Chapter 11 - The Shadow of the Red Bear
The cold autumn wind howled against the reinforced glass of the Kaine Memorial Clinic.
Clara adjusted her stethoscope, watching the controlled chaos of the emergency room floor from her glass-walled office.
She was no longer the desperate woman hiding from the world in a decaying apartment.
She was the director of the most well-funded medical facility in the Narrows, and she wore her authority with grace.
The diamond on her left hand caught the harsh fluorescent light, a constant reminder of the dangerous man who owned her heart.
The automatic doors of the ER suddenly blew open, shattering the quiet hum of the hospital.
Four men stumbled inside, carrying a fifth man who was convulsing violently violently on a makeshift stretcher.
Clara did not hesitate.
She threw open her office door and sprinted down the stairs, her white coat billowing behind her.
"Get him into Trauma Bay One immediately!" she shouted to her nursing staff.
The men carrying the patient were heavily tattooed, their faces pale with a terror that seasoned criminals rarely showed.
Clara snapped on a pair of black nitrile gloves and approached the convulsing man.
His veins were bulging against his skin, glowing with an unnatural, sickly purple hue.
Dark, tar-like blood was weeping from his tear ducts and his nose.
"What did he take?" Clara demanded, shining a penlight into his unresponsive, dilated pupils.
"We don't know, Doc," one of the tattooed men stammered, backing away from the terrifying sight.
"It’s some new product hitting the streets today, they call it Red Snow."
Clara’s heart dropped into her stomach as she realized the implications of a new, highly toxic synthetic drug in their territory.
"Push two milligrams of Ativan and get a crash cart, his heart is going to give out!" Clara ordered.
Before the nurse could administer the sedative, the monitor shrieked a flatline warning.
Clara grabbed the defibrillator paddles, charging them to two hundred joules.
She shocked him once, then twice, but the dark poison had already completely destroyed his nervous system.
The man was dead before his body even stopped twitching.
The doors to the trauma bay slid open, and the temperature in the room instantly dropped.
Victor Kaine stepped inside, flanked by Silas and four heavily armed guards.
Victor’s tailored charcoal suit looked entirely out of place in the sterile, bloody room, but his commanding presence demanded absolute silence.
He walked past the nurses, his dark eyes locking onto the corpse on the table.
Victor reached out and wiped a drop of the black blood from the dead man's face with his gloved thumb.
"The Volkov Bratva," Victor said, his voice a low, lethal rumble that made the hair on Clara's arms stand up.
"They are pushing their poison into my city."
Clara looked at her fiancé, seeing the ruthless syndicate boss stripping away the gentle man he was behind closed doors.
"This toxin kills in minutes, Victor," Clara warned him, pulling off her bloody gloves.
"If this spreads through the Narrows, the streets will be filled with bodies by midnight."
Victor turned to Silas, his jaw clenched so tightly it looked carved from granite.
"Lock down the ports, burn every warehouse the Russians own, and bring me whoever is distributing this filth."
He turned back to Clara, pulling her out of the trauma bay and into the quiet hallway.
He cupped her face in his large, warm hands, his thumb brushing over her cheekbone.
"You are to stay inside this building, surrounded by my men, until I end this."
Clara looked up into his fierce eyes, refusing to back down.
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"Just promise me you will come back in one piece, Victor Kaine."
"I always come back to you, my ghost," Victor whispered, pressing a hard, desperate kiss to her lips before walking out to start a war.
