Left turn. Right. Then, finally, the red EMERGENCY sign at St. Raphael’s slices the dark open. Dre’s hand opens the door handle. "Last chance to admit you did a little ring-pop ceremony under a Ferris wheel somewhere."
I get out and step into the antiseptic glare. "I’m not married," I tell him, even as the doors whoosh open and bleach and beeping swallow us.
"Cool," he says, falling into step beside me, voice flat. "Then let’s go meet Mrs. Conti."
The elevator doorspart on the ICU floor, and everything in me bristles a half-second before the chaos. This whole floor reminds me of a glass-walled fishbowl, with white tile and pale blue light filtering in from the city below. Nurses move in nervous shoals; machines chirp like they're arguing with each other.My wifeis somewhere down this hallway, fresh from surgery that, according to the doctor we briefly spoke to,went well.
Dre walks point, his jacket cut for movement but barely disguising the gun at his hip. He makes a bad show of pretending to be here for anything other than violence. He doesn't hide his glances to the left and right, scoping the exit strategies, the security cameras, and the best places to drop a body if it comes to that. Which leaves me to focus on the room numbers. At the nurse’s stationdesk sits a bottle-blonde. She clocks us and immediately picks up the phone, but Dre’s on her before she can dial. He leans in, drops my name and the room number, and she stiffens, recognizing who we are. She buzzes us through the next set of locked doors.
About thirty feet down the corridor, two men in ill-fitting hospital greens step around another corner. They look too out of place to be nurses or orderlies; they move like predators in a place built for the dying. One of them is holding something behind his back. I give Dre the nod, and we accelerate, two wolves in a petting zoo.
Both of us pull our guns, cock them in sync. We hit the turn just in time to see the men slip into a room to the left. Ana’s room. The sliding glass door is about to close when Dre stops it with his foot.
The two men are mid-action: one has a nurse by the hair, dragging her head back, the other is halfway across the room, bent over Ana’s bed. The first man goes for the nurse’s throat with a scalpel. I see the glint, hear the wet rattle as he opens her carotid. The nurse collapses, clutching the wound, shocked, trying to stem the crimson spray.
The second man is faster; he’s got a blade of his own, descending toward Ana’s exposed neck, her face is barely visible under gauze, swelling, and the oxygen line snaking into her nose. Everything in my body turns into lightning.
Time telescopes. Distills to a single imperative: protect.
One word fills my head: KILL.
My gun is up, and my finger is already pulling the trigger. Two rounds hit the man’s heart first before he can finish turning from the bed to us. He folds like a marionette with its strings cut, the scalpel skittering across the linoleum. A spray of blood hits the pinkish sheets on Ana's bed.
The second shot comes from Dre, but I don't pay it any attention. The corridor behind us fills with panic-screams and running feet, the nurse, the one who took the cut, is somehow still on her knees, clutching her neck, eyes huge and wild. She’s alive—for now, at least—but none of it matters because I’m at Ana’s side, tearing away what I can of the blood-soaked sheets and medical tape. There’s blood everywhere, but not hers. The monitor shrieks, then settles.
Her red hair is matted; her face is a mess of purple and yellow and dried blood from the earlier trauma and the surgery. Her left eye is swollen shut, and the cheekbone beneath it is ballooning. It doesn’t matter to me. Something in me changes shape.
MINE.
Mine to protect.
Mine to possess.
Mine to punish the world for touching.
That's not me. I’m notthatman. I don’t domine; I dooursandtheirsandwhat it costs.But the idea of that knife onher throat turns the floor under me into something that wants to break.
"Boss." Dre’s voice is low and steady. He’s already moving bodies with his boot, kicking blades away, clearing the corners. "We’re not alone."
"More men," I bark, not looking away from her. "Now."
He’s on his phone before the words land. "Two full teams to St. Raphael’s, ICU. Go."
I press two fingers to her pulse, even though the loud beeping of the monitor already tells me that her heartbeat is strong. I need to feel her skin. Her pulse. It's there, strong enough to fight. I straighten as uniforms stack outside the door behind the glass, hands hovering near their weapons, brave now that the noise is over. One of them pokes his head in. "Sir, we need you to step away from the patient and speak with?—"
"No," I don't even look up. "You want a statement, get my lawyer. Otherwise, you’re going to need a lot more than a badge to get me out of this room."
"Sir, that’s not?—"
Dre intercepts the officer at the threshold; his empty, deadly smile meets the man's. "He saidlawyer. Unless you have a warrant, or you’re arresting us, You. Back. The. Fuck. Up."
The cop hesitates, recalibrates, and you can see him mentally running through the Rolodex of who we are and who will make his life hell if he pushes the wrongbutton. He holsters his gun, but the look in his eye says this isn’t over.
"Fine. But if anyone else dies tonight?—"
"They won’t," Dre interrupts, then winks, "unless they try to make it through that door."
Outside, the hospital’s panic has reached full boil: alarms, people shouting for Code Black, security guards with walkie-talkies pressed to their faces like lifelines.
