Chapter 5 - THE DISCOVERY AT THE BOTTOM OF THE STAIRS
The grand foyer of the Garza estate looked like a crime scene.
As Alejandro reached the bottom of the twenty-step marble staircase, his tactical flashlight cut through the gloom, illuminating a horrifying tableau.
Sprawled across the pristine, white Italian tiles lay Camila.
Her silk nightgown was soaked through with a dark, glistening pool of crimson that had seeped outward like a sinister halo. Her head rested at an awkward, unnatural angle against the base of a bronze urn. Her face was as pale as marble, her lips tinged with a terrifying bluish hue, and her eyes were half-closed, glassy, and unfocused.
“Camila!” Alejandro gasped, dropping his tactical crate and sliding onto his knees directly beside her in the warm, sticky pool of blood.
He reached out with a trembling hand, pressing two fingers against the side of her neck.
Her pulse was thready, erratic, and terrifyingly faint—racing at over 140 beats per minute, the classic physiological sign of hemorrhagic shock.
“Doctor! Get over here right now!” Alejandro roared, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings with enough fury to wake the dead.
Dr. Reséndiz slid down the stairs behind him, dropping his medical case onto the floor and immediately falling to his knees on the bloody marble tile. He threw open the latches of his kit, snapping on latex gloves with lightning speed.
“Flashlight on her pupils—now!” Reséndiz ordered, pulling a penlight from his pocket.
Alejandro gripped his tactical flashlight, angling the beam directly into Camila’s face. Her pupils were sluggish, dilated, barely reacting to the harsh white light.
“She’s in stage-four hypovolemic shock,” Reséndiz said, his voice tight, clinical, and completely devoid of panic as his hands flew over her body. He pressed his stethoscope firmly against her abdomen, listening intently for several agonizing seconds through the thick layers of fabric and blood. His face went instantly pale.
“What is it, Armando? Talk to me!” Alejandro demanded, grabbing the doctor’s forearm with a grip so tight his fingers dug deep into the wool sleeve.
“Placental abruption,” Reséndiz said grimly, looking up directly into Alejandro’s eyes. “The fall sheared the placenta completely off the uterine wall. She’s bleeding internally at an alarming rate, and the baby is in severe fetal distress—heart rate has dropped to fifty beats per minute. We have less than three minutes before both of them go into cardiac arrest.”
“Then save them!” Alejandro shouted, his voice cracking with a raw, desperate emotion he hadn't felt in a decade. “You have whatever you need! Do it here! Do it now!”
“I can’t perform a full emergency C-section on a marble floor without a sterile surgical theater, or she’ll die of septic shock within the hour!” Reséndiz argued, frantically ripping open an IV line bag and jabbing the needle into the crook of Camila’s bruised, pale arm. “We need to move her to the chopper medical bay immediately! Fast IV saline push! Start the blood expanders!”
Alejandro didn't wait for instructions.
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With a surge of raw, adrenaline-fueled strength, he slid his arms beneath Camila’s broken, bleeding body, lifting her slight, fragile frame against his chest as carefully as if she were made of spun glass. He ignored the warm blood soaking through the front of his black wool coat, ignoring the sickening angle of her broken arm, and stood straight up.
“Lead the way, Doctor,” Alejandro commanded, his eyes burning with a dark, lethal fire. “If she dies on these stairs, I swear to God I will burn this entire house to the ground with Mateo inside it.”
