Chapter 2 - The Bullet and the Past
Inside trauma bay three, the monitors flashed a chaotic rhythm of green and red. Heart rate: 110 and climbing. Blood pressure: 80 over 50.
"He's bleeding out internally," Dr. Vance (no relation to the patient) yelled over the din of beeping alarms. "Cut that coat off! Let's see the entry wound!"
The heavy wool overcoat was sliced open, revealing a tailored suit jacket ruined by a massive crimson blossom. A .45 caliber hollow-point bullet had entered just below the right ribcage, tearing through tissue and missing his liver by millimeters.
Julian Vance lay flat on the operating table, his teeth clenched against the agony. He refused general anesthesia initially, his instincts overriding medical protocol. "Local... numb it," he rasped, his eyes locked on the ceiling lights. "I stay awake."
"Mr. Vance, you're going into shock if we don't put you under," the anesthesiologist argued.
"Do it," Julian commanded, his voice carrying the lethal authority of a man who commanded legions.
As the surgical team went to work, extracting the flattened lead slug from his abdomen, Julian’s mind drifted backward through the haze of pain and blood. Seven years. Seven years since the warehouse fire on the south side. Seven years since Marisol Cade had been murdered, and a twenty-one-year-old nurse named Wren Ashby had been thrown into a prison cell to take the fall for a crime she never committed.
Julian had known the truth from night one. He had known that Marisol was killed because she stumbled onto a weapons cache belonging to a rival syndicate trying to muscle in on his docks. He had known that Wren's keys were planted in her locker by a corrupt detective on the city's payroll.
And he had kept his silence. Because in Julian’s world, stepping forward meant total war, and protecting Wren from the shadows had seemed safer than drawing a target on her back. Until now.
Outside the operating room doors, sitting upright and motionless on a cold plastic chair, was Patch. The gray shepherd refused to leave the corridor. Nurses tried to coax him toward the staff lounge with turkey slices; security guards threatened to call animal control. Patch simply bared his teeth just enough to let them know that any attempt to move him would result in missing fingers.
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For six long hours, the surgery continued. For six long hours, the dog guarded the door like an ancient sentinel.
And as the sun began to peek over the horizon, painting the hospital windows in pale shades of amber and gray, Julian Vance woke up in the recovery ward—and made a decision that would shake the city to its foundations.
