Chapter 4 Lily Is Missing

(Esme's POV)

The next morning, I pushed open the hospital door with a prepared liquid meal, my smile freezing in midair.

The bed was empty. Lily was gone.

"Lily?" I dropped the tray to the floor with a heavy thud.

Panic seized me. Then Leo emerged from the bathroom, pushing the black suitcase I had packed.

He stared at me with a smug, icy smile. "I already told Dad about the cash and passport in the bottom of your suitcase. You were going to sneak Lily out and run."

I felt as if I'd fallen into an ice pit, my heart crushed by a giant hand, my breathing shallow. "Leo, how could you do this? She's your sister!"

"Good job, Leo." Sebastian and Jessica walked in together. Sebastian patted Leo's shoulder, then turned to me with contempt in his eyes. "Did you really think you could sneak her away from my sight?"

"Where did you take Lily?" I lunged at Sebastian like a cornered animal, but he caught me by the throat and shoved me back.

Jessica stepped closer, towering over me in her heels. "Save your strength. That sickly little brat is locked in a private clinic you'll never find."

"Sebastian, she's only six! She's sick!" I screamed, digging my nails into my palms until they bled. "She's your daughter. How can you do this to her?"

Sebastian smoothed his tie with cold detachment, his eyes like those of an insect. "Esme, just go to Sicily and work as a spy for the Gambino Family. Send me core intelligence every three months. As long as it's accurate and valuable, Lily will live. If it's worthless or false, you'll wait for her body to be delivered to me."

Jessica leaned close enough for her venomous whisper to touch my ear. "Try anything, and when your little bitch of a daughter grows up, I'll sell her to a mafia brothel as a sex slave. She can suffer the same humiliation you did."

Seeing me glaring at them as if I meant to drag them into death with me, Sebastian softened. "Don't worry. As long as your reports are accurate and valuable, we'll give her the best doctors and medicine, she'll be raised properly."

They stood over me with Leo beside them, all three pitiless. I collapsed to the floor, hollowed out by rage. If I survived, I would find Lily, and I would make Sebastian and Jessica die screaming.

Two weeks later. Palermo, Sicily.

Sebastian arranged for me to enter Palermo under cover as an emergency physician. After fifteen days of surveillance, I learned that the mysterious new Don often visited a place called Tuscany Bistro.

Today at noon, I passed by the restaurant as usual, but immediately sensed something was wrong.

Through the glass, I noticed two men in black suits sitting at the window table. Neither moved toward their food. One man's white sleeve was stained with fresh blood. His right hand remained resting against the inside of his suit jacket, muscles taut, expression tense.

Something had gone wrong.

I forced myself to stay calm, walking in as I always did, heading to the counter. "One black coffee and a salmon sandwich, please."

The woman behind the counter, Maria, went pale. Her hands trembled as she forced a smile that looked more like a sob. "Right away, Dr. Esme..."

"BANG!"

A bullet pierced Maria's head instantly, spraying blood and brain matter across my face and the glass cabinet. Maria's body went limp and fell straight down.

"Aah!" I screamed, dropped to my knees, and covered my head, performing the terror of an ordinary civilian caught in a shooting.

At that moment, the kitchen curtain was ripped open, revealing a long trail of blood on the floor.

A black-clad man, covered in blood, peered out, holding a gun pointed at me, and shouted angrily, "You're a doctor? She called you a doctor just now!"

I shook violently and whispered in a broken, terrified voice, "Yes... I'm a doctor! Please don't kill me!"

The next second, the man snatched my hair and dragged me roughly into the kitchen!

The kitchen reeked of sharp blood. A man lay dead on the floor with a bullet through the head, and on the worktable, another man lay unconscious and wounded.

The gunman jammed the barrel against my temple. "Get the bullet out of Sterling and stop the bleeding. If he dies, I'll blow your skull apart."

I looked at the man on the table, my voice trembling. "This isn't a sterile environment! I don't have surgical tools, no hemostats, no suture thread!"

The man ripped a dusty, portable sewing kit from his pocket, then snatched a fishing line from the side and slammed it in front of me. "Stop talking! Use this! Sew now!"

The gun pressed hard against my skull. I trembled violently, grabbing the fishing line, tears streaming down my face. But beneath the surface fear, my mind remained sharp and clear.

That was my chance to enter the core of the Gambino Family.

I cut open Sterling's blood-soaked shirt, pushed my fingers into the wound to find the bullet, rinsed the injury with the strongest liquor in the kitchen, and stitched his flesh with a sewing needle and fishing line, all without anesthesia.

For twenty minutes, under the threat of the gun, I completed a crude, makeshift operation.

When I tied the last surgical knot and cut the fishing line, the man grabbed my arm suddenly, yanking me up off the ground and dragging me violently.

"Come with me!"

He gave me no chance to resist or speak, simply dragging me out of the kitchen and slamming me into a black bulletproof SUV parked in a dark alley. The door slammed shut, and the car sped off toward the Gambino Family's secret base.