Chapter 9 - The Poisoned Ledger
The torrential rain had transformed into a heavy, freezing mist by the time the armored SUV pulled into the subterranean ambulance bay of St.
Jude’s Memorial Hospital.
Paige sat in the passenger seat, her emerald gown bunched around her knees, the diamond choker feeling like an iron collar around her throat.
Her phone buzzed once on the console.
It was an encrypted ping from the secure monitor on the ninth floor: Elevated heart rate detected in Suite 904.
“Drive,” Roman commanded, his voice tight as a bowstring.
Luca did not bother with the ramp gates.
He slammed the SUV through the wooden barrier arm, shattering the fiberglass pole as the vehicle roared into the VIP parking bay.
Paige was out of the door before the wheels had fully stopped spinning.
She kicked off her high-heeled shoes, leaving them on the wet concrete, and sprinted barefoot across the polished tiles toward the private express elevator.
Roman was half a step behind her, his hand resting on the grip of the weapon beneath his dinner jacket.
The elevator doors opened on the ninth floor.
The hallway was eerily, terrifyingly quiet.
The two private operatives Roman had stationed outside suite 904 were not standing at their posts.
Paige’s heart seized in her chest like an engine throwing a piston.
She rounded the corner, skidding across the plush carpet, and found the two men lying motionless against the wall near the water cooler.
They were breathing, but their eyes were rolled back, dark puncture marks visible along the exposed skin of their necks.
“Fentanyl dart,” Roman hissed, dropping to one knee beside the first guard for half a second before springing up like a coiled cobra.
Paige did not wait.
She threw her weight against the frosted glass door of suite 904, bursting into the room with a wild, desperate cry.
“Leo!”
The room was dim, illuminated only by the soft blue wash of the medical monitors.
Standing beside Leo’s bed was a man dressed in the sterile blue scrubs of a pediatric respiratory tech, wearing a surgical mask and paper cap.
In his right hand, the tech held a fifty-milliliter syringe filled with a clear, viscous liquid.
The needle was already aligned with the primary injection port of Leo’s central venous line.
Leo was whimpering softly in his sleep, his small face twisting as if caught in the grip of a fever dream.
“Get away from him!” Paige shrieked.
She did not think.
She did not hesitate.
She forgot about her broken wrist, her silk gown, and her lack of weapons.
She launched herself across the bed like a feral wolf defending its cub, driving her entire body weight into the technician’s chest.
The impact threw the man off balance, his back crashing into the stainless-steel IV stand with a deafening metallic clatter.
The syringe flew from his grip, skittering across the linoleum floor and leaking its deadly payload into the fibers of the rug.
The technician snarled, his eyes bulging over his mask with murderous rage.
He lunged forward, his heavy fist driving into Paige’s ribs with brutal force.
Paige gasped, the air exploding from her lungs, but her good left hand clamped onto his collar like an iron claw, refusing to let him reach the bed.
The technician drew a four-inch ceramic blade from his waistband, raising it to drive it into her throat.
He never completed the motion.
A hand made of forged steel seized the technician’s wrist in mid-air.
Roman Gallow had arrived.
Roman’s slate eyes were not human in that moment; they were the eyes of an ancient, merciless god of slaughter.
He twisted the technician’s arm with a horrific, casual snap that shattered both the radius and ulna simultaneously.
The man opened his mouth to scream, but Roman’s other hand clamped around his throat like a hydraulic vise, cutting off the sound before it could leave his vocal cords.
Roman lifted the full-grown man off his feet by the throat, driving his spine into the cinderblock wall with concussive violence.
“Who sent you?” Roman whispered.
His voice was so quiet, so devoid of air, that it sounded like a venomous snake sliding through dry grass.
The technician kicked frantically against the wall, his face turning blackish-purple, blood trickling from behind his surgical mask.
“Victor…” the man choked out through crushed cartilage.
“Victor… paid… the clinic…”
Roman did not ask a second question.
With a short, brutal jerk of his forearm, he drove the man’s temple into the corner of the wall frame, rendering him instantly, deeply unconscious.
Roman dropped the limp body to the floor like a sack of garbage.
He kicked the ceramic knife under the credenza.
Then, he turned around.
Paige was on her knees beside the bed, her trembling arms wrapped around Leo’s shoulders, pressing her tear-streaked face against her brother’s chest.
Leo’s eyes were open now.
They were confused, clouded with medication, but they recognized the scent of his sister.
“Paige?” Leo whispered, his voice thin as tissue paper.
“Why are you wearing a pretty dress?”
Paige let out a choked, ragged laugh through her sobs, kissing his forehead again and again.
“Because we went to a party, Leo,” she whispered, burying her fingers in his soft brown hair.
“A very fancy party.”
“Are we safe now?” the boy asked, his gaze drifting past her shoulder toward the tall, dark man standing in the center of the room.
Leo’s eyes widened slightly as he took in Roman’s immaculate tuxedo, his broad shoulders, and the cold, unyielding power radiating from his frame.
“Who is he?” Leo asked softly.
Roman did not look away.
He slowly walked to the side of the bed, his dark face softening by a fraction of an inch as he looked down at the boy who carried Thomas Vance’s blood.
Roman extended his right hand, not like a mob boss demanding fealty, but like a soldier greeting an equal.
“My name is Roman, Leo,” he said, his voice warm, deep, and remarkably gentle.
“I was a friend of your father.”
Leo looked at Roman’s broad, scarred hand, then reached out with his small, pale fingers and clasped it.
“My dad was strong,” Leo whispered.
“He could lift an engine block.”
“I know he was,” Roman replied softly.
“And you are just as strong as he was.”
Roman looked up from the boy’s bed, his eyes meeting Paige’s over Leo’s head.
There was no business left between them.
There were no debts, no suits, no ledgers of cash and credit.
There was only the shared, unbreakable covenant of two survivors who had looked into the abyss and chosen to drag each other back into the light.
Luca entered the room, his weapon drawn, taking in the unconscious assassin on the floor with a grim nod.
“The clinic director has been secured, boss,” Luca reported.
“He’s singing like a canary.”
“Victor is operating out of the old bonded grain terminal at slip nineteen.”
“He has forty men, three cargo containers of ordnance, and a private freighter flagged out of Panama waiting on the tide.”
Roman released Leo’s hand, stepped back from the bed, and straightened his cuffs.
“The tide turns at four in the morning, Miss Vance,” Roman said, his eyes locking onto hers with absolute, terrifying resolve.
“Shall we go close your father’s ledger?”
Paige stood up from the hospital bed.
May you like
She smoothed the silk of her emerald gown over her hips, her chin lifting with royal defiance.
“Let’s finish it,” she said.
