Chapter 10 - THE GHOST OF SAINT JUDE'S
The warehouse air turned into liquid ice.
Sloan’s hand crushed the phone until the glass screen spider-webbed under his grip.
Across the iron table, Vincent let out a low, dry chuckle.
The old man didn't look worried anymore.
He leaned forward, exhaling a thick plume of gray cigar smoke.
“You always were predictable, Sloan,” Vincent purred. “You think I would come to a summit without securing the real prize?”
Sloan didn't roar.
He didn't scream.
The rage inside him bypassed noise completely, settling into a terrifying, lethal stillness.
“Where is she, Vincent?”
“She’s at Saint Jude’s Hospital,” Vincent smiled, tapping his cigar against an iron ashtray. “In the abandoned third-floor oncology ward where she supposedly committed her little medical crime three years ago.”
Vincent checked his gold pocket watch.
“My private contractors are prepping her for an emergency cesarean section right now.”
The council elders gasped.
Even Don Vance looked sickened.
“You’re cutting open a pregnant woman?” Vance stammered.
“I'm securing the bloodline,” Vincent replied without a shred of remorse. “The baby will be raised by the council. The runaway nurse will finally have her fatal accident. And Sloan... Sloan will sign over the port authority charters if he ever wants to hold his son.”
Vincent looked at Sloan, his eyes gloating.
“You have twenty minutes before the surgeon makes the first incision, Nephew. You’ll never make it across town in this traffic.”
Sloan didn't look at his watch.
He looked at Bishop.
“Bishop.”
“Sir?”
“Execute every man sitting at this table who voted with my uncle.”
Vincent’s eyes widened in sudden, absolute terror.
“Wait! Sloan! You can't—the council rules—”
The twelve Marchetti enforcers racked the slides of their shotguns simultaneously.
CLACK-CLACK.
Sloan turned his back on the table and walked toward the exit.
Behind him, the warehouse exploded with gunfire and screams.
Sloan didn't look back once.
He leaped into the passenger seat of the lead Suburban.
The driver floored the accelerator.
The heavy tires smoked against the wet asphalt, rocketing into the rainy night.
“Call the harbor aviation unit,” Sloan ordered through his radio. “I want the Black Hawk helicopter over Saint Jude’s in four minutes.”
“Sir, the FAA has a flight restriction over the medical district—”
“I don't give a damn about the FAA!” Sloan roared, the beast finally breaking its chains. “Land that bird on the roof of Saint Jude’s or crash it through the windows!”
Across the city, in the dark, mothballed ward of Saint Jude’s Hospital, Delphine lay strapped to a rusted operating gurney.
Her wrists and ankles were bound with heavy nylon restraints.
The abandoned room smelled of mildew, dust, and ozone.
A single surgical light flickered above her, humming like an angry hornet.
Beside her stood two men in black tactical gear and a nervous man in surgical scrubs holding a tray of scalpels.
“Her blood pressure is through the roof,” the surgeon stammered, his hands shaking. “If I cut into her under this stress without proper anesthesia, she could bleed out before the child is delivered.”
A contractor slapped the surgeon across the face.
“Vincent said we only need the kid breathing. Get the scalpel ready.”
Del thrash against the nylon straps.
Pain shot through her lower back.
A sharp, rhythmic cramping gripped her abdomen like an iron vice.
Her water had broken twenty minutes ago in the back of the van.
The labor was on her.
Fast.
Violent.
Unstoppable.
“Please,” Del begged, looking into the surgeon's eyes. “He’s only thirty-one weeks. His lungs aren't fully developed. He needs surfactant medication or he will suffocate!”
The surgeon hesitated, looking down at his tools.
The contractor raised his suppressed pistol and pressed it against the doctor's temple.
“Cut her, or I put a bullet through your ear.”
The surgeon picked up the scalpel.
His blade hovered an inch above Del’s exposed, trembling belly.
Del closed her eyes, tears streaming into her hair.
“Sloan,” she whispered into the dark.
Then—
May you like
The industrial glass windows behind the operating table shattered into a million glittering shards.
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