Chapter 8 - The Price of a Nurse’s Hands
The sudden eruption of flame and blinding white magnesium light threw the ambush into complete chaos.
The gunmen screamed, dropping their weapons as the heat scorched their jackets, stumbling backward through the thick black smoke. The leader fired two wild, blind shots into the darkness before the concussive heat knocked him flat onto the gravel floor.
Emma didn't hesitate for a split second. She charged through the smoke, pulling a pair of heavy trauma shears from her nursing kit, and dropped to her knees beside Julian.
“You’re crazy,” Julian coughed through the smoke, blood trickling from his split lip, but his gray eyes were blazing with ferocious admiration. “You are completely insane, Emma Hayes.”
“I’m an emergency nurse,” Emma panted, using the leverage of the steel shears to unpick the padlock’s rusted clasp. “We deal with chaotic disasters every single night.”
The padlock snapped open with a sharp crack. Julian tore the heavy iron chains from his chest, his large hands immediately catching Emma by the waist and pulling her behind him just as the warehouse leader lunged out of the smoke with his hunting knife raised.
Julian didn't back down. Despite the knife wound in his ribs, he stepped into the attack, caught the man’s wrist, twisted it until the bone shattered with a loud snap, and drove his fist straight into the man’s throat. The attacker collapsed instantly onto the burning floor, unconscious.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
Four black SUVs roared through the warehouse’s bay doors, scattering the remaining gang members into the dark river. Marco Bell and twenty heavily armed Cross enforcers spilled out into the smoke, weapons drawn, securing every corner of the pier within forty seconds.
“Boss!” Marco yelled, running over with a medical trauma kit. “We tracked the burner phone signal!”
“Get the cars ready,” Julian ordered, his breathing heavy as he pressed his hand against his bleeding side.
Emma slapped Marco’s hands away from the kit. “Give me that!” she commanded with absolute authority.
Marco blinked, stunned, but instantly handed over the sterile gauze and pressure bandages to the small blond woman who was barking orders at the underworld’s top lieutenant.
Emma dropped to her knees beside Julian, tearing open his shirt. A jagged four-inch laceration bled heavily along his left ribcage, narrowly missing his spleen. Her hands moved with clinical, ruthless efficiency, packing the wound with hemostatic gauze, wrapping tight compression bandages around his torso, and securing the tape with firm pressure.
“Hold still,” she scolded him, her voice trembling with held-back tears. “You’re losing blood.”
Julian looked down at her hands—her small, gentle, bloodstained hands that had saved him in the snow twelve years ago, and had just walked through fire to save him again.
He reached up with trembling fingers, cupping the side of her soot-stained cheek.
“You came for me,” he whispered, ignoring the excruciating pain in his ribs. “Through fire and armed men. For a monster like me.”
Emma looked up into his gray eyes, a tear cutting a clean path through the soot on her cheek.
“You’re not a monster to me, Jules,” she said softly, leaning her forehead against his chest. “You’re the boy who kept his promise.”
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Julian closed his eyes, wrapping his arms around her as the rain began to fall through the shattered warehouse roof, quenching the flames around them.
“Take us home, Marco,” Julian said into the quiet night. “Take us home.”
