Chapter 5 - The Emergency Wing
The neurological pavilion at St. Jude’s Private Hospital didn't look like an emergency room; it looked like a high-end hotel, all brushed steel, muted lighting, and expensive wood paneling. But by 4:12 a.m., the silence of the wing was broken by the rhythmic, heavy stride of Roman Velez’s security detail.
Six men in dark suits stood at every exit of the intensive care floor, their arms crossed over their chests, their expressions vacant but alert. Jonah Price sat at the reception desk, a tablet open in front of him, monitoring the city’s police scanners and the digital security perimeters of the hospital.
Inside Room 412, the only sound was the soft, continuous hum of a respirator and the steady, reassuring beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor.
Camila lay in the center of the bed, her head wrapped in clean white gauze, an IV line dripping advanced neuro-protectants into her arm. The chief of surgery, Dr. Mercer, had spent ninety minutes in the operating suite clearing a small blood clot from her temporal lobe. The prognosis was good, but the recovery would be long.
Roman sat in a leather armchair beside the bed, his white shirt stained with dried blood and sleet, his eyes never leaving her face.
On the couch across the room, the twins were fast asleep, curled into each other under a heavy, green hospital blanket. They were still clutching their mother’s faded star blanket between them, their small faces peaceful for the first time in twenty-four hours.
The door to the room opened silently. Jonah stepped inside, his face tight.
"Boss," Jonah whispered, leaning down toward Roman’s ear. "We’ve got a situation downstairs. The landlord from the Wolcott building called the local precinct. Apparently, some of Hector Gaitan’s scouts were spotted hanging around the block after the ambulance left. They saw your Mercedes, Roman. They know you were on the South Side tonight without your standard convoy."
Roman’s jaw clenched, the muscles in his neck tightening like iron cables. Hector Gaitan was the leader of the East Side syndicate, a brutal, short-sighted drug runner who had been trying to move his product through Roman’s northern shipping lanes for six months. If Gaitan discovered that Roman had an unprotected vulnerability—a woman and two children hidden in a South Side walk-up—the war would turn biological.
"Did they follow the rig?" Roman asked, his voice a low, lethal whisper that didn't disturb the sleeping children.
"No," Jonah shook his head. "We shook them on the Dan Ryan. But Gaitan isn't stupid. He’s already putting two and two together. He knows you didn't risk your life at three in the morning for a diner waitress unless she meant everything to you."
Roman stood up slowly, crossing the room to stand over his daughters. He reached down, gently brushing a stray curl away from Luz’s forehead. The girl mumbled something in her sleep, her tiny hand reaching out to grab the hem of his blood-stained shirt, holding onto it even in her dreams.
"Move them," Roman commanded.
"To the penthouse?" Jonah asked.
"No," Roman said, turning his head to look at Camila’s steady heart monitor. "The penthouse is a target. Move them to the Lake Forest estate. Activate the perimeter sensors. Bring in the first tier from the docks—twenty men, heavy rifles. If anyone so much as looks at the gates of that property without my written clearance, bury them in the woods behind the stables."
May you like
He looked back at Camila, his eyes burning with a dark, terrible resolve.
"Hector Gaitan thinks he found a weakness," Roman muttered, his hand dropping to the heavy steel frame of the hospital bed. "He’s about to find out that I just found the only thing in this world worth killing for."
