Chapter 2 - The Emerald Stain|
"Code Red! Incoming trauma!"
"Clear the main corridor! We need a surgical bay now!"
Heavy double doors at the end of the hallway slammed open with a violent metallic bang. Six paramedics and trauma nurses rushed through the doors, their shoes squeaking against the polished floorboards as they pushed a speeding gurney.
Dominic didn't bother looking up at first. Gunshot wounds, vehicular accidents, and street violence were normal occurrences in his line of work. He was a man who ordered executions without blinking. A little blood in a hospital corridor was nothing to him.
Then a flash of color moved past the glass panel of Serena’s suite.
Emerald green silk.
Dominic’s pulse spiked. His mind flashed back to that very morning. He had watched his wife walk down the grand staircase of their Lake Forest estate wearing an emerald silk dress—a birthday gift he had given her the previous month.
Dominic stood up so fast his chair scraped violently across the floorboards.
"Dom?" Serena asked, startled as her hand slipped from his grip. "What is it?"
Dominic didn't answer. He stepped out of the suite and onto the cold floor of the corridor just as the gurney rushed past.
The sterile smell of bleach vanished, replaced by the heavy, iron stench of fresh blood.
A pale, bruised arm hung limply over the metal side rail of the stretcher. On her left hand, a massive diamond wedding band caught the overhead lights.
Dominic looked up at the woman’s face.
Her delicate features were bruised purple, cut by dozens of tiny shards of shattered glass, and streaked with dark, wet crimson.
"Clara," he whispered.
His voice lacked all its usual authority. It sounded broken, hollow, and small.
She was completely alone. No armed guards. No syndicate soldiers. No family. Just strangers pressing thick rolls of gauze into her bleeding body, trying to keep her pulse from fading into nothing.
"Sir, step back!" a nurse shouted, pushing past him.
"That’s my wife!" Dominic roared, lunging forward and grabbing the cold side rail of the moving stretcher. "Clara! What happened to her?!"
A paramedic tried to pry his hands off the metal rail. "Severe blunt-force trauma! Internal hemorrhaging! Her vehicle was completely crushed, sir—let go!"
"Clara!" Dominic pleaded, staring at his wife's closed eyes.
The paramedic locked eyes with him, his expression grim. "If you don't let go of this gurney right now, she will die before we reach the operating room."
Dominic froze. His hands slipped off the cold rail.
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He watched the surgical doors swing shut, the red light above them illuminating the dark hallway. He looked down at his palms.
They were covered in his wife's blood.
