Chapter 6 #3
"There has to be protection—" Sophie started, leaning forward with earnest concern that made my chest tight.
"I tried that." The words came out sharper than intended, driven by exhaustion and fear and the weight of six months running.
"The first person I trusted, another resident who promised to help, sold me out within a week—ten thousand dollars to report my location.
The second, a detective who said he'd investigate quietly, turned out to be on Brand's payroll for years.
Everyone has a price. Everyone can be bought or threatened or disappeared. "
I forced myself to meet Sophie's eyes, even though her genuine concern felt like sandpaper against raw wounds.
"Trust is just another word for vulnerability. And vulnerability, in my experience, gets a knife between your ribs."
Silence settled over the office like dust after an explosion.
Sophie looked stricken, one hand unconsciously protecting her pregnant belly as if my words might somehow harm the child within.
Maks had gone back to typing but slower, thoughtful.
Nikolai watched me with those dark eyes that calculated everything and revealed nothing.
But it was Kostya who broke the silence, his voice cutting through from his position by the door.
"You haven't eaten."
The non sequitur made me turn to look at him. He stood in exactly the same position as before, but something in his posture had shifted. Attention focused with an intensity that made my skin prickle.
"What?"
"You haven't eaten. Not since yesterday. Maybe longer. Your hands are shaking from hypoglycemia, not just stress. When did you last have an actual meal?"
The question was so unexpected, so precisely observed, that I couldn't formulate a lie fast enough. My mouth opened, closed, no words emerging because I genuinely couldn't remember.
"I'm fine," I managed finally.
"You're lying." He said it without judgment, just fact. "You're running on adrenaline and cortisol, and when those crash, you will too. Can't think strategically when your brain is eating itself for fuel."
Heat flooded my cheeks. Here I was trying to maintain some semblance of professional dignity, and he was cataloging my physical deterioration like I was a patient requiring intervention.
Which, maybe I was. But I didn't want to be.
Not here, not in front of these people who held my life in their manicured hands.
"Perhaps we should take a break," Sophie suggested gently, standing with the careful movements of late pregnancy. "This is a lot of information to process, and Dr. Cross has been through significant trauma in the last twenty-four hours."
"I don't need—" I started.
"Yes," Nikolai interrupted smoothly, "you do. We'll continue this after you've eaten and rested. Kostya will escort you back to your room. Food will be brought."
It wasn't a suggestion. Nothing in this room was a suggestion.
Everything was choreographed control, even Sophie's seemingly spontaneous kindness.
But my body was betraying me—the tremor in my hands worse now that Kostya had pointed it out, my stomach cramping with emptiness, vision starting to gray at the edges in that familiar way that preceded collapse.
I stood, medical bag clutched against my chest like always, and moved toward the door. Kostya stepped aside to let me pass, but I could feel his attention following me, cataloging every tell my body couldn't help but broadcast.
The guest room felt smaller with Kostya in it, like his presence consumed the oxygen and left me breathing something else entirely—ozone before lightning, maybe, or that thin air at altitude that made your heart work harder.
I curled into one of the armchairs by the gas fireplace, pulling my knees up, medical bag in my lap with my arms wrapped around it.
A barrier between me and the world. Between me and him.
The leather was soft, broken in, the kind of chair that invited you to sink into it and never leave.
Instead, I perched on the edge like a bird prepared for flight, even though we both knew there was nowhere to run.
Kostya didn't leave. Of course he didn't. He moved through the room with surprising quiet for someone his size, disappearing through a door I hadn't noticed before—small, discrete, probably leading to some service area.
When he returned, he carried a tray that he set on the side table next to me with deliberate care.
Sandwiches cut into small triangles like I was a child who needed manageable portions. Soup that steamed and smelled like chicken and herbs and comfort I didn't deserve. Ice water with actual ice, the condensation already beading on the glass. A cloth napkin, not paper, folded into precise angles.
"Eat," he said, lowering himself into the opposite chair.
The fireplace flickered between us, casting shadows that made his face harder to read than usual. Not that I could read him anyway. He was a closed book written in a language I'd never learned—violence and protection twisted together until you couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.
"I'm not hungry."
"Stop lying, devotchka." That flat certainty again, like he could see through skin to the hollow ache of my stomach. "Your body is consuming muscle mass for energy. Eventually, it'll start on organ tissue. You know this. You're a doctor."
"Was," I corrected automatically. "Was a doctor."
"Are." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and the movement brought him close enough that I could smell him—gun oil and expensive soap and something like blood.
Probably blood. "License or no license, you're still a doctor.
Still the woman who saved my life three nights ago with hands that didn't shake even once. "
They were shaking now, and we both could see it.
"You told us about Brand," he said, changing tactics with the smoothness of someone used to interrogation. "The what and the how. But you didn't tell us what he did to you specifically. What really happened."
"I told you enough."
"No." He shook his head once, deliberate. "You gave us data. Statistics. Facts scrubbed clean of feeling. But something personal happened. Something that broke you enough to run, to hide, to give up everything you worked for."
The silence stretched between us, broken only by the fake crackle of the gas fireplace. He waited with the patience of someone who'd learned that silence was often more effective than violence in extracting truth.
"I was a good surgeon," I said finally, staring at the untouched food because it was easier than looking at him.
"Not just good. Exceptional. Youngest chief resident in the hospital's history.
I had publications, research grants, a career trajectory that should have led to running my own department by thirty. "
My throat felt like I'd swallowed glass, but the words kept coming.
"When I found Maria—the girl missing her kidney—I did everything right.
Documented everything. Filed reports with the ethics board, the state medical board, hospital administration.
I had proof. Charts, surgical notes, even security footage showing Brand entering operating rooms he wasn't scheduled for. "
I picked up the water glass just to have something to do with my hands, took a sip that felt like swallowing around a stone.
"Brand called me into his office two days later. Sat me down like a concerned mentor. Told me he understood I was under stress, that residency was hard, that sometimes we saw patterns that weren't there. He offered me a leave of absence. Said it would be good for me to rest, get some perspective."
The laugh that escaped was hollow, bitter. "I refused. Told him I'd already sent everything to the state board, that an investigation was coming whether he liked it or not. That's when his expression changed. Like taking off a mask."
I set the glass down before I dropped it, my hands trembling worse now.
"He said, 'Dr. Cross, you're very young. You don't understand how the world really works. But you're about to learn.' Then he dismissed me. Just like that. Sent me back to my shift like nothing had happened."
"But something did happen," Kostya said quietly.
"The next day, security found opioids in my locker.
Three bottles of fentanyl, two of morphine, all with the lot numbers from missing inventory.
An anesthesiologist named Dr. Hendricks came forward, claimed he'd seen me taking them, that I'd been impaired during surgery.
Another nurse said she'd noticed erratic behavior, suspected drug use.
Within forty-eight hours, I was suspended pending investigation. "
My voice had gone clinical again, retreating into facts because they were safer than feelings.
"I tried to fight it. Demanded drug testing, which came back clean.
But Brand had an explanation for that too—said addicts were clever, knew how to time usage to avoid detection.
The investigation I'd started got buried under concerns about my 'mental state' and 'substance abuse issues.
' Every piece of evidence I'd gathered got reframed as the paranoid delusions of someone in the grip of addiction. "
"Maria," Kostya prompted when I fell silent.
"Maria." Her name tasted like failure. "She was scheduled for a 'corrective procedure' to address 'complications' from her appendectomy. I tried to warn her, but security had banned me from the hospital. I waited outside, tried to catch her going in, but she never came out."
My throat closed completely for a moment. I had to force the words through.
"Died on the table. Cardiac arrest during a routine procedure. Brand himself tried to save her, according to the official report. A tragedy. Unexpected. These things happen sometimes."
"He killed her."