Kidnapping the Assassin: The Mafia Don’s Fatal Mistake

The Trauma Protocol

Chapter 56

**[Cassian]**

The cellar was a symphony of chaos, but my mind was completely silent. 

Luca burst through the doorway, carrying the heavy orange trauma bag we kept stocked for gunshot wounds and lacerations. He dropped it beside me, his eyes widening at the sight of the blood pooling beneath Lily. 

"Boss," Luca stammered, pulling out trauma shears and sterile gauze. "The ambulance is ten minutes out, but the roads are too narrow for them to move fast."

"We don't have ten minutes," Elara said, her voice tight, completely devoid of the panic she had shown seconds earlier. The Viper had seamlessly locked the terrified sister away, replacing her with the clinical, unfeeling architect of survival. 

"She's tachycardic," Elara continued, pressing her fingers hard against Lily's neck. "Her pulse is thready. If this laceration nicked her descending aorta, she bleeds out in three minutes."

I knelt on the opposite side of Lily. I grabbed the sterile gauze from Luca, packing it brutally into the open wound. Lily groaned, a weak, agonized sound that made my chest tighten, but her eyes remained closed. 

"Leo," I called out, my voice sharp and commanding.

My son was standing a few feet away, trembling, his dark eyes wide as he watched his aunt bleed. He snapped to attention, looking at me. 

"Go to the communications console," I ordered him, pointing to the server racks. "Override the external lock down. Open the front gates and keep the driveway clear for the paramedics. Do not look at the blood. Look at the screen."

Leo swallowed hard, giving a jerky nod, and ran to the console. It gave him a task. It grounded his panic into action. 

"Hold pressure," Elara commanded me, moving her blood-soaked hands away so I could press the heavy wad of gauze deeper into the wound. 

She turned to Luca. "The med-bay upstairs. Do we have universal donor blood?"

"Yes, Donna. Two units of O-Negative in the fridge," Luca confirmed. 

"Go get it. And bring the rapid infuser. Run." 

Luca sprinted out of the cellar, leaping over the dead assassins. 

I looked down at Lily. Her skin was the color of ash. She had spent the first ten years of her life in a coma, kept alive by machines funded by her sister's blood money. She had fought so incredibly hard to build a life in the sun. I wasn't going to let her die on the cold floor of my basement. 

"She's slipping," Elara whispered, her hand hovering over Lily’s pale face. A single tear escaped the Viper's iron control, cutting through the blood and soot on her cheek. 

"She's not," I vowed, pressing my body weight down on my hands, ensuring the pressure on the wound was absolute. "She is a Rossi. We don't die in the dark, Elara. We fight."

I looked up at Elara, my obsidian eyes locking onto hers. 

"Talk to her," I ordered softly. "Keep her tethered."

Elara leaned down, pressing her lips to Lily's cold forehead. 

"Lily, listen to me," Elara murmured, her voice a fierce, unyielding anchor in the terrifying quiet. "You are going to be a surgeon. You are going to graduate next year, and you are going to save people. You don't get to quit on me now. Squeeze my hand."

Elara grabbed Lily’s limp, bloody hand, intertwining their fingers. 

"Squeeze my hand, baby bird," Elara pleaded, her voice finally cracking. 

For ten agonizing seconds, nothing happened. The only sound was the frantic clicking of Leo typing on the console across the room. 

Then, faintly, Lily’s fingers twitched. 

She squeezed Elara’s hand. It was weak a microscopic contraction of muscle but it was there. 

"I've got you," Elara choked out, a ragged sob tearing from her chest. "I'm right here."

Luca burst back into the cellar, carrying two cold bags of O-Negative blood and a portable IV infuser. He dropped to his knees, expertly finding a vein in Lily’s arm, and started the rapid transfusion. 

The heavy wail of ambulance sirens finally pierced the thick walls of the villa, echoing down the cellar stairs. 

Paramedics flooded the room seconds later, swarming over Lily. They worked with practiced, frantic efficiency, securing her onto a backboard and moving her toward the stairs. 

Elara stood up to follow them, but her knees buckled. 

The adrenaline crash, combined with her fractured ribs from the fight at the chapel, finally caught up with her. 

I caught her before she hit the floor. I wrapped my arms securely around her waist, pulling her flush against my chest. 

"I have to go with her," Elara gasped, struggling weakly against my grip. 

"You are going to ride in the front seat of the ambulance," I promised, kissing the side of her head. "I will be right behind you in the SUV with Leo. She's going to make it, Elara. The bleeding slowed."

Elara leaned heavily against me, burying her face in my shoulder, her body shaking with exhausted, silent sobs. 

I looked over her head at the two dead assassins lying on the cellar floor. The vantablack armor absorbed the harsh light of the vault, making them look like literal voids in the room. 

I gently passed Elara to Luca. "Take her to the ambulance. Ensure Leo is in the armored transport. I will be up in two minutes."

"Yes, Boss," Luca said, supporting Elara's weight as they walked up the stairs. 

When the cellar was finally empty, I turned back to the bodies. 

I walked over to the assassin whose face I had smashed into the stone wall. They were unconscious, bleeding heavily from the shattered mirrored mask, but they were breathing. 

I knelt beside the phantom. I didn't reach for a weapon. I reached for the heavy, jagged edge of the broken mirror visor. 

I ripped the visor off, exposing the face beneath. 

It was a man, probably in his late thirties. He had a military-style buzz cut and a barcode tattooed on the side of his neck. He wasn't a Guild orphan. He was a professional mercenary. 

I grabbed him by the collar of his heavy armor, hauling him up until his back slammed against the stone wall. The violent movement jolted him awake. He groaned, his eyes fluttering open, struggling to focus on my face. 

When he finally recognized who was holding him, genuine, primal terror flashed in his eyes. 

"You missed," I growled, my voice a low, terrifying vibration that echoed in the quiet cellar. 

The mercenary spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor, trying to maintain a defiant sneer. "You think you won, Rossi? We were just the distraction. The real strike is happening right now."

I didn't blink. I didn't yell. 

"I know," I said calmly. "You thought you were drawing the King away from his castle. You thought you were leaving my family unprotected."

I leaned in, my face inches from his. The absolute, apocalyptic darkness in my eyes completely shattered his arrogance. 

"But you forgot one detail," I whispered, drawing a tactical combat knife from my boot. "I didn't leave my castle unprotected. I left it guarded by a ghost."

I stood up, leaving the bleeding mercenary chained to the stone floor. 

I walked up the cellar stairs, my mind already calculating the global war that had just been declared. The High Table remnants thought they had struck a fatal blow. 

They were about to discover what happens when you wake the Viper's entire shadow army.