Blurred Lines

CHAPTER SIX: VENOM

The world came back to Bishop in fragments—shattered glass glittering like diamonds in the headlights, the acrid smell of burning rubber mixing with the metallic taste of blood in his mouth, and pain, so much pain radiating from everywhere at once. He tried to move, but something heavy pinned him down, and when he looked down through blurred vision, he realized the engine block had crashed into the driver's side, trapping his legs in a vice of twisted metal and shattered dashboard.

His head lolled to the side, and through the spiderwebbed windshield, he saw a figure approaching—indistinguishable in the darkness and smoke, moving with purpose toward his mangled vehicle. Bishop tried to call out, tried to move again, but his body refused to obey, and all he could manage was a weak groan that barely escaped his lips. The figure drew closer, and Bishop could make out what looked like a weapon in the man's hand, something metallic that caught the distant streetlight.

This was it, he thought hazily. They'd sent someone to finish the job.

But then sirens pierced the night—beautiful, blessed sirens—and the figure froze mid-step before turning and retreating hastily into the darkness. As consciousness began slipping away again like sand through his fingers, Bishop heard the man shout a name into the night: "Faust!" The word echoed in his fading awareness before everything went black.

---

When Bishop's eyes fluttered open again, harsh fluorescent lights assaulted his vision and the sterile smell of antiseptic filled his nostrils. A hospital. He was alive, somehow. EMTs surrounded him, their voices urgent but muffled, as if he were underwater, and through the fog of pain and confusion, one thought crystallized with startling clarity.

"Marius," he croaked, his throat raw. "I need to speak to Marius. And my girl—I need my girl."

A nurse with kind eyes leaned over him, pressing him gently back down as he tried to sit up. "Mr. Profacci, you need to stay still. You've been in a serious accident. You have a concussion, three broken ribs, and significant bruising. We need to—"

"I don't give a damn about my injuries!" Bishop shouted, immediately regretting it as pain lanced through his chest. "Get me Marius Profacci. Get me my girl. Now!"

"Sir, please, you need to calm down—"

"Calm down?" Bishop's voice rose despite the agony it caused. "Someone just tried to kill me! I need to speak to my brother!"

The medical staff exchanged worried glances, and a doctor stepped forward with a sedative, but Bishop thrashed against them with surprising strength for someone in his condition. "Don't you f*****g dare! I need to warn him! They're going to kill him too!"

It took two orderlies and a security guard to hold him down while the doctor administered the sedative, and as the drug pulled him under, Bishop's last conscious thought was of his brother, alone and unprotected, while assassins moved through the night like sharks.

---

Hours later, when the sedative wore off and he found himself alone in a dimly lit hospital room with only the steady beep of monitors for company, Bishop made his decision. The hell with protocols and doctor's orders—he needed to get to Marius, needed to warn him if it wasn't already too late. He pulled the IV from his arm, ignoring the bright bloom of blood that appeared, and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

The room spun violently, and he had to grip the bed rail to keep from falling, but he pushed through the nausea and dizziness, taking one shaky step, then another. He'd made it halfway to the door when it burst open and three nurses rushed in, their faces masks of alarm.

"Mr. Profacci! What are you doing?!"

"I'm leaving," Bishop said through gritted teeth, continuing his agonizing shuffle toward freedom.

"Sir, you cannot leave! You're in no condition—"

"Watch me," he growled, but his body betrayed him. His legs gave out, and he would have crashed to the floor if the nurses hadn't caught him, their surprisingly strong arms guiding him back to the bed despite his protests.

"Please, Mr. Profacci," one of them said, her voice both stern and compassionate. "You're going to hurt yourself. You need to rest. Whatever you think is so urgent, it can wait until morning."

"You don't understand," Bishop said, his voice breaking. "My brother—they're going to kill my brother."

"Your brother is fine," she assured him, though her eyes told a different story. "Now please, let us take care of you."

They strapped him down this time, soft restraints that he was too weak to fight, and as they reinserted his IV and checked his vitals, Bishop felt tears of frustration burn in his eyes. He'd failed. Failed to warn Marius, failed to protect his family, failed at everything that mattered.

---

Around midnight, when the hospital had settled into its nocturnal rhythm of hushed voices and distant machines, Bishop's door opened again. He expected another nurse coming to check his vitals, but instead, a woman entered—Asian features, oval face, unusually large eyes that seemed to catalog everything about him in an instant.

"Mr. Profacci, I'm Detective Anissa," she said, her accent thick but her English precise. "We need to talk about your brother."

Bishop's heart seized in his chest. "What about my brother? Is he—"

"Your brother just committed a murder," she said flatly, watching his reaction carefully. "He was found trying to dispose of a body on your family estate. But I can help him—help both of you—if you cooperate with me."

"You're lying," Bishop spat, straining against his restraints. "Marius wouldn't—"

"Wouldn't what? Wouldn't kill someone? Mr. Profacci, your family business is killing people. Or have you forgotten what your father did for thirty years?"

"I want to speak to our lawyer. Freddie Mareno. Get him on the phone right now."

Something flickered across Detective Anissa's face—was it satisfaction? Pity? "Your lawyer is dead, Mr. Profacci. Someone separated his head from his body. Very cleanly, very professionally. It was in a box with your brother's initial on it. Quite the message, don't you think?"

The words hit Bishop like a physical blow, and for a moment, he couldn't breathe. Freddie, dead. Marius, arrested. And he was here, strapped to a hospital bed, helpless as everything fell apart.

"I have nothing to say to you," he finally managed, his voice barely a whisper.

Detective Anissa smiled, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a card that she placed on his bedside table. "That's fine. You don't have to say anything now. But you will, Mr. Profacci. They always do, eventually." She moved toward the door, then paused, turning back to look at him with those unsettling eyes. "We'll meet again soon. Very soon. Sweet dreams."

The door closed behind her with a soft click that sounded like a coffin lid, and Bishop was alone again with his thoughts and his fear, wondering if Marius was sitting in a cell somewhere thinking the same thing.

---

About an hour after the detective left, when Bishop had finally managed to drift into an uneasy half-sleep, the door opened once more. A male nurse entered, his face obscured by a surgical mask, moving with quiet efficiency as he approached the IV stand.

"Time for your medication, Mr. Profacci," he said, his voice muffled behind the mask.

Something about him felt wrong—his movements too deliberate, his eyes too focused—but Bishop was too exhausted to question it. He watched with heavy-lidded eyes as the nurse produced a syringe and injected something into his IV line, then stood there, watching him with an intensity that finally triggered alarm bells in Bishop's foggy mind.

"What did you give me?" Bishop asked, his tongue already feeling thick.

The nurse didn't answer, just continued standing there, watching and waiting, and Bishop felt his heart rate accelerate as panic set in. This wasn't medication—this was something else, something that was already making his vision blur and his limbs feel heavy in a way that had nothing to do with his injuries.

"What did you do?" he tried to shout, but it came out as barely a whisper.

Three minutes felt like three hours as the poison worked its way through his system, and Bishop could feel his heartbeat becoming erratic, could feel his breathing becoming shallow and labored. He was dying, he realized with strange clarity. They'd succeeded where the truck had failed.

Then, by some miracle, the door burst open, and a female nurse entered, her eyes widening in shock as she took in the scene.

"Who are you? What are you doing in here?" she demanded, moving toward the IV stand. "This patient isn't scheduled for any medication right now!"

The male nurse's hand moved in a blur, and suddenly there was a pair of scissors—where had he gotten a scissor?—and he plunged it into the female nurse's stomach with brutal efficiency. She screamed, a sound that seemed to shatter the hospital's artificial calm, and slumped to the ground as blood bloomed across her white uniform like a terrible flower.

The male nurse ran, disappearing out the door as the woman's screams turned to gasps, and Bishop felt consciousness slipping away even as he heard the thunder of footsteps in the hallway, voices shouting, alarms blaring.

Medical staff flooded the room—some rushing to the fallen nurse who was bleeding out on the pristine floor, others surrounding Bishop's bed as his monitors went wild, their urgent voices blending into a cacophony of terror and desperation.

"He's coding! Get the crash cart!"

"We need to pump his stomach—what did he inject?"

"There's too much in his system—"

"Don't you dare die on me, Mr. Profacci!"

But Bishop was already far away, sinking into darkness as his body fought a losing battle against whatever poison now coursed through his veins, his last thought a prayer that Marius had somehow survived the night, that someone in the Profacci family would live to see morning.