Chapter 2 - The Red Line
The coffee in Blythe’s mug turned cold while she stared at the screen.
Her phone rang in her hand. The screen flashed *Dana*.
Blythe pressed it to her ear. “Dana—”
“Are you alive? Are you alone? Tell me you’re alone!” Dana’s voice was borderline hysterical.
“I’m in my bed,” Blythe said, her voice sounding numb to her own ears. “Dana, who is Soren Vanek? The article called him a syndicate boss. Is that… is that real? Or is it just tabloid clickbait?”
A heavy sigh rattled through the receiver. “Blythe, do you live under a rock? Soren Vanek isn't a mobster from an old movie. He controls half the shipping docks on the eastern seaboard, three-quarters of the high-end private security firms in the tri-state area, and allegedly half the black-market laundering pipelines on the continent. The FBI has an entire task force named after him that has accomplished zero because witnesses keep vanishing!”
Blythe felt the room tilt slightly.
The calm man in the hallway. The quiet voice. The way Hartfield had looked ready to soil his expensive trousers.
“I didn't know who he was,” Blythe said, panic creeping into her throat. “Hartfield was cornering me. I needed a distraction. I literally just grabbed the first person I saw.”
“Well, you grabbed the devil by the wrist, Blythe! Look at Twitter! Look at the financial blogs! Everyone is asking who the girl in the catering jacket is. The caption says you’re his lover!”
“I’m an ER nurse who makes twenty-eight dollars an hour!” Blythe cried out.
“The street doesn't know that,” Dana said grimly. “Vanek’s enemies don't know that. Blythe… you need to call in sick today. Don't go outside.”
“I can't call in sick. We have trauma rotations, and Dr. Morrison will write me up. I have a rent check due tomorrow. I’m fine, Dana. It’s just an internet rumor. It’ll blow over in twenty-four hours when they realize I’m nobody.”
She hung up, but her hands were shaking so badly she spilled cold coffee across her kitchen counter.
She took a shower, dressed in her standard navy scrubs, and pulled her dark hair into a tight, sensible bun. She threw on an oversized trench coat, tucked the matte-black card into her pocket—she didn't know why, only that throwing it away felt like discarding a shield—and walked down the steps of her walk-up apartment building.
The morning air was crisp and smelled of autumn exhaust.
She took three steps onto the sidewalk before she noticed it.
Across the street, parked beside a fire hydrant, sat a black sedan with heavily tinted windows. Its engine was idling, a thin wisp of vapor drifting from the dual exhaust.
Blythe froze.
New York was full of black town cars. It meant nothing.
She turned left toward the subway station.
As she walked, she heard the low rumble of an engine engaging gear. The black sedan pulled out from the curb, crawling along the street at ten miles an hour—matching her walking pace.
Her stomach dropped through the pavement.
She picked up her pace. Her sneakers squeaked against the concrete. She darted down the subway stairs, swiped her MetroCard with trembling fingers, and plunged into the sea of morning commuters waiting for the N train.
She pressed her back against a tiled pillar, scanning the crowd. Nobody seemed to be following her. Just tired accountants, construction workers, and students with headphones.
She let out a long breath. *You’re being paranoid. It was just an Uber waiting for a fare.*
The train arrived with a screech of brakes. Blythe boarded, wedged herself between a businessman and a woman holding a crying toddler, and kept her head down for the entire forty-minute commute to Manhattan.
St. Jude Memorial Hospital was an island of controlled chaos. The emergency department was already backing up by the time Blythe clocked in at 8:45 AM.
“Carver! Bay four,” the charge nurse barked without looking up from her monitor. “Laceration from a broken bottle, non-compliant patient. Stitch him up and move him out.”
“On it,” Blythe said.
Work was a blessing. In the trauma ward, there was no time to think about tabloids or syndicate bosses. Blood was real. Sepsis was real. The rhythm of IV pushes, sterile gauze, and heart monitors anchored her to reality.
By 2:00 PM, she was finishing the charting on an elderly woman with acute pneumonia when the double doors of the ambulance bay burst open.
Two paramedics rushed in pushing a gurney, their faces grim.
“G-S-W!” the lead paramedic shouted. “Male, mid-thirties, two rounds to the abdomen! Pressure is dropping, 70 over 40!”
“Trauma One!” Blythe called out instantly, abandoning her clipboard.
She sprinted alongside the gurney as they wheeled the patient into the surgical trauma suite. The man on the gurney was muscular, covered in intricate black-and-grey tattoos, his face pale as chalk. He wore a blood-soaked leather jacket that had been sliced open by the EMTs.
Dr. Morrison, the attending surgeon, pushed through the doors, snapping on latex gloves. “Get two large-bore IVs in him! Hang two units of O-neg! Carver, apply pressure to the upper quadrant!”
Blythe grabbed a thick pad of sterile dressing, planted both palms against the wound on the man’s upper abdomen, and pushed down with all her weight. Warm, dark arterial blood seeped between her fingers.
“Hold on,” Blythe said, leaning over the man’s face. “Stay with me. Keep your eyes on me.”
The man’s eyelids fluttered. His gaze, glassy with hemorrhagic shock, focused on her face.
Suddenly, his bloody hand reached up and wrapped around her wrist.
Blythe didn't flinch—she was used to terrified patients grasping for anchors—but then the man’s lips moved beneath the oxygen mask.
“The… the girl…” he rasped, his voice bubbling with fluid.
“Don't talk,” Blythe said softly. “Save your energy.”
“The girl… from the paper…” the man choked out, his eyes widening in sick recognition. “The boss’s… girl…”
Blythe’s blood ran colder than the saline bag hanging above the bed.
“What did he say?” Dr. Morrison demanded, adjusting the suction tube.
“Nothing,” Blythe whispered, her voice trembling. “He’s delirious.”
Before the doctor could reply, the cardiac monitor let out a long, flat, unbroken tone.
*Beep. Beep. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeep.*
“He’s in V-fib!” Morrison yelled. “Start compressions! Charge the paddles to two hundred!”
For the next twenty minutes, Blythe pumped the man’s chest until her shoulders burned and sweat stung her eyes. They shocked him four times. They pumped six units of blood and three rounds of epinephrine into his veins.
At 2:48 PM, Dr. Morrison lowered his head and stepped back.
“Call it,” he said quietly. “Time of death: fourteen forty-eight.”
Blythe stood over the body, her scrubs covered in the dead man’s blood. Her chest heaved as she tried to catch her breath.
She looked down at the man’s exposed neck.
Tattooed right beneath his jawline was a distinct symbol: a two-headed viper wrapped around a broken dagger.
She didn't know what it meant. But she knew that five minutes before he died, this man had recognized her face.
A tap on the glass window of the trauma suite made her look up.
Standing outside the observation room was Everett Hartfield.
He was not wearing his tuxedo. He wore an expensive gray cashmere coat, flanked by two men in dark trench coats who were definitely not hospital staff.
Hartfield was looking directly at her through the glass.
May you like
And he was smiling.
***
