Chapter 2 - The Woman With the Syringe
I hit the trauma-room door so hard my shoulder screamed.
The woman beside Ethan spun toward me.
She wore blue scrubs, a surgical mask, and an employee badge.
But her eyes were wrong.
Doctors had looked frightened that afternoon.
Nurses had looked worried.
This woman looked angry that I had interrupted her.
“Step away from him!”
She moved faster than I expected.
The syringe plunged toward Ethan’s IV port.
Then the door crashed against the wall behind me.
Adrian crossed the room in seconds.
He caught her wrist.
The woman twisted, dropped the syringe into her other hand, and tried again.
Adrian slammed her forearm against the bed rail.
The syringe fell.
She reached beneath her scrub top.
One of Adrian’s men yelled.
“Gun!”
I covered Ethan with my body.
A shot exploded.
Glass shattered.
The woman collapsed.
For several seconds, no one moved.
Then alarms screamed everywhere.
“Mom?”
Ethan’s voice was tiny beneath me.
I lifted my head.
“I’m here.”
“Why are you laying on me?”
I started laughing and crying at the same time.
Because he sounded irritated.
Because irritation meant he was alive.
Because my seven-year-old boy had no idea a woman had just tried to kill him.
Adrian stood several feet away.
His bodyguard had fired the shot.
The woman was alive but wounded in the shoulder. Hospital security dragged her away while medical staff rushed in.
Adrian picked up the syringe using a towel.
Dr. Chen entered seconds later.
“What happened?”
“She tried to inject this.”
Adrian held it out.
Dr. Chen stared.
“Don’t touch the needle.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
A technician sealed it inside an evidence container.
I stared at Adrian.
“You knew this could happen.”
“I knew it was possible.”
“You brought this here.”
His eyes narrowed.
“No.”
“People are shooting inside a hospital because of your family!”
“People poisoned Ethan before I knew he existed.”
That silenced me.
Adrian lowered his voice.
“Someone was already hunting him.”
Ethan looked between us.
“Why are you fighting?”
I turned immediately.
“We’re not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, sweetheart.”
“He looks mad.”
Adrian glanced at Ethan.
“I usually look like this.”
Ethan considered that.
Then asked, “Did it hurt when they took your blood?”
The question caught Adrian completely off guard.
“A little.”
“You gave it to me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Adrian looked at me.
I knew what he wanted.
He wanted permission.
I could not give it.
Not yet.
“Because you needed it,” he said.
Ethan yawned.
“That was nice.”
Adrian’s eyes shone.
He looked away before Ethan noticed.
Security moved us within ten minutes.
Not out of the hospital.
Deeper inside it.
San Gabriel Medical Center had a protected wing I had never known existed, built for political leaders, celebrities, and witnesses under federal protection.
Apparently, Adrian had paid for half of it.
Ethan was placed in a private room with reinforced glass.
I sat beside his bed.
Adrian stood across the room.
Neither of us spoke until Ethan fell asleep.
Then I said, “Tell me everything.”
Adrian loosened his tie.
“About?”
“Don’t insult me.”
He removed his jacket and placed it on a chair.
The gesture was so familiar it hurt.
Seven years earlier, after long nights, Adrian used to toss his jacket over my tiny apartment chair and claim his five-thousand-dollar suits looked better surrounded by my cheap furniture.
I pushed the memory away.
“Start with your father.”
Adrian leaned against the window.
“My father believed family was power.”
“I know.”
“No. You knew the public version.”
“I knew enough.”
“He tracked everyone connected to us. Employees. girlfriends. business partners. judges. police.”
“And me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I loved you.”
I laughed bitterly.
“That sounds romantic when you say it like that.”
“It isn’t.”
At least he understood.
“My father considered affection a vulnerability,” Adrian continued. “When he realized you mattered to me, he investigated you.”
“He discovered I was pregnant.”
“Apparently.”
“You still don’t believe me.”
“I believe you heard what you heard. I don’t believe I knew about it.”
I studied his face.
“Did you ever order anyone to follow me?”
“Yes.”
My stomach turned.
Adrian raised a hand.
“After you disappeared.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“I searched for you for eleven months.”
I stared.
“Eleven?”
“Every airport. Border crossing. hospital. shelter. morgue.”
He paused.
“Then the burned car appeared.”
“Why did you believe it?”
“Your necklace was found inside.”
My hand instinctively touched my throat.
I had left that necklace in Adrian’s Chicago penthouse the morning I fled.
A small silver moon.
He had given it to me on our first anniversary.
“I didn’t have it.”
“I know.”
He stared at the floor.
“Someone planted it.”
The room suddenly felt colder.
“Who?”
“That is what I intend to find out.”
“No.”
His gaze lifted.
“No?”
“You intend to keep Ethan safe. That’s all.”
A dangerous stillness settled over him.
“You think I can separate those things?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t.”
“You will.”
“Lena—”
“You lost seven years because somebody lied to you. I spent seven years terrified because somebody lied to me. Ethan is bleeding because somebody decided your bloodline made him a target.”
My voice cracked.
“So you are going to do something you probably haven’t done in your entire adult life.”
“What?”
“Choose your son over revenge.”
For a long moment, Adrian said nothing.
Then he nodded.
“You’re right.”
That surprised me enough that I almost looked behind myself.
“What?”
“I said you’re right.”
“You don’t say that.”
“I’ve had seven years to develop new skills.”
Despite everything, a laugh escaped me.
Adrian smiled faintly.
And for one dangerous second, I saw the man I had loved.
Then his phone rang.
The smile disappeared.
“Talk.”
I watched his expression harden.
“Alive?”
Pause.
“Keep her that way.”
He hung up.
“The woman?”
“Yes.”
“Who is she?”
“Her fingerprints identify her as Rachel Sloane.”
I shook my head.
“Should that mean something?”
“It means something to me.”
“Then explain.”
“Rachel worked for my father’s private security division.”
My stomach twisted.
“Seven years ago?”
“Yes.”
“Another person from then.”
“Yes.”
“Did she know me?”
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
“She was assigned to watch you.”
I felt the blood drain from my face.
“By Roman?”
“Yes.”
I moved away from Ethan’s bed because suddenly I needed air.
“She knew I was pregnant.”
“Probably.”
“Then why didn’t she kill me?”
“I don’t know.”
“What happened to her?”
“She supposedly died six years ago.”
I stared.
“What?”
“Car accident in Nevada.”
“Apparently your dead employees are very active.”
Adrian did not smile.
A knock came at the reinforced door.
One of his security men entered.
“Boss, federal agents are downstairs.”
“Which division?”
“Organized Crime and Counterterrorism.”
Adrian sighed.
“They’re early.”
I stared at him.
“You called the FBI?”
“No.”
“Then why are they here?”
The security man answered.
“Because the hospital’s restricted donor alert automatically notified several federal databases.”
I frowned.
“Why would Adrian’s blood alert the federal government?”
Neither man answered immediately.
I looked at Adrian.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
He rubbed his jaw.
“My medical profile is protected under a federal cooperation agreement.”
“You cooperate with the FBI?”
“Occasionally.”
I laughed.
“You’re a mafia boss with federal health insurance?”
One of the guards looked like he was trying not to smile.
Adrian ignored him.
“It’s complicated.”
“Everything about you is complicated.”
A voice came from the doorway.
“That may be the first accurate statement anyone has made about Adrian Blackwood today.”
A woman in a dark navy suit entered.
She was about fifty, with silver streaks through black hair and the expression of someone who had stopped being impressed by dangerous men decades ago.
She held up federal credentials.
“Special Agent Rebecca Shaw.”
Adrian looked displeased.
“Shaw.”
“Blackwood.”
They clearly knew each other.
Agent Shaw looked at Ethan.
Then at me.
“Mrs. Bennett, I’m sorry we’re meeting under these circumstances.”
“You know who I am?”
“I do now.”
That did not comfort me.
She placed a folder on the table.
“We identified the compound found in Ethan’s blood.”
“We already know it was HX-47,” I said.
“Yes.”
She looked at Adrian.
“But you may not know who manufactured this batch.”
Adrian’s expression sharpened.
Shaw opened the folder.
“The chemical signature matches a production run made seven years ago at Blackwood Pharmaceutical’s discontinued research facility outside Joliet, Illinois.”
Adrian went completely still.
“Impossible.”
“That facility was destroyed.”
“By fire,” Adrian said.
Agent Shaw nodded.
“Three weeks after Lena Bennett disappeared.”
My skin prickled.
Shaw slid a photograph across the table.
It showed a warehouse.
Half burned.
Police tape around the entrance.
“Investigators believed all HX-47 samples were destroyed.”
Adrian studied the image.
“They weren’t.”
“No.”
Shaw placed another photograph down.
A younger man stood beside Roman Blackwood at some event.
Dark hair.
Perfect suit.
A smile that did not reach his eyes.
I knew him.
Not well.
But I remembered him.
“Julian.”
Adrian’s head turned toward me.
“You remember him?”
“Your brother.”
“Half brother.”
Agent Shaw watched both of us.
“Julian Blackwood disappeared from federal surveillance five years ago.”
Adrian’s voice became cold.
“My brother has been living in Monaco.”
“No,” Shaw said.
“He wants you to believe he has.”
She placed a third photograph on the table.
This one was taken two weeks earlier.
Julian Blackwood stood outside a coffee shop in Pasadena.
My neighborhood.
My hands started shaking.
“No.”
Shaw continued.
“He has been in Southern California for at least three months.”
I looked at Ethan.
“Why?”
Agent Shaw’s answer came softly.
“We think he was looking for your son.”
Adrian stood.
His chair struck the wall.
“Where is Julian now?”
“We don’t know.”
“You came here without knowing?”
“We know something else.”
Shaw looked directly at me.
“Your son’s school was not Julian’s first stop.”
My stomach dropped.
“What does that mean?”
She pulled out another file.
Inside was a photograph of my apartment building.
Taken from across the street.
“Someone entered your home yesterday while you were at work.”
I could not breathe.
“What did they take?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Adrian’s voice turned lethal.
“Get a team there.”
Shaw shook her head.
“Already done.”
“Then?”
“They found no one.”
I stared at her.
“But they found this on Ethan’s bedroom wall.”
She showed me a photograph.
Three words had been written in red marker above his bed.
HE BELONGS HERE.
Adrian looked at the message.
Then at me.
For once, the most dangerous man in America looked afraid.
And I finally understood something worse than the truth I had hidden.
May you like
Someone had not tried to kill Ethan because he was Adrian Blackwood’s son.
Someone wanted him alive.
