Chapter 10
The door burst inward.
Luca fired once into the ceiling.
“Stop!”
Vincent entered first.
Dr. Vale followed.
Two armed men stood behind them.
Nobody fired.
Not yet.
Vincent looked at the steel bowl.
His face collapsed.
Three weeks of planning sat inside something smaller than Nora’s thumb.
Gabriel spoke from the table.
“Was it worth it?”
Vincent looked at him.
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand perfectly.”
“You were giving everything away.”
“I was returning things that were never ours.”
“Our fathers built this.”
“Our fathers stole parts of it.”
Vincent’s eyes filled with something dangerously close to tears.
“You think becoming weak makes you good?”
Gabriel slowly pushed himself onto one elbow.
“No.”
He looked at Nora.
“Nearly dying just made me tired of pretending evil was strength.”
Vincent raised his weapon.
Luca aimed back.
Nora stood directly between them.
“Put them down.”
Nobody listened.
Of course.
She stepped toward Vincent.
His gun shifted toward her.
“Nora,” Luca warned.
She ignored him.
Vincent’s hand trembled.
“You’re destroying my family.”
“No,” Nora said quietly. “I think your family has been destroying itself for years.”
“Move.”
“No.”
“I said move.”
“And then what?”
She took another step.
“You shoot Gabriel?”
Vincent’s jaw clenched.
“You shoot Luca?”
Another step.
“You shoot me?”
His eyes flickered.
Nora stopped less than six feet away.
“Then what, Vincent?”
His breathing grew faster.
“You sit in his chair?”
Silence.
“You inherit the penthouse?”
Silence.
“You eat dinner alone at his table and spend every night wondering which cousin, brother, friend or employee is putting something in your drink?”
His hand lowered half an inch.
Nora’s voice softened.
“That’s not power.”
Vincent’s eyes shone.
“That’s a prison.”
Gabriel stared at his cousin.
Vincent looked suddenly exhausted.
Nora recognized the expression.
She had seen it on doctors after thirty-hour shifts.
On parents outside intensive care rooms.
On her own face after her marriage ended.
A human being who had been running toward something for so long he had forgotten whether he actually wanted to reach it.
“You don’t know him,” Vincent whispered.
“No.”
“He ordered people hurt.”
Gabriel did not deny it.
“He destroyed families.”
Still no denial.
“He thinks one year of guilt washes his hands clean?”
Nora turned toward Gabriel.
“No.”
Gabriel met her eyes.
“No,” he repeated.
Vincent laughed bitterly.
“Then why save him?”
That question filled the room.
Nora looked at the man on the table.
The criminal.
The patient.
The frightened boy hidden inside the empire.
She thought about Hawthorne Memorial.
About administrators deciding which patients were worth protecting.
About people who had justified cruelty because the victims were inconvenient, poor, old, invisible or imperfect.
Then she looked at Vincent.
“Because medicine isn’t a reward for good people.”
Nobody spoke.
Nora continued.
“If I only save people whose lives I approve of, I’m not practicing medicine. I’m playing God.”
Gabriel closed his eyes.
Something in his face broke.
Vincent lowered the gun.
Not dramatically.
Not heroically.
His arm simply seemed too heavy to hold up anymore.
It dropped to his side.
Luca moved quickly and took it.
The other men surrendered.
Dr. Vale sank into a chair.
May you like
Vincent looked at Gabriel.
“What happens now?”
