A third man finds me, this one with shrapnel wounds to his side that are bleeding badly but not arterially. I pack the wounds with strips of cloth and tell him to keep pressure while I check on Tony and Dom.
I save three men. Three men who would have bled out on this cathedral floor if I’d stayed behind that pillar like Dante told me to.
I’m not useless. I’m not helpless. I’m a goddamn nurse and this is what I do.
But the whole time I’m working, the whole time I’m applying pressure and tying tourniquets and keeping men conscious with my voice, part of my brain is tracking the battle around me. Watching for Luca. Listening for his voice.
They go down a corridor, and Dante is trapped behind the alter.
Viktor’s men are falling back and trying to regroup, but not paying attention to the doorway behind them. The doorway that leads to wherever they were taking my son.
I don’t try to weigh the risks or calculate the odds or do any of the sensible things a sensible person would do. I just run.
The distance between my cover and that doorway is maybe thirty feet. But that thirty feet is not ordinary, it’s an open ground with bullets flying in every direction. Thirty feet that could easily get me killed.
But my son might be on the other side, so I run faster than I’ve ever done.
Something whizzes past my ear so close I feel the heat of it, another pulls at my sleeve, and I don’t look down to see if I’m hit. My legs are pumping and my lungs are burning, but the doorway is getting closer. It’s just twenty feet. Fifteen. Ten.
I dive through the opening and my feet catch on something. Suddenly I’m tumbling, rolling, falling down stone steps that scrape my arms and bang my knees and knock the breath out of me.
I land hard at the bottom, gasping, disoriented, my whole body screaming with fresh pain. But I’m alive, and I got in.
The dark, frigid basement smells like mold and dust. Water drips somewhere in the distance. My footsteps echo off stone walls that have been down here for over a century. I can hear gunfire echoing from somewhere deeper in the catacombs, Marco’s team fighting Viktor’s men in the tunnels below. But that’s not what I’m listening for. I’m listening for my son.
Then I hear it. Crying. Small, terrified, hiccupping sobs that I would recognize anywhere because I’ve been listening to them for five years. Every nightmare, every scraped knee, every fever dream, every time the thunder got too loud or the dark got too scary, I know exactly what my son sounds like when he’s scared.
“Luca!” I scramble to my feet, ignoring the pain in my everything, and follow the sound. “Luca, baby, where are you?”
“Mama?”
No one else responds, and relief tears through me. He’s alone.
“Mama?”
His voice is coming from behind a door. Old wood, with rusted hinges, and a padlock that looks newer than everything else down here. They locked him in. They locked my five-year-old son in a room in a basement and left him alone in the dark.
I’m going to kill Viktor myself. Slowly and painfully.
“I’m here, baby. I’m right here. Stand back from the door, okay?”
“Okay.”
I look around for something to break the lock with and find a chunk of fallen masonry that’s heavy enough to do the job. Three swings and the padlock gives way, clattering to the floor. I yank the door open and there he is.
My son. My baby. My whole entire world huddled in the corner of a tiny stone room, his dinosaur pajamas dirty and torn, his face streaked with tears and snot, his small body shaking so hard I can hear his teeth chattering from the doorway.
He looks up when the door opens and for a split second there’s raw terror in his eyes. Then he sees it’s me.
“Mama!”
He launches himself at me and I catch him, pulling him against my chest so hard it probably hurts us both. I don’t care. We’re both sobbing, and for a moment nothing else exists except the feel of his small arms wrapped around my neck and his heart beating against mine.
“I’ve got you,” I’m saying, over and over, the words tumbling out between sobs like a prayer. “I’ve got you, baby. Mama’s got you. You’re safe now. I’m here.”
“Mama, Mama, I was so scared.” He’s crying so hard he can barely get the words out. “The bad man took me and it was dark and I couldn’t find you and I thought you weren’t coming.”
“I’m here. I came. I will always come for you, do you understand me? Always.”
