Chapter 53
LUCIAN
I’m standing in front of Scar and Mason trying to tell them a story I don’t have the full ending to.
“Start from the top,” Scar says.
His voice is simmering - coiled steel, irritation, and barely contained fury. I know exactly why. The last thing he wants on his plate is another operation cutting up human beings like inventory. Another reminder of how dark this city really is.
I draw in a slow breath, steadying myself because the weight of his stare is heavy enough to crack ribs.
The room is unnaturally quiet. It feels like the walls themselves are leaning in, waiting.
Like everything in here is holding still for the first crack of a rockslide, bracing for the avalanche my words are about to trigger.
“The network is tighter than I thought,” I say. “These guys are smarter. They learned lessons from those that came before them, and they really know their stuff.”
Mason’s jaw works. “So they’re not amateurs.”
I pin Mason with my eyes. “They rarely - if ever - make a mistake. Their selection process consists of people who won’t cause ripples. Those that won’t be missed. The elderly, addicts, children who are wards of the state. Generally, people whose absence will be blamed on fate or bad luck.”
“That’s a given,” Scar interrupts, and I plough on. It’s hard to give them anything when you literally have nothing. And not for lack of trying.
“More than that,” I say. “They’ve perfected the art of turning murder into medical misfortune. Post-op complications, sudden sepsis - clean, believable causes. The paperwork matches. The charts look right. Everything is tidy enough that no one asks more than a polite question.”
I lean forward, voice dropping. “But a few months back, there were cases that didn’t sit right. They sparked concern, real suspicion… and then vanished into the system. Buried. Smothered. Left to die the kind of slow, silent death only bureaucracy can pull off.”
Scar rubs the bridge of his nose, slow. “Examples.”
I force myself to the memory. “Eight months ago, a seven-year-old boy goes in for a routine appendectomy. Kid’s healthy, jokes with his mum.
Doctor ticks boxes, nurse signs off. Post-op, the boy crashes - cardiac arrest. They code him for forty minutes, then pronounce him dead. Family’s told it was an infection.”
Mason speaks, low. “Parents complained?”
“Of course they complained.” I jab a finger at the table. “They asked for records. They wanted to see the meds chart. All they wanted was a reason why their son was dead, when he was due to be discharged in a matter of hours.”
“What happened?”
“Grief happened. The family was too tired, too distraught. Too poor to fight it.”
Mason leans forward. “And the hospital?”
“They signed off the incident as routine. No inquiry.”
“Are there more?”
“Unfortunately, at St. Elizabeth’s, it’s becoming a little too common for routine surgeries to go sideways,” I say. “There was even a malpractice case last year. You might remember it—the parents went public for a while, gave a few interviews, then disappeared from the spotlight overnight.”
Mason frowns. “Right. I don’t usually follow the news. We’ve already got enough chaos in real life.”
Scar snorts, grabs a pen off the table, and flicks it at Mason’s head. “Yeah, no kidding. You are the news half the time.”
Mason dodges it with a lazy grin. “Only when I let you write the headlines.”
Scar turns to me. “What was the malpractice suit about?”
“A twenty-two-year-old man that went in for a corrective knee surgery. Never woke up. Post-mortem said embolism. Family says he was fine the day before. After their very public outcry, the family just sort of dropped everything.”
Scar’s eyes are ice. “You think they settled with the parents?”
“Could be.” I feel the room tilt. “Or it could be something else. The family was tight lipped when I contacted them. I don’t think they’ll be talking to anyone anytime soon.”
“Sounds like a job for Kanyan,” Mason mutters, and honestly, I’m not inclined to argue. The man’s reputation is practically folklore at this point.
They call him the mafia’s truth serum—not because he tortures people, but because he rarely has to.
He can sit across from the most volatile, tight-lipped bastard on earth and somehow pull the truth out of them with nothing more than a look and a few quiet questions.
No threats. No theatrics. Just that unnerving calm of his, the kind that makes people confess things they didn’t even want to admit to themselves.
“Do we know where the organs go?” Scar asks finally, voice quieter than before. He doesn’t need the answer; he already feels its weight.
I shake my head. “Not yet. But I’m tracing the trail. They’ve buried their tracks deep - clean, and damn near airtight. It’s clear they’ve spent a long time perfecting how to stay invisible.”
Mason stares at me long enough that it feels like he’s mapping my bones. “Someone at that hospital must know something. Organs aren’t cutting themselves out of the dead.”
“People are scared to talk,” I admit. “Hospitals are slippery. There are legal shells and lawyers who can positively bury us in bureaucracy if we don’t tread carefully.” I swallow. “And they move quick when someone gets noisy.”
Scar’s hand hits the table. “Then we move quicker.”
My phone buzzes on the table - one of those small, electric jolts that means something new has happened somewhere else. I don’t look, but the sound reverberates in my skull like a distant alarm.
“You good?” Mason asks.
I’m not. My hands are cold. The meeting was supposed to be thirty minutes to get the Gattis up to speed, make a plan, then leave. Instead we’ve been circling the wound for over an hour, patching and probing, and every minute I spend here is another minute I’m away from Nadia.
Scar looks up. “We may need more eyes in that hospital to speed this up. Every day that passes without closure, we’re risking another human life.” He pauses, eyes finding mine.
“Something’s bound to give soon,” Mason says. “It’s only a matter of time.
The thing about the Gatti machine is that it only works because every piece believes in the same wound. They move for each other. Bleed for each other. Fight like hell for the people who can’t fight back.
And I believe in it too - maybe more than I’d like to admit.
As I step toward the door, the truth settles heavy and sharp beneath my ribs: someone can walk into a hospital for a simple surgery and end up on a morgue slab.
No alarms. No outrage. No headlines. Not until it happens to the right child…
the right husband… the right face someone remembers laughing in the sunlight.
That’s what sticks with me.
How grief can be both tiny and deafening.
How easy it is for the world to shrug and look away.
It’s the part that keeps me moving - knowing just how much hurt lives in the shadows, and how damn much of it goes unanswered.
The meeting with Scar Gatti and Mason Ironside drags on longer than it should, and by the time I glance at my watch, I already know that I’ve missed walking Nadia home. The thought grates at me, low and sharp.
I fire off a quick text, then instead of circling back toward the hospital, I turn the car toward her building.
The message stays unread, unanswered. It’s a small thing, but it hits wrong, and I can’t help imagining her walking out of the hospital looking for me the way she has every night these past couple of weeks, only to find an empty pavement instead.
Nadia is a creature of habit. She always has been. Steady in a world that won’t stop shifting. Reliable. Grounded. Someone who commits fully or not at all. When she does something, she’s all in.
It’s one of the first things I ever noticed about her - back in that little coffee shop she used to haunt.
She’d come in at the same time every day, sit on the same stool, order the same drink, stay for the same number of minutes before rushing off to whatever came next.
There was something soothing about it, something quiet and intentional. Routine. Her anchor in the chaos.
And right now, the silence on the other end of the line feels like that routine just… broke.
Her building is quiet when I pull up. There’s no light in her windows. I knock once, then again, but there’s nothing.
I wait a few beats, listening for the shuffle of feet or the soft click of her locks turning. Still nothing.
I call her, expecting to hear the phone on the other side of the door, but there’s only silence before the call goes to voicemail.
A bad feeling starts to gather in my gut, heavy and low.
I check my phone again - no messages, no missed calls. I shoot her another text:
You home?
The message hangs there, “delivered,” but the dots never come.
I lower myself onto the concrete steps outside her building.
The metal railing is cold under my palm.
The night air smells like rain and exhaustion.
A few people pass by, giving me quick, curious glances - the guy sitting outside a rundown apartment complex like he’s lost something. Which I guess I have.
I give it ten minutes. Then twenty. There’s still no sign of her.
I call her again. The phone rings five times before it hits voicemail. Her voice — bright, tired, kind — fills the silence:
“Hey, it’s Nadia. Leave a message after the beep.”
I don’t. I hang up instead, jaw tight, dragging a hand down my face as the silence stretches in my ear.
Nadia’s not the type to miss a call.
I tell myself she’s not ignoring me - she wouldn’t shut me out just because I didn’t show up to walk her home after her shift. She’s not petty like that. She’s steady. Thoughtful. The kind of woman who forgives before she fights.
But still… that empty dial tone feels too heavy.
Too final.
And something in my gut starts to twist.
Something’s wrong.
I stand and head for the car. By the time I’m behind the wheel, my pulse is a dull roar in my ears. The drive back to the hospital is a blur - the echo of my heartbeat ticking like a countdown.
When I walk into the ER, the usual chaos hits me - nurses shouting, phones ringing, stretchers squeaking down the hall. But one thing’s missing: her.
I head straight for the nurses’ station. The woman behind the counter - looks up as I approach.
“Good evening. You looking for someone?”
“Dr. Nadia Reed,” I say. “I was supposed to meet her more than an hour ago but she never showed up. I was wondering…”
Her brows pinch together. “Dr. Reed? She didn’t clock in today.”
My stomach drops. “Didn’t—what? She called in sick?”
Martha shakes her head. “No call. No text. Just a no-show. Which isn’t like her.”
No. It’s not.
Nadia’s the type who apologizes for being two minutes late because the crosswalk light took too long. She doesn’t just disappear.
I turn away from the counter, trying to think - forcing myself to replay the last time I saw her.
This morning. When I left her place, she was in her scrubs, hair tied up, coffee in hand.
Completely normal. She was smiling, teasing me about stealing her last clean pair of socks as I headed out her front door.
There was nothing - nothing - to suggest she’d skip her shift.
That was this morning. And now fourteen hours have slipped by without a word. Fourteen hours.
My mind starts stitching the timeline together, fast and frantic.
What happened between her leaving her home and arriving at the hospital? Where did her routine break without anyone noticing? How does someone like Nadia - steady, reliable, predictable - just disappear?
My mind starts sprinting through possibilities - accident, family emergency, something with her apartment - but every logical thread hits a wall. The part of me that deals in logic is already losing to the panic clawing its way up my chest.
I start asking around. The orderlies, the interns, the guy who runs the night shift security desk. No one’s seen her. No one’s heard from her. It’s like she vanished into thin air.
By the time I make it back outside, the street’s slick with drizzle and the sky’s gone the color of ash. I lean against the car and drag in a breath that doesn’t quite make it to my lungs.
I just found her again. After years of thinking it was too late - that fate would never give us a second chance - we found each other again, proving that miracles really do happen.
And now she’s gone.
Inside, my mind is screaming - a thousand alarms all going off at once. I tell myself to think, to breathe, to not jump to conclusions. But the truth is simple and merciless:
I know what it feels like when something’s wrong.
And this - this feels exactly like that.