Entangled with the Mafia Don novel Chapter 76

Ezra's POV

The sound of the double doors swinging open was a guillotine blade. I didn't move. I couldn't. I remained pinned against the wall, my fingers curled into the cold tile, waiting for the words that would officially end my life. I could hear faint voices, but nothing could go through my head.

The doctor stepped into the hall. He looked like he’d been through a war. His surgical gown was a map of crimson stains—Davina’s blood—and his eyes were heavy with a exhaustion that transcended physical tiredness.

"She’s stabilized," he said, the word coming out in a dry, raspy breath.

For a second, the oxygen in the hallway seemed to return. Lexi let out a choked sob, and Lydia slumped against her, both of them gasping as if they’d been under water. But I didn't cheer. I didn't move. I saw the but in the doctor’s eyes before he even opened his mouth again.

"It was a miracle we got her back," he continued, his voice dropping into a somber, clinical tone. "Her heart stopped for nearly four minutes. We’ve managed to repair the primary damage to the lung and the vessels near the heart, but the trauma was extensive. She is in a deep coma. We are moving her to the ICU, but..."

"But what?" Lexi snapped, her voice trembling.

The doctor looked at the floor, then back at the grieving family. "The oxygen deprivation was significant. There is a high risk of neurological deficit. At this stage, we can’t say if she’ll ever wake up. She’s on full life support. It’s now a matter of whether her brain decides to come back to us."

The silence that followed was more violent than the gunshot.

Lydia didn't scream. She didn't cry. She simply turned white, her eyes rolling back as her knees gave out. She hit the floor with a soft, sickening thud.

"Mom!" Lexi shrieked, dropping to the ground.

"I need a gurney here!" the doctor yelled, snapping back into professional mode.

The hallway exploded into a frantic blur. Nurses surged forward, Andrea moved to help Lexi lift her mother, and the doctor began checking Lydia’s vitals. It was a whirlwind of white coats and panicked whispers, a scene of a family coming apart at the seams.

And in the center of it, I was a ghost.

I pushed off the wall, but my feet didn't feel like they were touching the ground. I began to walk. Not toward the ICU. Not toward the exit. Just... away.

The sounds of Lexi’s sobbing and the frantic activity of the medical team began to fade, replaced by a high-pitched, ringing hum in my ears. I walked down the long, sterile corridor, my boots leaving faint, reddish smudges on the linoleum. I passed nurses who looked at me with horror, seeing the blood-soaked man in the thousand-dollar suit wandering like a vagrant.

I didn't know where I was going. I didn't know who I was. The Mafia Don was dead. The man who had survived The Ivory Queen, who had built an empire on bone and shadow, had been hollowed out. There was nothing left inside me but the cold, grey ash of the coma Davina was currently trapped in.

“If she wakes up, the last thing she needs to see is the man who killed her family.”

Lexi’s words echoed in my skull, a rhythmic torture. I had won the war. Ivan was at the bottom of the ocean. Tatiana was a corpse on a pier. And my prize was a body kept alive by a rhythmic, clicking machine.

My chest felt hollow, as if the bullet that hit Davina had traveled through space and time to rip the heart right out of me. As I stared at the dried, flaking blood on my knuckles—the only remains of her presence in this sterile world—the silence of the hallway began to echo with the ghosts of my own legend.

I am Ezra De Luca, I thought, the name feeling like a curse in the back of my throat.

I am the man who reshaped the map of the underworld with iron and fire. I have sat in rooms with presidents and monsters, and I have never blinked. I have ended bloodlines with a single word. I have built an empire so vast that the sun never sets on my shadows. Men whisper my name in the dark to frighten their children into obedience. I have played God for a decade, deciding who draws breath and whose lungs are filled with lead.

I looked at my hands, the shaking worse than it had ever been on any battlefield.

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