Chapter 2 - The Shadow of Saint Jude
The black card remained on my silver serving tray like a piece of burning lead long after Roman Voss and his terrifying entourage swept out of Bella Rosa Trattoria. The heavy glass front doors clicked shut behind them, dampening the roar of the evening rush hour on Michigan Avenue, but the air in the restaurant remained thin and suffocating.
My manager, Vince, stood frozen beside the hostess stand, staring at me as if I were a ghost that had just risen from the floorboards.
"What... what just happened?" Vince stammered, his fingers twitching against his apron. "Did you know him, Pamela? Do you have any idea what kind of man Roman Voss is?"
"No," I whispered, my voice sounding hollow even to my own ears. My hands were shaking so violently that I had to set the tray down on the nearest empty table before the water pitcher tipped over. "I've never seen him before in my life."
"He left his card," Vince pointed out, his eyes wide with a mix of terror and predatory curiosity. "A black titanium card. Do you know who gets those? Politicians, billionaires, and people who make problems disappear into Lake Michigan. If he comes back and you've screwed this up—"
"I didn't do anything," I snapped, turning away from him.
I grabbed my coat from the back locker room, untied my stained apron, and walked out the back service exit into the freezing Chicago wind. I didn't care about the rest of my shift. I didn't care if Vince fired me on the spot.
The three small voices were still echoing inside my head, bouncing off the walls of my skull like ricocheting bullets.
Mom. Mom. Mom.
It was biologically impossible. Fourteen months ago, at Saint Jude Memorial Hospital, Dr. Harrison had looked me in the eye with cold, clinical pity and told me my babies had not survived the emergency C-section. Complications. Placental abruption. Heart failure before they could even draw their first breath.
I had been too weak to fight, too drugged to demand answers, and too broken by grief to question the three small, sealed death certificates that arrived in my mailbox two weeks later.
I walked the four blocks to my cramped studio apartment in a daze, the sleet stinging my cheeks. When I finally unlocked my door, the silence of the tiny room hit me like a physical blow. The three empty cribs in the corner—painted pale yellow, draped with the hand-knitted blankets my mother had made before she passed—remained untouched, shrines to a loss I had spent over a year trying to survive.
I dropped my bag on the floor, sank onto the edge of the mattress, and pulled Roman Voss’s card from my pocket.
Under the matte black surface, a single phone number was engraved in polished silver. No name. No title. Just digits.
My thumb hovered over my cell phone keypad. Part of me wanted to throw the card into the radiator and pretend none of this had ever happened. But another part—a terrifying, desperate spark of maternal instinct that I thought had been extinguished forever—whispered that those babies had looked at me with my own eyes.
Before I could dial, my phone buzzed violently in my hand.
An incoming call from an unknown, restricted number.
I pressed accept.
"Pamela Hayes," a deep, controlled voice commanded from the other end of the line. Roman Voss. "You didn't call."
"I just got home," I answered, my heart hammering against my ribs. "Mr. Voss, I don't know what kind of game you're playing, but—"
"It's not a game," Roman interrupted, his voice dropping an octave, carrying an undercurrent of raw, unadulterated terror that sounded entirely foreign for a man who ruled half the city's underground infrastructure. "My children have not slept in fourteen months. They don't cry for nurses. They don't respond to nannies. When I brought home three infants from Saint Jude Memorial Hospital a year ago, I was told their biological mother died on the operating table."
The room spun. My breath caught in my throat.
"What... what did you say?" I whispered, the words barely escaping my lips.
"Saint Jude Memorial Hospital," Roman repeated slowly, each word deliberate and lethal. "Dr. Arthur Harrison. Fourteen months ago. My security detail has already pulled the public records. You were admitted to Saint Jude on the exact same night, under the exact same obstetric ward, at the exact same hour."
A cold sweat broke out across my back.
May you like
"No," I choked out, tears instantly blinding my eyes. "No, they told me... they told me my babies died."
"And they told me the mother died," Roman replied, his voice hardening into steel. "Someone lied, Pamela. And I am going to find out who. Get dressed. Donovan is waiting downstairs in a black sedan. We are going to find out what happened in that hospital."
