in eight minutes.”

“Should we notify her husband?” Brenda asked.

The line went dead.

Dante arrived in nine.

Three black SUVs pulled into the ambulance bay, and six men in dark coats entered ahead of him.

They did not threaten anyone.

They did not need to.

Their calm was worse than shouting.

They positioned themselves in the lobby, near the elevators, and along the surgical corridor with the precision of people who had planned for disasters no one else had imagined.

Then Dante Corvino walked in.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, and immaculate despite the rain on his charcoal overcoat.

He looked at the smear of Norah’s blood on the tile, and for one moment all expression left his face.

Richard Blaine, the night administrator, hurried forward.

“Sir, this is a hospital.

If you’re not immediate family—”

Dante gripped Richard’s lapels and pulled him close enough that Richard forgot the rest of his sentence.

“I am the only family she has tonight,” Dante said quietly.

“Take me to her.”

Richard swallowed.

“She’s in surgery.”

“Is she alive?”

“Yes.

They’re trying.”

Dante released him.

“Then pray they’re good at it.”

He sat outside Trauma Surgery with Norah’s blood drying on his cuff.

He did not pace.

He did not ask useless questions.

He stared at the doors as if staring hard enough could keep them from becoming a border between this world and the next.

Leo Costello, his right hand, arrived with a tablet and a grim face.

“We pulled city cameras around the Sullivan townhouse,” Leo said.

Dante did not look away from the surgery doors.

“Tell me.”

“Back gate.

Eleven-oh-seven.

Two men from the O’Rourke crew arrive in an unmarked van.

Eleven-oh-eight, the service door opens.” Leo hesitated.

“Arthur Sullivan lets them in.”

Dante’s eyes shifted to him.

The O’Rourkes were an old South Side crew, violent and desperate.

They had lost influence for months, and Arthur Sullivan had built his career promising to prosecute people like them.

But Dante had known for a long time that Arthur’s public crusade and private appetites did not match.

Leo played the footage.

Norah was dragged from the townhouse through the back.

She fought, slipped, kicked one man hard enough to break free, and ran into the alley under the rain.

A patrol car turned onto the next block, and the men abandoned the chase.

Arthur stood in the doorway in a silk robe, watching his pregnant wife disappear into the storm.

He did not call for help.

He did not move.

Dr.

Boyd emerged from surgery nearly an hour later.

“She’s alive,” he said.

“The baby is alive too, but premature and unstable.

We delivered by emergency C-section.

They’re both critical.”

Dante closed his eyes for less than a second.

“She woke briefly,” Dr.

Boyd added.

“She asked for two things.

You.

And lipstick.”

Brenda brought the evidence bag.

Dante put on gloves, removed the cracked lipstick tube, and studied it.

The base was too heavy.

He twisted once, then twice.

A tiny compartment opened.

Inside was a micro-SD card.

Leo loaded it on the tablet in an empty consultation room.

The video was grainy, filmed from low behind furniture, but the voices were clear.

Arthur Sullivan stood in his study with Patrick O’Rourke.

“She has the recording,” Arthur said.

“If she