Chicago Crime Boss in a Wheelchair Hired a Broke Therapist—What She Discovered About His Spine Changed Everything

The first volley of rounds tore through the corrugated steel walls of the warehouse with the sound of a thousand sheet-metal shears ripping at once.

Sparks showered from the ceiling rafters as fluorescent tubes exploded in bursts of white glass and blue flame. Alexei, who had been pushing the front casters of the fluoroscope, took two high-velocity rounds through the upper chest. The impact threw him backward into a stack of wooden pallets, his blood spraying across the gleaming white housing of the German imaging machine.

"Down!" Frank roared, tackling me to the concrete floor behind an engine block wrapped in plastic.

Bullets whined off the iron, spitting hot lead fragments into the air above our heads. The smell of burnt gunpowder, ozone, and copper flooded my nostrils. My ears rang with an agonizing, high-pitched whistle.

"It's Matteo's personal crew!" Frank shouted over the deafening roar of gunfire, emptying the magazine of his rifle through the gaps in the pallets. "They knew we were coming! Julian tapped the compound’s internal comms!"

I looked through the smoke toward the loading dock.

The fluoroscope sat stranded five feet from the rear bumper of our van. If a single stray round struck the high-voltage generator mounted beneath the chassis, the internal vacuum tube would implode, rendering the two-million-dollar machine useless—and killing any chance Sebastian had of surviving tonight's surgery.

*Oliver is holding that gold watch,* I thought. *He's sitting on that sofa, watching the hands move toward midnight.*

Poverty teaches you how to be terrified. Motherhood teaches you how to kill your fear.

"Cover me!" I screamed at Frank.

"Clare, no! Stay down, you crazy—"

I didn't wait. I scrambled out from behind the engine block on my hands and knees, ignoring the jagged glass slicing through the knees of my jeans, and threw my body against the heavy steel frame of the C-arm fluoroscope.

The machine weighed more than a grand piano, but adrenaline is a chemical miracle. I dug the rubber toes of my boots into the blood-slicked concrete, screamed through my teeth, and shoved.

The pneumatic wheels groaned, rolling forward two feet.

A bullet struck the concrete an inch from my right knee, sending a shard of stone into my cheek. I tasted blood.

*Clack-clack-clack.*

Behind me, Frank rose from the floor, abandoning his cover completely, stepping into the open doorway with an automatic shotgun in his hands. The weapon roared with rhythmic, earth-shaking booms—*KA-CHUNK, BOOM! KA-CHUNK, BOOM!*—shredding the windshields of the attacking Lincolns, forcing the shooters to duck behind their engine blocks.

"Get it in the van, Clare! PUSH!" he bellowed, his voice raw.

I hit the hydraulic lift switch on the van's rear gate. The aluminum ramp dropped with a heavy clatter. With one final, desperate heave that tore the muscles in my lower back, I slammed the fluoroscope up the ramp and into the cargo bed, locking the wheel brakes with two savage stomps of my boot.

Frank backed up the ramp, firing his sidearm until the slide locked back empty, then hit the interior door-close button with his elbow.

The heavy steel doors slammed shut just as a hail of bullets peppered the exterior armor with the sound of heavy hail.

"Drive! Drive!" Frank roared through the partition to the driver, a young kid named Marco who had been hiding beneath the dashboard.

The van lurched forward, tires screaming, jumping the curb of the loading dock with a sickening jolt that nearly tossed me against the roof. We smashed through the remains of the chain-link gate, fish-tailing onto the wet asphalt of the avenue, while the sound of sirens began to wail in the distance through the sleet.

I collapsed onto the cargo floor beside the bloody body of Alexei, my hands shaking so violently I couldn't unbuckle the heavy Kevlar vest.

Frank leaned his head back against the van wall, his face covered in soot, breathing like a dying steam engine. He reached out with two bloody fingers and pulled a stray wood splinter from his forearm, tossing it aside.

He looked at me—at my torn jeans, my bloody cheek, and my hands still locked protectively around the steel handles of the fluoroscope.

A slow, terrifying grin spread across his scarred jaw.

"Doc," Frank breathed, shaking his head in sheer disbelief. "You belong with us. You're crazier than the boss."