Chapter 2 - The Hand on the ThroatBeneath the white sheet, I felt Gabriel's entire frame go rigid.
The poison had paralyzed his vocal cords and motor functions, but his ears heard every single word. The faint, irregular thud against my cheek suddenly quickened—his heart was hammering back to life under the surge of pure, white-hot adrenaline.
Dr. Vance’s gloved hands trembled as he reached for the clear IV tube resting near Gabriel’s neck. "Carmine... my hands are shaking... if the guards outside see me—"
"DO IT NOW, YOU COWARD!" Carmine barked in a low, terrifying hiss, grabbing the doctor by his lapels.
Before Dr. Vance’s needle could touch the rubber IV port, I acted.
I didn't think about my job. I didn't think about the forty armed guards loyal to Carmine standing outside the estate gates. I only remembered the man who had stood up for a nameless maid covered in broken glass when the rest of the world laughed at her.
I threw the white sheet back with a wild, desperate force, grabbing a heavy stainless-steel surgical tray off the adjacent cart and slamming it hard against the side of Dr. Vance’s head.
CLANG!
"ARGH!" Dr. Vance shrieked, staggering backward as surgical scalpels and metal clamps rained across the floorboards.
Carmine spun around in total, speech-bound shock, his hand flying toward the suppressed sidearm inside his leather jacket. "WHAT THE—?! THE MAID?!"
"RUN, MR. FALCONE!" I screamed, lunging forward to grab Carmine’s arm.
Carmine let out a dark, vicious curse, backhandling me across the face with his heavy ringed hand. The force knocked me flat onto the cold linoleum, my lip splitting open, blood pooling against my cheek.
"You miserable little street rat!" Carmine snarled, stepping over me, raising his suppressed pistol directly toward my forehead. "You should have stayed in the kitchen!"
CRACK!
A sound like snapping timber shattered the quiet room.
A broad, massive hand—pale as marble, but locked with the terrifying, sovereign power of a waking titan—shot out from the steel gurney, clamping with crushing force around Carmine Rossi’s throat.
Carmine’s eyes bulged out of his head. His gun slipped from his fingers, clattering uselessly against the floorboards as his hands thrashed wildly against the iron grip around his neck.
Gabriel Falcone sat up slowly on the steel table.
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The white sheet fell away from his broad shoulders. His dark hair was disheveled, his chest heaving with shallow, ragged gasps, his storm-gray eyes burning with a dark, terrifying, and apocalyptic fury that dropped the temperature in the room below zero.
"Car... mine..." Gabriel rasped out, his baritone voice cracking into raw, lethal fragments that echoed off the cold walls. "You... stole... my empire... while I was cold?"
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