Chapter 6 - The Spark in the Iron
The basement medical annex was quiet except for the rhythmic hiss of the pneumatic hydraulic table.
If Desmond was going to face the syndicate council tomorrow night without Julian staging an open mutiny, he had to prove he was recovering.
I stood beside the parallel bars, adjusting the leather stabilization straps designed to lock his knees into full extension.
“This is going to hurt,” I warned him, wiping the perspiration from his forehead with a cool towel.
“Your quadriceps haven’t carried your body weight in six months.”
“The pain will tell me I am still alive,” Desmond replied, his voice gritted between clenched teeth.
He reached up and gripped the heavy steel parallel bars with his powerful forearms.
His chest muscles flexed beneath his black compression shirt as he prepared for the kinetic transfer.
“On three,” I said, planting my feet squarely on either side of his knees to provide external bracing.
“One... two... three.”
Desmond roared—a raw, guttural sound torn from deep in his chest—and hauled his upper body upward.
The hydraulic lift assist whined, but the vast majority of the effort came from his sheer, unadulterated willpower.
His knees locked into the rigid carbon-fiber braces, his weight crashing down into his feet for the first time in half a year.
His entire frame shuddered violently, sweat erupting across his brow as his nervous system screamed in shock.
I clamped my arms around his waist, pressing my chest against his ribs to act as his secondary spine.
“Hold it,” I breathed into the side of his neck, feeling the pounding rhythm of his carotid artery against my cheek.
“Breathe through the diaphragm, Desmond.”
“You are standing.”
Desmond stood six feet two inches tall, towering over me just as he must have done before the bomb ripped through his life.
He looked down at his own feet planted on the rubber matting, a look of profound, wild wonder replacing the perpetual darkness in his eyes.
“I am standing,” he whispered, his deep voice shaking with raw emotion.
“You are standing because you are Desmond Gallagher,” I said, my voice muffled against his shoulder.
“And Chicago does not belong to Julian Vance.”
He turned his head slightly, his face mere inches from mine.
In that suspended second, the boundaries between caregiver and patient, between monster and healer, dissolved into dust.
His ice-blue eyes softened into something warm, vulnerable, and fiercely protective.
He lifted his right hand from the parallel bar and cupped the back of my neck, his fingers tangling gently in the loose strands of my hair.
“If we survive tomorrow night, Nora Campbell...” he began, his voice dropping into a low, smoky murmur.
The sharp crack of a high-caliber sniper rifle shattered the reinforced glass of the annex window before he could finish the sentence.
A bullet tore through the plaster three inches above my head, raining white dust over our shoulders.
Desmond’s reaction was instantaneous and terrifying.
Despite his paralyzed lower half, his upper body retained the lethal instincts of a street fighter who had survived a dozen turf wars.
He twisted his weight, unhooking his waist from the safety belt, and threw his entire upper torso forward.
He used his immense body weight to pull both of us off the platform, crashing down onto the thick floor mats.
His heavy frame shielded my body entirely, his arms wrapping around my skull to protect me from the falling glass.
A second round slammed into the steel frame of the parallel bars, sending a spray of orange sparks across the concrete.
Alarm sirens began to wail throughout the compound with deafening intensity.
“Frankie!” Desmond roared against the concrete floor, keeping me pinned safely beneath his chest.
The heavy reinforced door of the annex was kicked open, and Frankie charged in with an assault rifle raised, firing two suppression bursts toward the perimeter tree line outside the broken window.
“Perimeter breach on the west lawn!” Frankie yelled over the noise of the sirens.
“Julian’s hit squad is trying to pin us down inside the estate!”
Desmond pushed himself up on his elbows, checking my face with frantic, demanding hands.
“Are you hit?” he demanded, his voice laced with pure panic.
“Look at me, Nora—are you hit?”
“I am fine,” I choked out, coughing through the plaster dust, my hands clutching his leather jacket.
“I am not bleeding.”
Desmond closed his eyes for a split second, letting out a ragged breath of relief that shook his entire torso.
Then, when he opened them, the man who had looked at me with tenderness was gone, replaced entirely by an executioner.
“Frankie,” Desmond commanded, his voice cold as a winter grave.
“Julian just made the biggest mistake of his life.”
“Bring the armored van to the loading bay.”
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“We are not waiting for the council meeting tomorrow.”
“We are going to Cicero right now.”
