Chapter 5: Cracks in the Armor
1305 Words
The next morning arrived colder than the last.
Eva woke to the sound of rain drumming against the glass again, a relentless tattoo that matched the dull ache behind her eyes. Donald was already gone from the bed. She found him in the living room, shirtless, staring out at the gray city with a phone pressed to his ear. His voice was low, clipped, every word edged like broken glass.
“Handle it. Quietly. No bodies in the river this time too many eyes.”
He ended the call without a goodbye, thumb swiping the screen dark. When he turned, his expression smoothed into something almost neutral, but she caught the flicker of tension at the corners of his mouth.
“Morning,” he said.
“Business?” She kept her tone light, wrapping one of his black robes around herself like armor.
“Always.”
She crossed to the kitchen island, poured coffee from the pot he’d already brewed. Black. Strong. The way she liked it now, apparently, because he’d noticed.
“You’re leaving soon,” he said. Not a question.
“Rounds start at seven. I need to swing by my place first scrubs, actual shoes, maybe a shower that doesn’t smell like your cologne.”
He moved behind her, close enough that she felt the heat radiating off his bare chest. His arms bracketed her against the counter again, but this time there was no playfulness in them.
“Stay tonight,” he said against her ear. “After your shift.”
She closed her eyes for a second. “Donald...”
“I’ll send a car. No questions. Just come back here.”
She turned in the cage of his arms. “You’re asking me to build a routine around your world. That’s not casual.”
“Nothing about this is casual.”
The honesty hit harder than any command could have.
She studied the fresh stitches along his ribs—her handiwork, neat and precise. Already the skin around them was pulling tight with healing. She pressed two fingers gently over the bandage.
“Tell me what that phone call was about.”
He hesitated. Rare.
“Someone tried to move against one of my warehouses last night. Small-time crew thinking they could skim product. My people handled it.”
“Handled it how?”
“Permanently.”
She exhaled slowly. “And you’re telling me this because…?”
“Because you asked for real. That’s real.”
She nodded once. “Okay.”
“Okay, you’ll come back tonight?”
“Okay, I heard you. I’m still deciding.”
He didn’t push. I just kissed her forehead softly, almost reverently, and stepped back.
“The car will be outside the hospital at nine. Black SUV. Plate ends in 7K4. The driver’s name is Marco. He’ll wait as long as it takes.”
She didn’t answer. Just finished her coffee, dressed in yesterday’s clothes, and let him walk her to the elevator.
The doors closed on his face, his gray eyes steady and unreadable.
The hospital swallowed her whole.
Twelve hours of controlled chaos: a multi-vehicle pileup on the expressway, two gunshot victims from a turf skirmish downtown, a construction worker who fell twelve stories and somehow survived long enough to reach her table. She lost one. Saved three. The math never balanced.
By the end of her shift, her hands shook not from fatigue, but from the memory of Donald’s voice saying “permanently.” She scrubbed out in the locker room, changed into street clothes, and stared at her reflection in the streaked mirror.
Dark circles. Faint mark on her neck half-hidden by her collar. Eyes too bright, too alive.
Marisol found her there.
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Looking like someone who’s about to jump off a cliff and thinks the fall might feel good.”
Eva laughed hollowly. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not. You’ve been floating through shifts like a ghost for three days. And that mark on your neck isn’t from a scarf burn.”
Eva tugged her collar higher. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s a hickey the size of a quarter. And you’re smiling about it.”
“I’m not smiling.”
“You are. Tiny, secret one. The kind that scares me.”
Eva turned to face her friend. “I met someone. It’s… intense. That’s all.”
“Intense like ‘he’s married with kids’ or intense like ‘he might get you killed’?”
Eva didn’t answer fast enough.
Marisol’s face changed. “Jesus, Eva. Who is he?”
“I can’t talk about it yet.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I know.”
Marisol stepped closer, voice dropping. “Listen to me. Whatever this is, it’s already changing you. You’re distracted. You almost dropped a clamp during that last thoracotomy. You never drop anything.”
Eva felt the words land like stones in her stomach.
“I’m handling it.”
“Are you?”
No.
But she couldn’t say that out loud.
Instead, she hugged Marisol quickly, fiercely. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Promise.”
She walked out of the hospital into the humid night.
The black SUV was exactly where he’d said it would be. Plate ending in 7K4. The driver, Marco, opened the rear door without a word. Mid-forties, salt-and-pepper hair, eyes that had seen too much.
“Dr. Moreau.”
She slid inside.
The partition was already up.
Twenty-eight minutes later the elevator opened onto the penthouse.
Donald was waiting in the living room, jacket off, sleeves rolled, glass of whiskey in hand. He didn’t speak when she stepped out just looked at her like he’d been holding his breath since she left.
She dropped her bag by the door.
Walked straight to him.
Took the glass from his fingers, set it aside, and kissed him like she was drowning and he was air.
He groaned into her mouth, hands sliding under her shirt, lifting her against him. She wrapped her legs around his waist as he carried her to the bedroom same wall, same bed, same desperate rhythm.
But this time there was something different.
Something breaking.
When they were spent, tangled in sheets, she pressed her face to his throat.
“I almost lost someone today,” she whispered. “Kid. Same age as the one I lost last week. Same kind of wound. I kept thinking if this was you on my table…”
He tightened his arms around her.
“I don’t end up on tables,” he said quietly. “I end up in morgues. Or not at all.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t talk like it’s inevitable.”
He was silent for a long time.
Then: “I’m trying to keep you out of it. But you keep coming back.”
“Because I can’t stop.”
He rolled them so he was above her, forearms braced beside her head.
“Then don’t stop.”
She searched his face. “What happens when someone finds out?”
“They try to use you against me.”
“And you?”
“I remove the threat.”
She swallowed. “Permanently?”
“If I have to.”
She closed her eyes.
“I hate that answer.”
“I know.”
“But I still want you.”
He kissed her again slow, aching.
“Then we figure it out. One night at a time.”
She nodded against his lips.
Outside, the city glittered like broken glass.
Inside, two people who should never have met clung to each other like the only safe thing left in the world.
They both knew it wouldn’t last.
But neither was ready to let go.
Not tonight.
- Writer
