Chapter 5 - The Dawn of Ithaca
When I burst through the double doors of Room 618, the scene inside was pure, chaotic violence.
Marco had already reached the bedside, his gun drawn, reaching out with his left hand to grab the telemetry wires that had been torn from Salvatore’s chest.
He didn't realize the trap until it was too late.
Salvatore wasn't in the bed.
He was standing behind the heavy oak bathroom door, using the full weight of his body to swing the massive door outward like a battering ram.
CRASH!
The edge of the oak door smashed directly into Marco’s face with a sickening crunch of breaking cartilage. Marco let out a choked scream, stumbling backward, blood spurting from his nose as his gun flew out of his hand and clattered across the linoleum floor.
Franco raised his suppressed pistol, aiming directly for Salvatore’s chest. "You mother—"
I didn't process the danger. I didn't calculate the risk.
I threw my entire body weight into Franco’s back, my shoulder slamming into his ribs with everything I had.
Franco let out a grunt of surprise, his shot going wild, the bullet tearing through the heavy vinyl recliner with a soft pfft sound.
"Get off me, bitch!" Franco roared, turning around and bringing his heavy elbow back into my collarbone.
The impact sent me flying across the floor, my head slamming into the base of the metal supply cart. Blinding white light erupted behind my eyes, my vision swimming as dark crimson blood began to trickle down my forehead from a split near my hairline.
Franco turned back to finish Salvatore, raising his weapon with both hands.
"Goodbye, Boss," Franco growled.
Salvatore didn't flinch.
Despite five months of muscle atrophy, despite the agony tearing through his healing surgical incisions, Salvatore moved with the terrifying speed of a apex predator that had spent thirty years surviving the streets of Boston.
He lunged forward, his long fingers wrapping around Franco’s gun hand, twisting the man’s wrist downward with a sharp, sickening SNAP.
Franco screamed, dropping the gun.
Before Franco could recover, Salvatore grabbed the heavy, stainless-steel IV pole, swung it in a wide, vicious arc, and brought the solid metal base crashing down against the side of Franco’s jaw.
THUD.
Franco collapsed onto his side like a felled oak, his eyes rolling back into his head, unconscious before he hit the floor.
Across the room, Marco was crawling toward his dropped pistol, his blood dripping onto the white tiles.
I forced myself up onto my hands and knees, my head spinning, pulled the pre-filled syringe of Succinylcholine from my scrub pocket, uncapped the needle with my teeth, and plunged it straight into the deltoid muscle of Marco’s shoulder.
I depressed the plunger all the way down.
Marco froze.
Within fifteen seconds, his breathing became shallow, erratic, his chest hitching as the paralytic seized his respiratory muscles. His eyes went wide with pure, unadulterated terror as he stared up at me, completely conscious, completely paralyzed, unable to draw a single breath of air.
I quickly reached over, pulled the bag of ambu-bag manual resuscitator from the wall, and placed the mask over Marco’s face, squeezing the rubber bulb rhythmically to keep him alive.
"He won't die," I panted, looking up at Salvatore, my chest heaving, blood dripping down my nose. "As long as... as long as someone squeezes the bag every five seconds... the drug wears off in ten minutes."
Salvatore stood in the middle of the room, panting heavily, his white hospital gown spotted with blood, holding the suppressed pistol he had snatched from Franco’s broken hand.
He looked down at me.
The cold, ruthless killer in his eyes vanished instantly, replaced by an expression of raw, profound shock as he saw the blood pouring down my face.
He dropped the gun onto the bed, dropped to his knees beside me, and wrapped his long, warm arms around my shoulders, pulling me tightly against his chest.
"Rosalind..." he whispered, his raspy voice breaking with an emotion he hadn't allowed himself to feel in thirty years. "You're hit..."
"I'm fine," I sobbed into his shoulder, holding onto his hospital gown with all my remaining strength. "I'm fine, Salvatore... but Leo... Leo is coming..."
"Leo isn't coming," a sharp, familiar voice spoke from the open doorway.
I pulled back from Salvatore’s chest, wiping the blood from my eyes.
Standing in the doorway was Dr. Evelyn Vance.
She wasn't carrying a tablet. She was holding a heavy black tactical radio and a manila folder filled with legal documents. Standing behind her in the hallway were four uniformed Boston Police officers, alongside two federal agents wearing dark blue windbreakers with FBI printed across their chests.
Leo Conti was standing between the two federal agents, his hands locked in heavy steel handcuffs, his face pale, terrified, and utterly defeated.
I stared at Dr. Vance, my mind completely paralyzed. "Doctor...?"
Evelyn walked into the room, stepping over Franco’s unconscious body with complete, practiced indifference.
She looked down at Salvatore, a long, slow smile spreading across her manicured face.
"Good morning, Salvatore," Evelyn said smoothly. "The federal wiretaps on Leo’s offshore accounts just cleared twenty minutes ago. We have him on tape authorizing the hit on Hanover Street, the murder of Gabriel Reyes in 1999, and the attempted assassination of a federal witness in Room 618."
Salvatore slowly stood up, keeping one hand firmly anchored on my shoulder to support my weight as I stood beside him.
"You took your sweet time, Evelyn," Salvatore rasped, his voice steadying, returning to its full, booming authority.
"Federal warrants take time, Salvatore," Evelyn replied, turning her sharp gaze toward me. "And Nurse Reyes here proved to be a far more effective security asset than any of the undercover agents we assigned to your perimeter."
I looked at Salvatore, then looked at Dr. Vance. "Undercover...?"
"Dr. Vance has been working with the Federal Witness Protection Division for two years, Josephine," Salvatore explained softly, his hand gently touching the wound on my forehead. "My 'coma' was real for the first eight weeks. After that... it was the safest place in the world to hide while the Justice Department dismantled Leo’s entire network from the inside."
He looked down at me, his dark obsidian eyes shining with a warmth I had never seen before.
"The only thing I didn't plan for," Salvatore whispered, "was a brave, beautiful nurse who read me poetry in the dark and carried her dead father's courage in her veins."
Six months later.
The morning sun over the coast of Portland, Maine, was brilliant, washing the dark blue waters of the bay in shimmering gold.
A small, two-story wooden house sat on a cliff overlooking the ocean, surrounded by wild beach roses, pine trees, and the loud, rhythmic crying of gulls.
On the wrap-around porch, sitting in a wooden rocking chair, was a worn copy of the Odyssey.
I stood at the porch railing, wearing a comfortable woolen sweater, sipping hot coffee from a ceramic mug, feeling the cool salt breeze brush across my face.
The scar on my hairline had faded to a thin, silver line—a quiet badge of honor from a night that had broken my chains forever.
The door behind me opened smoothly.
Salvatore walked out onto the porch.
He was wearing a dark navy sweater and jeans, his hair brushed back, looking healthy, broad-shouldered, and powerful. The silver scar across his left eyebrow caught the morning sun, no longer a mark of a victim, but the mark of a man who had reclaimed his life.
He walked over to me, stepping behind me, wrapping his thick, warm arms around my waist, pulling my back firmly against his broad chest.
He leaned down, resting his chin on my shoulder, smelling of sea salt, cedar wood, and fresh coffee.
"What are you thinking about, Rosalind?" he whispered into my hair.
I smiled, setting my coffee cup down on the railing, reaching down to lace my fingers through his long, heavy hands.
"I was thinking about the story," I said softly, looking out over the endless blue ocean stretching toward the horizon. "About Odysseus. He spent twenty years fighting wars, surviving monsters, and wandering through the dark before he finally reached his shore."
Salvatore leaned down, pressing a long, warm kiss against the pulse point on my neck, his arms tightening around me with a gentle, unbreakable protection.
May you like
"He reached the shore," Salvatore whispered against my skin. "And he never had to go back to sea again."
I turned around in his arms, looked up into his dark, clear obsidian eyes, and knew that for the first time in twenty-nine years, we were both finally home.
