Chapter 3 - The Broken Trust
“Victor!” Selena gasped, clawing at his iron grip. Her eyes bulged with terror. “Victor, stop… please!”
Dante stepped forward, his hand resting lightly on Victor’s forearm. “Boss. Not here. Cameras.”
Victor stared into Selena’s eyes. For months, he had found solace in those striking green eyes, seeking an escape from the crushing weight of his syndicate and the quiet, drifting distance that had grown between him and Elena. Now, looking at Selena, all he saw was rot.
“You hung up on her,” Victor whispered, his voice vibrating with lethal intensity. “She was dying, Selena. She was suffocating on our floor, begging for help, and you played high school games with her life.”
“I didn’t know!” Selena choked out, tears spilling down her cheeks. “I swear to you, Victor, I didn’t know she was sick! I thought… I thought she was just checking up on you like she always does!”
“She never checked up on me,” Victor spat, releasing her with such sudden disgust that she tumbled to the linoleum floor, coughing violently. “Elena never asked where I was. She respected me. And I repaid her by letting you insult her while her heart stopped.”
The door to Room Eight clicked open. Dr. Sterling stepped out, pulling her surgical mask down to her collar. She looked exhausted, her scrubs damp with perspiration.
“Are you Victor Romano?” she asked, her voice clipped and professional.
Victor turned his back on Selena completely. “Yes. How is she? Tell me she’s alive.”
“She’s stabilized, Mr. Romano. We’ve transferred her to the Intensive Cardiac Care Unit,” Dr. Sterling said, checking her chart. “Her heart suffered profound ischemic trauma, but we managed to restore sinus rhythm without performing an emergency bypass.”
“What caused it?” Victor demanded, stepping closer. “My man told me her blood pressure spiked out of nowhere.”
Dr. Sterling’s gaze sharpened, turning cold and calculating. “We ran an urgent tox screen the moment she hit the bay. Her blood contained lethal concentrations of digitoxin—a powerful cardiac glycoside. In layman's terms: foxglove extract. It caused massive ventricular fibrillation.”
Victor felt the floor fall away beneath him. Dante shifted behind him, jaw clenched.
“Poison,” Victor muttered, the word tasting like ash.
“Yes, Mr. Romano. It was administered orally, likely within forty-five minutes of her collapse,” Dr. Sterling said, her eyes boring into him. “The NYPD has already been notified. Attempted homicide protocol is active.”
Victor didn’t care about the police. The police were a minor inconvenience. What terrified him was the reality that his world—the violent, ruthless world he had sworn to keep separate from Elena—had breached his front door.
“Can I see her?” Victor asked quietly.
“Only for five minutes. She’s semi-conscious, but she shouldn't be agitated. Any spike in stress could trigger another arrhythmia.”
Victor didn't wait. He walked straight past the security doors toward the ICCU, leaving Dante to handle Selena.
Room 14 in the ICCU was dim and quiet, save for the rhythmic, steady beep of the heart monitor. Elena lay under thin white blankets, an IV line taped to her bruised hand, an oxygen cannula resting gently beneath her nose.
Victor pulled a plastic chair up to the bedside. His large, scarred hands trembled as he reached out, hovering an inch above hers, terrified that touching her might break her.
“Elena,” he whispered, his voice cracking.
Her eyelids fluttered. Slowly, painfully, she opened her dark eyes. They were unfocused at first, glassy with medication. But then they locked onto his face.
There was no warmth. No relief. Only an ocean of dead, freezing emptiness.
“Elena, baby, I’m here,” Victor stammered, leaning in. “I’m right here. You’re safe. I swear to you, whoever did this is going to burn. I’m going to tear this city apart—”
Elena pulled her hand away. The movement was weak, but it struck Victor harder than a hollow-point bullet.
“Elena?”
Her dry lips parted. Her voice was barely a rasp, stripped of all energy, but each syllable landed with devastating clarity.
“Who was she, Victor?”
Victor swallowed hard, the guilt suffocating him. “Elena, please. Don’t think about that right now. We have to focus on you getting better—”
“Who… was… she?” Elena repeated, a single tear cutting a path down her pale cheek. “I was lying there, Victor. I couldn't feel my arms. I couldn't breathe. I thought if I could just hear your voice… maybe I wouldn't die alone.”
“I’m sorry,” Victor choked out, burying his face in his hands. “God help me, Elena, I am so sorry. I didn't know.”
“You knew you weren't with me,” Elena whispered.
Victor looked up, his chest aching. “I will spend every day of my life making it right. I swear on my soul—”
“You don't have a soul, Victor,” Elena said softly. Her monitor gave a warning chime as her heart rate edged upward. “And you don't understand why I called.”
Victor froze. “What do you mean?”
Elena looked toward the ceiling, closing her eyes as if the sight of him made her physically ill.
“I wasn't calling to ask you to come home,” she murmured. “I called because your lieutenant, Frankie, came by the penthouse at six o’clock. He dropped off a package for your meeting at the docks tonight. After he left, I opened it.”
Victor’s blood ran ice-cold. “What was in the package, Elena?”
Elena turned her head back toward him, her gaze piercing his soul.
May you like
“A remote detonator, Victor. Frankie wired your warehouse to explode at eight o’clock. I called four times to tell you not to go. But your whore told me you didn't want to talk to me.”
***
