58. BLAKE
BLAKE
Eric Voss.
I forced myself to breathe, to maintain some semblance of professional calm, but images started flashing through my mind like a horror show I couldn’t stop.
Tessa’s nightmare-twisted sheets. That scar on her collarbone—jagged, angry—where the bottle had cut her as she fought. How she’d curl into herself whenever she talked about that night.
After I set the tablet down, my fingers curled into fists, uncurled, curled again. In my mind, I could see it all: his weight crushing her small frame into the mattress, her desperate gasps for air, the sound of glass shattering. Her blood pooling across her chest.
He laid hands on her. He hurt her. He violated her.
I’d sworn an oath. First, do no harm. But other oaths stirred in my blood.
The ones I’d made to Faith all those years ago, watching her bruises heal.
The silent promise I’d made to Tessa, holding her through her nightmare.
The darkness that lived in me, which had been waiting since that night with the baseball bat, recognized this moment for what it was.
A reckoning.
Inside, that familiar rage was building. The kind that had painted walls with blood. Only this time, it wasn’t for Faith.
It was for Tessa.
For every time she’d woken up terrified.
For every flinch.
For every tear she’d shed.
For every moment she’d felt powerless.
The oath I’d taken as a doctor seemed very far away now, replaced by something older, something primal. Something that remembered the weight of that baseball bat and knew exactly how to make someone suffer.
I stepped closer.
Voss lay there, blood seeping from a knife wound dangerously close to his femoral artery, along with a compound fracture to his shin, his face already glazed with pain and fear.
“You know who I am?” I snapped on a pair of fresh latex gloves, accentuating the snap.
The guy tried to muster his arrogant swagger as he cocked his head, clearly disturbed by the tone in my voice. “Should I?”
I made a show of ambling up to his bed, glancing down at his very injured shin. “If you did, I’d venture to guess you would’ve gone to a different ER.” Look at that slight shiver of fear mixing with confusion in his eyes. “I can’t remember the last time blood brought me this much joy.”
What a delicious sight, seeing his face go pale.
“My, what happened?” I visually examined the compound fracture, his shinbone escaping his leg cavity like it couldn’t stand being attached to his body. “Tell me.” I drew my hand closer to the wound, savoring the way he flinched. “Did your latest victim fight back?”
His eyes darted to the curtain, but no one could save him now.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Did she stab you first? Or kick your shin first?”
“I want a different doctor.”
“You were angry, weren’t you?” I leaned down, my face close to his.
“When your company was sold. When social media painted you as the predator you are.” When the Sinners and Saints destroyed every facet of his life while I called dibs on dismembering him.
“So, you found another vulnerable woman to take your anger out on. But this one?” My lips curled.
“This one was armed. Smart girl, going for the dick.” I glanced at the blade spearing from his flesh. “Shame she missed.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about?—”
My hand found his wound. Applied pressure. His words dissolved into a choked gasp.
“How many?” I asked quietly.
“What?”
I pressed harder. “How many women, Eric?”
“None! I never?—”
“Wrong answer.” I shifted my grip, feeling him bite back a scream. “Want to try again?”
Sweat beaded on his forehead. “You can’t do this. You’re a doctor!”
I met his eyes. “You picked the wrong woman to hurt.”
“Please,” he whimpered. “I didn’t mean to?—”
“How. Many?”
I pressed against the bone protruding out of his skin.
He groaned and then curled his lips at me. “I’ll tell them what you’re doing.”
“Your word against mine. Poetic, isn’t it? Her word wasn’t enough to put you away. And yours? A ruined man accusing a respectable doctor of hurting you? Who do you think they’ll believe?”
Besides, you won’t have the chance.
I moved my hand to the blade of the knife. “One wiggle, and this will puncture your femoral artery. You’ll bleed out before we can get a bag of blood to your room.”
Beads of sweat formed on his upper lip. “Fine. I … I lost count.”
“You lost count?” The words came out as ice.
“I … I don’t want to do this. It’s … I can’t help it, okay? But I never hurt them.”
He means stabbed them. He just used this knife to scare them, to force them into compliance. This was probably his knife. And this woman, bless her soul, turned it against him.
“So, it’s okay, is that it? Because you don’t kill them?”
“I never meant to?—”
“Death isn’t always about stopping a pulse.
Sometimes, it’s about shattering someone so completely that the person they were dies.
You didn’t just attack her body; you murdered the woman who used to walk home alone at night without checking over her shoulder.
The one who didn’t flinch at shadows or wake up screaming.
That’s the real death sentence you handed out.
And for that? Your pulse is a fair trade. ”
“You’re out of your mind!”
“Any other victim, I’d have handed you to authorities. But the day you laid a hand on Tessa?” My fingers found the knife’s handle. “That was the day your tombstone was engraved. The day I became your Grim Reaper.”
Recognition flooded his face. “You’re one of them. The ones who destroyed my company.”
“We buried you, Eric Voss.” I twisted the knife, just slightly. Just enough. “And my face will be the last one you see.”
I watched blood pool beneath him, dared him to scream. If he did, he’d just confessed to multiple sexual assaults, and with everything Axel’s PR company had dug up, he’d go to prison for the rest of his life.
“Consider yourself lucky,” I added as his terrified eyes began to fade. “If I’d found you outside these walls, your end would have been much messier.”
His breaths became shallow, desperate. I stood there, watching his face go pale, until his pulse faded to nothing.
Only then did I reach for the code blue button, when I was certain it was far too late.
“Time of death,” I murmured, “is when I say it is.”