The Terminal Tumor

Dante kept his gun on Victor, the head of the Petrov family. He spoke to the men holding Elena. “Take her,” my husband said. Wind came hard off the pier. “Let Elena go.” I stood between them while nausea from that afternoon’s chemo rolled through me. My knees nearly gave. I had expected Dante to notice my gray skin or the tremor in my hands. He never looked long enough. Elena, his first love, stumbled out from behind Victor’s men and ran straight into his arms. She buried her face against his chest. “Oh, Dante, I was so scared.” He held her and glanced past her shoulder at me. “Sienna, just go. You can handle this. You always handle it.” *You always handle it.* He had used those four words for every job, every wound, and every night I spent cleaning up after him. Two of Victor’s men took my arms. I let them. Dante had put a price on my life, and it was exactly high enough to buy his childhood sweetheart back. As they pulled me toward the cars, Dante called after us. “Don’t hurt her more than you have to, Victor. She’s still useful.” Useful. That was the word he chose. They put me in a damp basement with no windows. Mildew and stale water caught in my throat. I covered my mouth as a cough bent me over, and blood warmed my palm. My hand came away red. The tumor was moving faster than I had expected. The pressure had started causing micro-hemorrhages. I had a month left, perhaps two. The door opened and Victor Petrov walked in. His attention went from my face to the blood on my hand. “Your husband thinks you’re indestructible,” he said. “He’s mistaken.” Another cough blurred the room. If I could not slow the bleeding, I could have a stroke on that floor. I found the pressure point beside my carotid artery and held it with two fingers, adjusting until the dizziness eased. Victor came closer. He watched where I placed my fingers and how I corrected the pressure while fighting for breath. “I know that technique. There was a doctor they called the Ghost. She treated men the public hospitals wouldn’t touch. Three years ago, after an ambush, she stopped my arterial bleed the same way.” He stared at my hand, then at me. I wiped my mouth. “You were losing too much blood to see my face.” Victor stopped treating me as Dante Moretti’s discarded wife. Three years earlier, I had been the Ghost Surgeon, and Victor Petrov had left my table alive. The men had missed my phone. It buzzed in my pocket with a message from an unknown number. [Hope you’re enjoying your new accommodations. Dante is so worried about you ;) He’s making me soup in *your* kitchen. It feels like home already.] I read the message twice, then locked the screen. I looked at Victor. My throat was raw, but the words came out clearly. “Dante is right about one thing. I am useful. Not to him anymore.” “My life is already ending. It doesn’t have to end in your basement.” I gave him the terms. “You want to cripple the Moretti family? I built their offshore banking system and secure communications network. I am the only person with the passwords to their medical supply chains and emergency protocols.” Victor pulled a chair over and sat down. “Give me 48 hours and a laptop. In return, you help me disappear. Arrange a fire and call it an accident. Sienna Moretti dies tonight.” I would schedule an email to every senior member of the Moretti family. It would arrive in exactly 48 hours. By then, the accounts and codes would be gone. “Let Dante mourn the tool he threw away,” I said. “Then let him try to run his empire without it.”