Chapter 3 - The Man in the Glass Room
Through the thick observation window of Room 612, David Carter looked less like the king of the Chicago underworld and more like a ghost fading into white linen.
The man I remembered was five years older than me, six-foot-two, with broad shoulders, sharp jawlines, and a presence that could command a room without him ever having to raise his voice. When he walked through the doors of his restaurants or his private shipping offices on the river, people moved out of his way out of a instinctual combination of respect and terror.
Now, he lay motionless beneath a heavy thermal blanket.
Dozens of clear plastic tubes snaked out from beneath his hospital gown, connecting him to three separate IV pumps, a mechanical ventilator, and a complex blood-filtration monitor that ticked with a quiet, hollow rhythm. His face was unnaturally pale, his dark hair damp against his forehead, his cheekbones sharp and hollowed by severe blood loss.
Dr. Winters moved methodically around the bed, connecting the specialized micro-filtration line from the metal box to the central IV port near his collarbone.
A deep red liquid began to trickle slowly down the clear tubing.
Chloe’s blood.
I pressed my forehead against the cool glass of the observation window, my fingers digging into the sill. Tears finally welled up in my eyes, hot and silent.
"He looks terrible, doesn't he?"
I turned my head.
A young man had walked up beside me. He was in his late twenties, wearing a dark blue tactical jacket over a black shirt. He had a pale, square face, a silver cross hanging around his neck, and dark blue eyes that carried a faint, tired warmth.
Julian Vance.
David’s personal bodyguard and closest confidant. Eight years ago, Julian had been a twenty-year-old kid David had pulled out of the South Side boxing gyms, turning him into his most loyal shadow. Julian was the only person in David's inner circle who had never treated me like a liability.
"Julian," I murmured, wiping my cheek quickly with the back of my hand.
"Natasha," Julian said softly, giving me a small, respectful nod. "I couldn't believe it when Marco said you were on the floor. I thought you were gone for good."
"I was," I said. "I should be."
Julian looked through the glass at David, his jaw tightening. "It wasn't a surgical complication, Natasha. Not really."
I looked at him sharply. "What do you mean?"
Julian glanced over his shoulder toward Samuel, who was standing thirty feet down the hallway speaking in low, urgent tones to two men in suits.
"David was shot three days ago at the railyards in Cicero," Julian whispered, leaning closer so his voice wouldn't carry. "A rifle round to the upper abdomen. The public story is an emergency appendectomy at St. Catherine’s, but it was an ambush. Someone inside our own network leaked David’s private route."
My stomach dropped. "An ambush? Who?"
"We don't know yet," Julian muttered darky. "But Samuel took control of the family bank accounts within four hours of David hit the operating table. He’s already calling an emergency meeting of the syndicate captains for tomorrow evening at the Drake Hotel. He wants to declare David permanently incapacitated and take over the leadership."
"Can he do that?"
"If David doesn't wake up by noon tomorrow, yes," Julian said grimly. "The captains won't wait for a dead man. They want stability. If Samuel takes the seat, he’ll purge everyone who was loyal to David. Starting with me."
Julian looked back at me, his eyes searching my face with sudden intensity.
"Why are you really here, Natasha?" Julian asked softly. "You ran away eight years ago. You hated this life. Why did you come back to save him?"
I looked through the glass at David’s pale face.
I thought about the small house in Madison. I thought about the purple horse drawn on cheap construction paper sitting on a waiting room table on the fourth floor.
"Because he didn't deserve to die in the dark, Julian," I said quietly, telling him only half the truth. "And because some debts never truly go away."
Suddenly, inside Room 612, a high-pitched alarm began to chime from the central cardiac monitor.
Dr. Winters snapped her head up, checking the digital readout. The line on the heart monitor—which had been flat and erratic for six hours—began to jump with sudden, sharp spikes.
David’s blood pressure readings began to rise.
The deep red liquid from the pediatric draw was entering his system, its rare antibodies locking onto his damaged cells, stabilizing his failing internal organs in real-time.
On the bed, David’s hand—long, scarred, and pale—suddenly twitched against the white sheet.
May you like
His fingers curled into a loose fist.
And then, slowly, painfully, his eyelids flickered open.
