Chapter 7: The First Cut
1108 Words
The orchid was only the beginning.
By the following afternoon, the messages started.
Eva’s phone buzzed during a consult unknown number, no profile picture. She ignored it. It buzzed again. And again. On the fourth vibration she excused herself from the attending physician and stepped into the stairwell.
The first text was a photo: her, exiting the hospital two nights ago, hood up, walking fast through the rain. Timestamped. Clear enough to read the name tag still clipped to her bag.
The second: a close-up of her face from the same moment, eyes down, lips pressed tight. Someone had zoomed in until the exhaustion lines around her eyes looked like scars.
The third: a single line.
He can’t protect what he can’t see.
Her fingers went cold. She deleted the thread, blocked the number, then stared at the blank screen like it might bite her.
She didn’t tell Donald right away.
She told herself it was to keep him from doing something irreversible. She told herself she could handle it. She was wrong.
That evening she took the car Marco drove no more subway experiments. The black SUV felt like a cage now, safe but suffocating. When she stepped into the penthouse, Donald was on the phone again. He ended the call the second he saw her face.
“What happened?”
She dropped her bag. “Nothing I can’t manage.”
“Eva.”
She crossed to the window, arms wrapped around herself. The city sprawled below, indifferent. “Someone’s watching me. Photos. Texts. They know where I work. Where I walk.”
He crossed the room in three strides, took her phone from her hand without asking. She didn’t stop him. He scrolled through the deleted-thread recovery how he knew how to do that, she didn’t ask then his expression went flat. Dangerous flat.
“Vargas,” he said quietly.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
She turned to face him. “What do they want?”
“Me on my knees. Or you in a box. Preferably both.”
Her stomach lurched. “And your plan?”
“To remind them why no one’s ever succeeded.”
She studied him. The man who’d whispered “please” against her skin last week now looked carved from stone. “You’re going to kill someone.”
“If they touch you? Yes.”
She exhaled shakily. “I don’t want that on my conscience.”
“Then don’t look.”
“That’s not how it works.”
He stepped closer, voice dropping. “This is my world, Eva. You walked into it. You don’t get to pick which parts stain you.”
“I’m not asking to pick. I’m asking you not to drown in it.”
Silence.
Then he reached out, brushed a strand of hair from her face with surprising gentleness. “I won’t let them near you.”
“You can’t watch me every second.”
“I can try.”
She closed her eyes. “I have a twelve-hour shift tomorrow. I can’t disappear. People will notice.”
“Then Marco drives you. Two more men shadow you discreet. Hospital security gets a quiet upgrade. And you wear this.”
He pulled a slim black bracelet from his pocket. Matte finish, no clasp visible. She took it. Heavy. Inside the band, a tiny red light blinked once when she fastened it.
“Tracker?”
“Among other things.”
She stared at it. “You’re monitoring me.”
“I’m keeping you breathing.”
She wanted to argue. Wanted to throw it across the room. Instead she left it on.
That night they didn’t speak much.
They made love slowly, almost carefully like both of them were afraid of breaking something fragile that had only just formed. Afterward she lay with her head on his chest, listening to the steady thud of his heart while his fingers traced the line of her spine.
“I’m scared,” she admitted into the dark.
“I know.”
“Not just of them. Of what this is turning me into.”
He tightened his hold. “You’re still you. The rest is noise.”
“It doesn’t feel like noise.”
He kissed her temple. “Then we make it quieter.”
The next morning she woke to him already dressed black suit, tie knotted with military precision. He looked like a man going to war.
“Where are you going?”
“To have a conversation.”
“With Vargas?”
“With someone who speaks for him.”
She sat up, sheets pooling around her waist. “Don’t.”
“I have to.”
“Then take me with you.”
He laughed once short, humorless. “Absolutely not.”
“I’m not asking permission.”
“You’re not coming.”
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, stood naked and defiant. “If this is about me, I get a say.”
He crossed to her, cupped her face. “This is about keeping you alive long enough to keep arguing with me. Stay here. Marco’s outside. Armed. The building’s locked down. You’ll be safe.”
She searched his eyes. “And you?”
“I’m always safe.”
“Liar.”
He kissed her hard, possessive, goodbye wrapped in promise. Then he was gone.
The door clicked shut.
The penthouse felt suddenly too big, too quiet.
She dressed in silence, ate nothing, stared at her phone. No new messages. Yet.
At noon her shift started.
Marco drove her in silence. Two nondescript sedans trailed at a distance Donald’s shadows. Inside the hospital she felt their eyes like a second skin.
Rounds passed in a haze. She sutured a laceration, ordered scans, comforted a mother whose son wouldn’t wake up. All the while the bracelet on her wrist blinked its tiny red eye.
At 4:17 p.m., her phone buzzed again.
Unknown number.
One photo.
Donald.
On his knees in what looked like an abandoned warehouse. Blood on his lip. A gun to his temple.
The caption:
Come alone. Or he dies screaming your name.
Her vision tunneled.
She stared at the image until it blurred.
Then she slipped the phone into her pocket, told the charge nurse she had a family emergency, and walked out of the trauma bay.
Marco was waiting by the curb.
She didn’t get in the SUV.
She hailed a cab instead.
And gave the driver an address she’d never been to but one she’d seen in the background of that photo.
The warehouse district.
Rain started falling again.
She didn’t look back.
- Writer
