Chapter 6 - The Trial of BloodTime seemed to slow down.
Lorenzo stood ten feet away, his finger tightening on the trigger of the shotgun. Behind me, Lucian made a desperate, agonizing effort to shift his body, trying to place himself between the gun and me, but he was too weak, collapsing back against the pillar with a bloody gasp.
“Don't... touch her...” Lucian choked out, his voice a broken whisper.
Lorenzo laughed. “Goodbye, Serena.”
Before he could pull the trigger, I drew the silver revolver from my coat pocket and fired three shots in rapid succession.
The heavy silence of the garage exploded.
The first bullet struck Lorenzo directly in the shoulder, knocking him off balance. The second caught him in the chest. The third ripped through his throat.
Lorenzo dropped the shotgun, his eyes wide with disbelief, before collapsing onto the blood-stained concrete floor, motionless.
The remaining Romano henchmen in the garage froze, staring in absolute horror at their fallen leader, then at me—standing over Lucian with a smoking gun, my eyes filled with a lethal, terrifying rage.
“Get out!” I screamed at them, my voice echoing like thunder through the cavernous space. “Get out before I kill every single one of you!”
Panic seized the surviving thugs. With their boss dead and Marco’s team advancing, they scrambled back into their vehicles and sped out of the garage, abandoning the battle entirely.
The garage fell into a deafening, ringing silence.
I dropped the gun, turning back to Lucian. His eyes were wide, staring at me as if he were seeing a warrior goddess who had just descended from the heavens.
“You... shot him...” Lucian whispered, a weak, disbelieving laugh coughing out of his chest.
“I told you,” I sobbed, pulling his head into my lap, pressing my hands back over his bleeding chest. “You don't get to die today.”
Marco rushed over, accompanied by three private medics who had finally broken through the outer perimeter with an armored ambulance.
“Get him on the gurney now!” the lead medic ordered, cutting open Lucian’s shirt and applying emergency pressure dressings.
As they lifted Lucian onto the stretcher, his hand reached out, his bloody fingers clamping around my wrist with surprising strength.
“Serena...” he gasped, his vision fading as the medics injected him with morphine. “Don't leave me...”
I held his hand tightly, walking beside the stretcher as they wheeled him toward the ambulance.
“I’m right here, Lucian,” I whispered, tears blurring my vision. “I’m not going anywhere.”
For six agonizing hours, I sat in the private waiting room at St. Jude’s Hospital.
Elena arrived with Nico, wrapping me in a tight embrace as I washed Lucian’s blood off my hands in the sink. Marco stood guard outside the door with twenty heavily armed Moretti soldiers. The Romano family had been completely dismantled in a single night—Lorenzo was dead, Bianca had fled the country in disgrace, and the remaining Commission members had officially declared Lucian the undisputed ruler of New York.
At 6:00 AM, the surgeon stepped into the waiting room, pulling off his mask.
“Mrs. Moretti?”
I stood up instantly, holding Nico in my arms. “How is he?”
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The surgeon offered a tired, reassuring smile. “The bullet missed his heart by a fraction of an inch. We repaired the damage to his lung and stopped the internal bleeding. He is stable, awake, and demanding to see his wife.”
A long, shuddering sob escaped my throat, and I buried my face in Nico’s soft blanket.
