Chapter 2 - The Price of Survival
Ten minutes later, the rain was lashing against the floor-to-ceiling windows of the private medical dispensary built beneath the estate's east wing.
Dr. Ronald Hayes, a sixty-year-old trauma surgeon who had patched bullet wounds for the DeMarco syndicate for twenty-five years, adjusted his gold-rimmed spectacles as he reviewed a glowing digital ultrasound on the diagnostic screen.
On the examination table, Caleb sat quietly in an oversized white hospital gown, his small legs dangling over the edge. His mother stood beside him, clutching her purse to her ribs like an iron shield, her eyes wide and bloodshot with exhaustion and dread. When my security team had knocked on her door in the service quarters, she had thought they were taking her to the harbor to be buried.
Instead, she had been brought to a surgical suite that rivaled the top private clinics in Manhattan.
"Congenital aortic and mitral valve dysplastic narrowing," Dr. Hayes said quietly, stepping back from the monitor and turning toward me where I stood in the shadow of the doorway. "His ejection fraction is down to thirty-two percent, Salvatore. He’s in stage-three compensatory heart failure. Those two pills in his pocket were the last of a three-month prescription issued by a county charity ward six months ago."
Sarah's composure broke completely. She sank onto the vinyl stool beside the bed, burying her face in her hands, her shoulders heaving with silent, ragged sobs.
"The county clinic in the Bronx cancelled his Medicaid extension in August, Mr. DeMarco," Sarah wept, her voice cracked and raw. "They told me that because I worked thirty hours a week cleaning offices, I made two hundred dollars too much to qualify for the pediatric cardiac subsidy. The specialist at Mount Sinai charges twelve thousand dollars for the balloon valvuloplasty... I took three cleaning jobs. I haven't eaten a full meal in four weeks. I just wanted to keep him breathing until the end of the year."
Caleb leaned over from the examination table, reaching down to gently pat his mother's trembling hair. "Don't cry, Mom. My chest doesn't hurt that much today."
I stepped into the light of the fluorescent panels.
At six-foot-two, dressed in a bespoke charcoal three-piece suit with silver hair slicked back and a face carved from forty years of street violence, I looked like an angel of death standing in a room meant for healing.
I reached into my pocket, pulled out the small white pill Caleb had pressed into my hand, and set it on the stainless-steel tray beside Dr. Hayes's instruments.
"You don't need to save your medicine for me anymore, Caleb," I said, my voice dropping into a low, steady cadence that silenced the room.
Caleb looked up at me with wide, unblinking dark eyes. "Did your heart stop hurting, Mister?"
"It did," I replied softly. "Because I found the boy who fixed it."
I turned to Dr. Hayes.
"Page the Chief of Pediatric Cardiovascular Surgery at Columbia University Medical Center," I ordered. "Book the hybrid operating theater for seven o'clock tomorrow morning under the DeMarco Sovereign Endowment. Have a private medical transport idling at our tarmac in thirty minutes."
Dr. Hayes nodded once with military precision. "It will be done, Don Salvatore."
Sarah looked at me in total, paralyzed disbelief, her mouth trembling as she reached out with shaking hands. "Mr. DeMarco... I... I don't have anything to give you. I only clean your floors."
"You gave me your son's last pill, Sarah," I said, looking down at her with eyes as immovable as granite. "In my world, an honest debt of life is repaid with an iron fortress. You will never clean another floor for the rest of your days."
The door to the dispensary opened with a soft click.
May you like
Marco, my chief of intelligence, stepped into the room, holding a thick, black leather dossier stamped with the red seal of the New York State Surrogate's Court.
"Salvatore," Marco murmured, his expression tight and grave. "You need to look at this."
