Chapter 2 - The House of Pain
St. Jude’s Medical Center was a sprawling brick fortress of healing on the northern edge of Richmond, but to Blake, it felt like an occupied zone. The rain had turned into a steady, miserable drizzle that streaked the tall glass windows of the lobby as Blake, Jax, Miller, and Reyes walked through the sliding automatic doors.
The security guards at the front desk looked up, took one look at Blake’s rigid, unblinking march, and wisely pretended to be engrossed in their computer monitors. They had likely seen county cruisers parked outside the emergency entrance for the last twelve hours. Word traveled fast in a town where the police department answered to a billionaire.
Blake didn’t stop at the reception desk. He knew the layout of this hospital by heart; he and Emily had walked these halls three years ago when her mother was admitted.
Third floor, orthopedic ward, room 314.
As they stepped out of the elevator, the antiseptic smell of bleach and medicine hit Blake’s nostrils. The hallway was unnaturally quiet. Too quiet. No nurses at the station. No rolling carts. Just the rhythmic beep-beep of an automated infusion pump coming from down the hall.
"Perimeter secure," Miller murmured, hanging back near the stairwell door to watch the rear. Reyes drifted toward the nurses' station, his fingers brushing the edge of the counter to check for active security feeds.
Blake stopped outside room 314.
The small wire-reinforced window in the door was fogged from the inside. Through the lower corner, he could see the edge of a white hospital bed and the pale blue contour of a weighted traction rig holding his wife's shattered legs in place.
His hand trembled as he gripped the brushed-steel handle. He pushed it open.
Emily was awake.
She looked smaller than he remembered, swallowed up by the oversized hospital gown, her dark hair tangled against the coarse white pillowcase. Her face was pale, bruised around the cheekbone where she had hit the floor during the home invasion, and her eyes—those bright, fierce eyes that had sustained him through three combat tours—were hollowed out by pain and terror.
When the door clicked, she flinched so violently that the traction rig rattled.
"Emily," Blake breathed, his voice breaking for the first time.
Her head whipped toward the door. When she saw him standing there in his travel jacket, rain-soaked and dust-streaked, the tears broke free, silent and devastating.
"Blake..." she choked out, her voice a dry rasp. "They... they said you couldn't get back in time. They said the police..."
Blake crossed the room in two strides, falling to his knees beside the bed. He didn't dare touch her legs, knowing the steel pins and ceramic plates holding her bones together beneath the sheets, but he grabbed her hand, pressing her knuckles against his trembling lips.
"I'm here," he whispered fiercely, pressing his forehead against her wrist. "I'm right here, Em. Nobody is ever touching you again. I swear to God Almighty."
"You shouldn't have come," she sobbed, squeezing his hand with surprising strength. "Cameron... Cameron was here an hour ago. He brought flowers. Just to show me he could get past the guards. He said... he said if you made a sound, the next thing they break won't be my legs. It'll be your career, your life, everything."
Blake’s eyes went dark. A heavy, suffocating silence descended on the room until Jax stepped through the door, closing it softly behind him.
"We have a visitor," Jax said, his tone entirely devoid of panic, carrying the calm professionalism of a sniper identifying a target at four hundred yards.
Blake stood up slowly, wiping a trace of moisture from his cheek with the back of his hand. "Who?"
"Two guys in plainclothes just flashed county badges at the nurses' station," Jax said, pulling a suppressed tactical pistol from his waistband and sliding the slide back to check the chamber with a quiet, oily click. "They’re asking for Captain Dean. Says they have an administrative warrant for questioning regarding 'interfering with municipal law enforcement'."
Blake looked back down at Emily. She was shaking, her eyes wide with fresh panic.
"Don't let them take you," she whispered. "That's how they get you alone."
Blake leaned down, pressing a warm, lingering kiss to her forehead. "They aren't taking anyone, baby. Rest."
May you like
He turned to Jax, Miller, and Reyes. The four men exchanged a single, wordless glance—the same look they had shared before breaching hostile compounds in the dark mountains of the Hindu Kush.
"Let's go greet the local authorities," Blake said.
