Chapter 3 - Footsteps in the ICU
The silence that followed the drop of the clipboard was heavier than lead. Nora stood frozen, her breath caught behind her teeth, staring at Marcus as if he had just pulled a blade from his coat.
"You knew," she gasped, her voice barely a breath. "You knew before he was shot."
"I suspected," Marcus replied smoothly, bending down with surprising agility for a man his age to retrieve the metal board. He handed it back to her with a small, courteous nod. "Adrian didn't know yet. I was running the final background verification through our private investigators when the Rossi family launched their strike at the docks. I hadn't briefed him yet. I didn't want to give him false hope."
"It isn't hope!" Nora spat, clutching the clipboard like a breastplate. "It's a target! Don't you understand what you people do? You bring bullets to grocery stores! You bring bombs to street corners! Lily is innocent! She goes to kindergarten! She collects plastic butterflies and eats blueberry pancakes! She does not belong in your cesspool!"
"And who do you think funded that private kindergarten, Nora?" Marcus asked, his tone devastatingly gentle. "Do you truly believe a trauma fellow's salary covered full tuition at St. Jude's Academy on Queen Anne Hill? Did you think the anonymous endowment grant that covered eighty percent of your down payment on that craftsman house was lucky timing?"
Nora’s knees gave out. She had to reach for the edge of the crash cart to stay upright.
The anonymous grant.
The pediatric healthcare subsidy that had arrived in her mailbox three years ago, just as her savings were completely depleted by residency loans and childcare costs. The program director had told her it was a municipal initiative funded by private philanthropy to retain specialized surgical talent in the Seattle area.
"He... he knew?" she choked out.
"Adrian didn't know," Marcus clarified, stepping closer, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper. "I did. Two years after you left, I located your trail through a prescription database in Oregon. I saw that you were alone, working eighty hours a week at the hospital, raising a child in a damp basement apartment. I knew that if I told Adrian, he would come for you with an army, and the war that followed would consume you both. So I protected you from a distance. I made sure the funds appeared. I made sure the local precinct had your address flagged for immediate priority response. I kept Adrian in Chicago by feeding him false leads in South America."
Nora stared at the silver-haired enforcer, her mind spinning through six years of memories. The police cruiser that always seemed to be parked at the end of her residential street at night. The sudden approval of her mortgage when her credit score was borderline. The mysterious scholarship that had appeared for Lily’s Montessori program.
"Why?" Nora whispered. "Why would you lie to him?"
"Because Adrian was my boy," Marcus said, his gravelly voice cracking with rare, unvarnished emotion. "I raised him after his father was assassinated in eighty-nine. I watched what this life did to his soul. When you were with him, Nora, he slept through the night. He smiled at breakfast. He started talking about divesting from the ports, about going legitimate, about buying an orchard in upstate New York. You were the only clean thing in his world. When you vanished, the beast came back twice as vicious. I knew that if he found you while the war with the Rossi family was active, you and that little girl would be collateral damage. I wanted to wait until the coast was clear."
"The coast will never be clear!" Nora cried out. "He’s lying here with two holes in his chest!"
Behind them, the telemetry monitor gave an erratic skip.
Beep... beep... beep-beep-beep...
Nora turned toward the bed instantly. Adrian’s head shifted slightly against the white pillow. His brow furrowed in a spasm of intense pain. The ventilator began to alarm—Pressure High, Patient Resisting.
His heart rate climbed from seventy-two to ninety-five, then one hundred and ten. The arterial line tracing on the screen became tall and jagged.
"Adrian," Marcus stepped forward, his composure shattering. "He's waking up."
"Get out!" Nora commanded, shoving Marcus backward toward the door. "He has an endotracheal tube down his throat! If he bucks the vent, he'll tear his bronchial sutures! Step outside right now!"
Marcus hesitated for a split second, then backed through the sliding glass door, his eyes locked on his boss.
Nora grabbed a syringe of propofol from the emergency tray, her surgical training taking over. She reached for the central IV port to sedate him before his thrashing caused a fatal hemorrhage.
As her fingers touched the rubber port, a hand shot out from the sheets.
Cables ripped free from his chest. The monitors shrieked in unison. Adrian’s fingers clamped around her wrist with the sudden, violent grip of a drowning man catching a lifeline.
His eyes snapped open.
They weren't cloudy with drugs. They were burning with a terrifying, feverish intensity. The dark amber of his irises locked onto Nora’s face through the harsh fluorescent glare.
He pulled her down until she was inches from his face. His chest heaved against the vent tubing, a muffled, strangled sound escaping his throat behind the plastic.
He didn't reach for his wound. He didn't look at the alarms.
His thumb traced the delicate blue veins on the inside of Nora's trembling wrist, pressing against her racing pulse. He pulled the plastic ventilator tube from his own mouth with his free hand, coughing a spray of blood onto his bare chest as the emergency alarms screamed at maximum volume.
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Nora scrambled to re-intubate him, but Adrian’s fingers tangled into the fabric of her scrub top, hauling her down until his lips were brushing the shell of her ear.
"Nora," he rasped, his voice raw, bloody, and broken. "Where... is my daughter?"
