Chapter 2 - Five Seconds of Air
“Get your hands off my son!”
Alessio’s roar shattered the quiet nursery, shaking the glass panes in the tall windows. He crossed the room in two massive strides, the heavy metal barrel of his gun coming to a dead stop inches from Fiona’s left temple.
The air in the room instantly turned to liquid ice.
Fiona felt the cold, hard steel resting against her skin. She smelled the bitter scent of gun oil, rain, and the raw, unwashed sweat of a man who had been awake for three days straight.
Three-month-old Leo lay limp beneath her forearm on the changing table, his small body quivering, his face a terrifying shade of bruised dark purple.
Fiona’s heart slammed against her ribs like a trapped bird, but her hands did not shake. They couldn't. If her hand slipped by a single millimeter, the narrow metal tube inside the infant’s throat would tear his delicate vocal cords.
She did not turn around to face the gun.
She did not cry out.
She did not even look at the man holding her life in his hands.
“Shoot me,” Fiona spat out through clenched teeth, her eyes locked completely on the tiny dark opening of the baby’s throat, “and Leo dies.”
Alessio’s finger tightened against the flat metal trigger. A fraction of a pound more pressure, and her skull would burst open against the white wallpaper. “You’re killing him!” he screamed, his voice breaking with an agonizing, primal horror. “You’re choking him!”
“Shut up and give me five seconds!” Fiona commanded, her voice slicing through his rage with the absolute authority of a surgeon in an operating theater.
It was a command no living human had ever given Alessio Romano. Men had been executed in back alleys for merely speaking to him in a loud tone. But something in the razor-sharp, utterly fearless clarity of her voice hit him like a physical blow.
Alessio froze.
Five seconds.
One.
Fiona squeezed the small manual rubber suction bulb connected to the narrow tube. A wet, sickening sound echoed in the quiet room as the thick, viscous mucus plug was cleared from the baby’s narrow windpipe.
Two.
She pulled the metal blade cleanly out of his throat, flipped the limp infant over onto her forearm facing down, and struck him firmly three times between the shoulder blades with the heel of her hand.
Three.
Nothing happened. The baby lay motionless across her arm.
Four.
Alessio let out a low, animalistic growl, his thumb flicking the safety switch off the pistol, the click sounding like a crack of thunder in the small room. “I swear to God—”
Five.
Leo’s tiny chest gave a sudden, violent heave.
A high-pitched, thin gasp tore through his small throat, followed instantly by a raw, loud, beautiful cry that split the silence of the mansion.
Waaaaah! Waaaaaaah!
The dark blue color flooded out of the baby’s face, replaced instantly by a bright, healthy, furious pink as air rushed back into his tiny lungs.
Fiona didn't lose her composure. She immediately turned the crying baby face-up, wrapping him tightly in a clean swaddle blanket, holding him close to her chest to keep his airway elevated while rocking him in a smooth, rhythmic motion.
“He’s clear,” Fiona said, her voice shaking slightly for the first time as the adrenaline began to flush through her system. “He’s breathing.”
The gun barrel slowly dropped away from her temple.
Alessio stood beside the changing table, his tall frame trembling violently. The gun hung uselessly at his side, his knuckles white around the grip. He stared at his crying son, his chest heaving as if he had been the one drowning in the dark.
“What... what did you do to him?” Alessio rasped, his voice hollow and broken.
Fiona finally turned to face him. She stood nose-to-chest with the most feared criminal boss in Illinois, her brown eyes burning with a fierce, cold fury that completely matched his own.
“I saved his life,” Fiona said, stepping directly into his personal space, ignoring the gun in his hand. “While you were standing there acting like a brainless brute with a weapon, your son was dying of an upper airway obstruction caused by the very condition your hospital doctors warned you about!”
Alessio stared at her, stunned into complete silence.
“You threw out his medical monitors because you couldn't handle the noise!” Fiona continued, stepping closer, poking a firm finger directly into his chest. “You surround this house with armed thugs, iron gates, and surveillance cameras, but you left your son completely defenseless against his own body! You almost let him die tonight because of your pathetic, arrogant pride!”
In the doorway behind them, Dominic and two armed guards stood frozen, their eyes bulging, their guns drawn but completely forgotten as they watched a five-foot-five nanny berate their terrifying boss like a misbehaving child.
Alessio’s face went through three distinct shades of white. His chest rose and fell, his hands clenching into fists. For a second, Dominic was certain Alessio was going to snap her neck right there on the carpet.
Instead, Alessio slowly raised his hand and tucked his gun back into the leather holster beneath his left arm.
He looked down at his crying son, then looked back up into Fiona’s fierce, unwavering eyes.
“What do we need?” Alessio asked, his voice dead silent, completely stripped of its previous rage.
Fiona blinked, caught slightly off-guard by the sudden shift. “What?”
“What equipment do we need to make sure this never happens again?” Alessio repeated, his eyes fixing on hers with an intense, terrifying focus. “Tell me what to buy, and it will be in this room before sunrise.”
Fiona swallowed hard, regaining her composure. “A high-flow infant oxygen concentrator. A hospital-grade suction machine. An APNEA monitoring belt with an encrypted digital feed. And a pediatric pulse oximeter that connects directly to a monitor in my room.”
Alessio turned his head toward the doorway. “Dominic.”
Dominic snapped to attention instantly. “Yes, boss?”
“Call Dr. Harrison at Chicago Presbyterian. Wake him up. Tell him if those medical devices aren't brought to this house by a team of specialists within two hours, I will personally buy his hospital and fire everyone in it.”
“On it,” Dominic said, turning and sprinting down the hallway like his life depended on it.
Alessio looked back at Fiona. He looked at her wet hair, her cheap sleep clothes, her hands that were still gently rocking his breathing son.
“You didn't run,” Alessio murmured softly, as if analyzing a strange new species. “I put a gun to your head, and you didn't run.”
“If I ran, Leo would be dead,” Fiona said simply, resting her chin against the baby’s head as his cries slowed to a soft, exhausted whimpering. “I don't leave my patients, Mr. Romano. Not even for you.”
Alessio stared at her for a long, quiet moment. Something shifted deep behind his ice-blue eyes—a flicker of something that looked remarkably like respect, buried beneath layers of frozen grief.
“You’re staying,” Alessio said, stepping back toward the door. “You don't leave this house. Your salary is quadrupled as of tonight. You take care of my son, Miss Bennett.”
He stopped in the doorway, his hand resting on the wooden frame, his silhouette dark and towering against the hallway lights.
“And if you ever speak to me in that tone again,” he added softly, “I will make sure you regret it.”
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“Then don't almost get your son killed again,” Fiona replied without looking up.
Alessio let out a faint, almost invisible breath that might have been a ghost of a laugh, and disappeared into the dark corridor.
