Chapter 2 - The Price of a Lie
The sound of the flatline shattered Vincent's icy composure. He pushed Brooke's hand off his arm with a force that
made her stumble backward. Before his bodyguards could even react, Vincent threw his shoulder against the heavy
swinging doors of the emergency room, bursting inside.
"Sir! You cannot be in here!" a nurse yelled, attempting to block his path.
Vincent didn't even look at her. He gripped her shoulder gently but firmly and moved her aside like a leaf in the
wind. His eyes were locked on Emma's lifeless face. "Save her," he growled, his voice vibrating with a terrifying
mix of desperation and authority. "Save both of them, or I will tear this building down to the foundation."
"Clear!" the doctor shouted, ignoring the intruder as he pressed the paddles to Emma's chest. Her body jolted off
the mattress, then fell back limp. The flatline continued its agonizing drone.
"Again! Charge to two hundred! Clear!"
Vincent stood at the foot of the bed, his knuckles white as he gripped the metal rail. He was a man who ruled
Chicago's underworld with an iron fist, a man who had never begged for anything in his life. But right now, looking
at the pale, bruised girl who had once held his heart, he prayed to a God he hadn't believed in since childhood.
Please. Not her. Take me, but let her live.
With the second shock, the monitor beeped. Then another beep. A slow, erratic, but surviving rhythm returned.
"We have a pulse!" the doctor cried. "But she's still bleeding internally. We have to get the baby out right now.
Push fifty of propofol, we're doing a bedside crash C-section!"
Vincent was pushed back by a wave of incoming surgical staff. He stood in the corner of the room, a dark
shadow amidst the sterile scrubs. He watched in a daze as they cut open the gown, prepped her stomach, and
worked with frantic, bloody efficiency. Within minutes, a small, sharp cry echoed in the room.
It was a boy. Tiny, covered in blood and white vernix, but breathing.
A nurse quickly wrapped the infant in a blanket and rushed him to the warming station. Vincent took a step
forward, his eyes drawn to the child. The baby had a tuft of dark hair, just like his.
"The mother is still hemorrhaging!" the doctor warned. "We need to get her to the OR immediately to stop the
uterine bleeding. Go, go, go!"
They began wheeling Emma's gurney out of the room. Vincent walked alongside them, his hand reaching down
to grasp her cold, limp fingers. They felt like ice. He squeezed them, desperately trying to transfer his own warmth
into her veins. "I'm here, Emma," he muttered, his voice cracking. "I'm here."
As they wheeled her into the hallway, Brooke was waiting. Her face was pale, her perfect composure slipping.
She looked at the blood on Vincent's hands, then at the baby being wheeled out in an incubator behind them.
"Vincent," Brooke said, her voice shaking with a mixture of anger and fear. "What are you doing? This is
insane. She betrayed you. She's a federal informant! Have you forgotten what she did?"
Vincent stopped in the middle of the hallway. He turned to Brooke, his eyes dead and dark. "If she is an
informant, Brooke, then why was she living in a run-down, unheated apartment in the South Side? Why was she
working twelve-hour shifts at a diner just to pay for prenatal care? If she had federal money, why is she dying here
as a charity case?"
Brooke took a step back, her tongue suddenly catching in her throat. "I... I don't know, Vincent. Maybe the feds
cut her off. You can't trust her."
Vincent stared at his new lover, and for the first time, the blinders fell from his eyes. The "evidence" Brooke had
brought him eight months ago had been too clean, too perfect. He had been too proud, too hurt by the mere thought
of Emma betraying him to look deeper.
"Go home, Brooke," Vincent said, his voice dangerously quiet.
"Vincent, please—"
"I said, go home," he repeated, the threat in his voice vibrating through the corridor. "And pray to whatever god
you believe in that Emma survives this night. Because if she dies, I am going to start looking into exactly how
those bank transfer documents ended up in your hands."
Brooke's face drained of color. Without another word, she turned and hurried down the hallway, her high heels
May you like
clicking rapidly against the linoleum. Vincent watched her go, a cold, heavy dread settling deep in his chest. He had
made a terrible mistake, and the price of his blindness was currently being paid in blood inside an operating room.
