No windows. No other doors. Just four white walls, medical cabinets, the hospital bed, and?—
My eyes locked on a metal grate near the ceiling. A ventilation duct. But it was too small for me to crawl through.
If I could trigger the fire alarm, the automatic locking system of the door would probably get disabled to facilitate easier evacuation.
I looked up, but there was no smoke detector and no automatic sprinkler system in this room. Wasn’t that the norm for any hospital?
I rummaged through the cabinets, found bandages, antiseptic, surgical gloves—and then my eyes landed on something I hadn’t expected in this basement room. A portable defibrillator.
I looked back at the vent, and a plan formed in my mind, desperate but possible.
I couldn’t trigger the smoke detector in here, but what if I sent a bunch of smoke up the air vent—would that work to trigger the alarm?
And in the following chaos, I might find my chance.
I snatched all the gauze packages and cotton balls I could find from the cabinet and doused them in antiseptic. Then I pushed the bed underneath the vent, climbed up, and pulled and worked at the grate until it came loose.
“Come on, come on,” I muttered, ripping open alcohol pads and stacking them with the cotton and gauze into the vent. The sharp smell of isopropyl alcohol filled my nostrils. And I got even more dizzy.
After I packed everything tightly inside, I grabbed the defibrillator and opened its case. Inside were the paddles and the charging unit.
I powered on the defibrillator, and the machine whirred to life with a mechanical whine. When the charge indicator lit up, I positioned the paddles against the metal frame of the ventilation duct, leaving a small gap between them.
“Please work,” I whispered, hitting the discharge button.
A bright spark jumped between the paddles and caught the alcohol-soaked materials. They ignited immediately, flames licking upward into the ventilation shaft and outward into the room.
The fire spread faster than I’d anticipated, consuming the cotton and gauze and sending thick smoke billowing into the duct.
As the smoke billowed more heavily from the vent, a sinking feeling settled in my stomach. The materials weren’t just burning—they’d caught fire properly, flames now licking out of the metal interior of the duct.
“Shit,” I hissed, suddenly realizing how badly I’d miscalculated. I wasn’t just setting off an alarm—I had started an actual fire…in a hospital…where there were people on oxygen, who couldn’t just be evacuated.
I looked around, grabbed some saline solution, and doused it into the duct to kill the fire I started, just as the smoke alarm went off.
7
IVAN
My phone buzzed twice in rapid succession—Grey’s distinctive pattern.
Fuck. The man had the worst timing.
I glanced back at the Salvini girl, uneasy about leaving her alone. She was still lying there, with her eyes closed and her heart monitor beeping regularly. But something about her breathing and the subtle tension in her body when I’d laid her down on the gurney told me she might be feigning her unconsciousness. She was clever, this one—perhaps too clever for her own good.
I stepped into the sterile corridor and called him back. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting a harsh light along the empty corridor. This section of the hospital didn’t exist on official blueprints. It had been built decades ago by Alberto Salvini and used exclusively by the Paraskia Syndicate and a select few others with the right connections.
I moved farther from the door and mentally replayed the last conversation with Grey. If Mirabella had been pretending to be unconscious, how much of our plans did I reveal during the conversation?
Not a lot.
Grey didn’t pick up, and familiar irritation bubbled up. What, now he couldn’t even pick up the phone?
My jaw tightened. What was wrong with Grey?
I was almost certain Salvini would call sooner rather than later, and he would demand all of the women back. Including Isabella.
What was Grey’s motivation to demand Isabella? Why did he care about her in particular? Why take unnecessary risks, created purely by impatience or obsession?
