Chapter 3 - The Currency of Independence
“Excuse me?” Naomi said, her voice dropping into a low, dangerous hum.
“You heard me,” Silas replied, his grip not tightening, but refusing to yield. “St. Victoria pays its wound-care specialists a respectable mid-tier salary. But you aren't here for the salary. You live in a walk-up near the docks in Brooklyn where the radiator clanks all winter and you take the night bus because parking costs too much. Name your figure. Five hundred thousand. A million. Come work exclusively for Grayson Harbor Logistics as my private medical director. You won't have to touch another chart in a public hospital.”
The silence that followed was heavy enough to crush bone.
Naomi didn't pull her hand away immediately. Instead, she let out a slow, steady breath, looking down at his fingers wrapped around her wrist before raising her eyes to meet his gaze directly.
“You think everything can be bought, don't you, Mr. Grayson?” she asked, her voice dangerously calm.
“I think everything has a value,” Silas corrected flatly. “Time, loyalty, silence, safety. Pretending otherwise is just romantic foolishness.”
“My apartment in Brooklyn has a bad radiator, and I take the night bus because I earned every inch of my life on my own terms,” Naomi said, her words striking like small, perfectly aimed bullets. She twisted her wrist, breaking his grip with a sharp, effortless motion that caught him slightly off guard. “I didn't spend ten years in night classes working twelve-hour shifts while my mother cried over bills just to become another expensive toy in your inventory.”
She stepped back, her stainless-steel tray resting firmly against her hip.
“Keep your money, Mr. Grayson,” she added, turning toward the door. “And take your antibiotics. That’s the only prescription of mine you’re going to get.”
She pulled the door open and walked out into the corridor, leaving Silas sitting alone in the center of the sterile white suite.
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Cole and Wade watched her pass with wary fascination. Inside the room, Silas didn't move for a long, quiet minute. Then, slowly, a sound rumbled deep in his chest—a dry, humorless sound that wasn't anger.
It was respect.
