Chapter 14 - The Harbor Safehouse
Nora dove across the metal floor, her fingers locking around Roman’s wrist just as his boots slipped into empty air. Her shoulder popped with sickening strain, the sudden deadweight threatening to pull her out into the stormy sky. Marco threw his weight over her back, grabbing Roman’s leather collar and hauling the wounded boss back inside the cabin with a guttural roar.
Roman collapsed onto the metal floor, coughing up sea mist and blood, his wound completely exposed and weeping. But his eyes were fixed entirely on Nora, who knelt beside him, gasping for breath, her scrub top torn and drenched.
“You’re insane,” she whispered, trembling from exhaustion.
“We’re even,” Roman rasped, his hand closing gently around her trembling fingers.
Twenty minutes later, the aircraft touched down on the private concrete pad of a heavily fortified compound on a secluded peninsula south of the city. Waiting medical teams rushed the helicopter, carrying Mia and the cryogenic canister onto a mobile surgical gurney.
Nora followed the gurney into the private clinic within the fortress, refusing to leave Mia’s side as the transplant team began the sterile preparation. Through the double glass doors of the intensive care unit, she watched two trauma surgeons wheel Roman onto an adjacent surgical table, working desperately to repair the catastrophic internal damage to his abdomen.
Hours passed in a blur of antiseptic lights, the rhythmic hiss of ventilators, and the steady beep of monitors.
Dawn broke clean and gold over the ocean, casting long beams of light through the clinic windows. Mia lay in a clean white bed, her breathing calm and natural, her cheeks flushed with the first hints of healthy color as Roman’s marrow dripped steadily into her central line.
May you like
Nora sat beside the bed, holding her daughter’s small, warm hand, when the door swung open softly.
Marco stood there, his arm in a sling, holding a sealed black envelope. “He’s awake, nurse. And he’s asking for you.”
