No way to narrow it down."
"I have news about Artem." Alexei's voice is grim. "He's in SoHo. A townhouse near Spring Street. My source confirms he's been there since yesterday."
SoHo. Fuckers.
"Where in SoHo?" I ask slowly.
Alexei checks his phone. "Near West Broadway and Prince. Why?"
"Because that's where Sera lived." The pieces are clicking together. "Before me. She had an apartment above a bookshop. Antiquarian Rare Books. She worked there. Lived there."
Luc's eyes widen. "You think Gabriel took her back there?"
"It's empty. She doesn't have it anymore. But it's familiar to him. He knows the area. Knows the building." I'm already moving toward the elevator. "And he thinks we won't look there. Why would we? It's not connected to me. Not connected to the family."
"A bookshop?" Luc sounds skeptical. "That's where you think he's holding a hostage?"
"It's where I'd go if I were desperate and needed somewhere no one would think to look." I press the elevator button. "Alexei, take your men to the Artem location. If he's there, end him."
"And if your wife is there too?"
"She won't be. Gabriel has her. I'm sure of it." The elevator opens. I step inside. "But if I'm wrong, if Artem does have her, you call me immediately. Understand?"
"Understood." Alexei is already moving, barking orders to his men in Russian.
The elevator starts to descend. Luc is beside me, phone already out.
"I'm sending teams to the bookshop," he says. "We'll have the entire block surrounded in ten minutes."
"No." My voice is sharp. "Just us. Small team. If Gabriel sees a convoy, he'll panic. He'll do something stupid."
"Adrian, if he has mercenaries—"
"He doesn't. Not anymore. Artem wouldn't stay at the scene.
If what Alexei says is true, he wanted to draw that fucker out.
He got paid, and now, he can play cat and mouse with his enemy.
It's just Gabriel now. Desperate. Cornered.
Dangerous." The elevator hits the ground floor.
"We go in quiet. We get Sera out. Then we kill him. "
Luc doesn't argue. Just nods.
We're moving through the lobby when I see her.
Gemma.
She's standing near the emergency entrance.
Our eyes meet.
And I know.
Before she says anything. Before she opens her mouth. I know.
She walks toward me. Her face is pale. Her eyes are red.
"Adrian—"
"Don't."
"Mom is dead." Her voice cracks. "You're Don now."
The words hit me like bullets.
Mom is dead.
You're Don now.
Everything stops.
The hospital. The noise. The chaos.
Everything.