Chapter 4
Neither of them slept that night.
By four in the morning, Damian had gathered the only four people in his organization he trusted without reservation. Ricardo Salazar, his head of muscle, a man who’d taken a bullet meant for Damian’s father two decades earlier and never once mentioned it since, not even the year his knee finally gave out from the old wound. Priya Anand, the syndicate’s forensic accountant, who could trace a dollar through eleven shell companies faster than most people could count to ten, and who had once found a leak inside the organization simply by noticing a decimal point moved one place too far. Dr. Tomas Reyes, the only physician in Boston willing to treat Cross soldiers without asking questions, and who owed Damian a debt written in blood and silence going back to a hospital hallway neither man ever discussed. And Elise, wrapped in a blanket in the corner of the private conference room, refusing every suggestion that she rest, her eyes fixed on the security monitors as though looking away might let the danger slip past unseen.
Dr. Reyes examined her first, his weathered hands steady as he checked her pulse, her color, the fine tremor still visible in her fingers.
“The levels are dangerous, but not yet fatal,” he said at last, setting his instruments down with the particular care of a man delivering news he knows will be picked apart later for hidden meaning. “Chelation therapy starts immediately. Fluids. Total removal from any further exposure. Caught now, the baby has a strong chance at a full recovery. Two more weeks at this rate, and I couldn’t have promised you that.”
Damian’s hand found Elise’s shoulder and didn’t leave it again for the rest of the night.
“What do we do about Gerald?” Ricardo’s arms were crossed, his voice flat in the particular way it always went before violence, a stillness that unsettled people who didn’t know him far more than shouting ever could. “Say the word and this ends before sunrise.”
“Not yet.” Damian’s eyes had not left the security footage Priya had pulled up — grainy black-and-white recordings of the break room, running back three weeks at his order. “I want him thinking he’s safe. I want to know exactly how deep this runs before I bring it all down at once. A man who dies too early takes his secrets with him.”
Priya froze a frame timestamped nine days earlier, 11:47 p.m. Gerald Voss stood at the counter, silver thermos in one hand, a small glass vial in the other, his movements quick and rehearsed, the movements of a man who had done this enough times to stop feeling anything while he did it.
No one spoke for a moment.
“There,” Priya said quietly, tapping the screen. “Dated, timestamped — and I’ve already pulled three more instances just like it, going back almost a month. He’s not being careful anymore. He doesn’t think anyone’s watching.”
“Because he doesn’t think anyone suspects him,” Elise said, her voice steadier now than it had been in hours. “He thinks I’m just a woman getting sick. He thinks it’s working exactly the way it’s supposed to.”
May you like
Something without a name in polite company moved behind Damian’s eyes.
“Then let’s show him exactly how wrong he is.”
