Chapter 5- NADIA
794 Words
The sterile, white halls of Chicago General Hospital should have felt like home. Usually, the scent of antiseptic and the hum of the MRI machines acted as a balm to my frayed nerves. But today, three days after my return from Milan, every shadow in the corner of my eye looked like a man in a tailored suit.
“Dr. Snow? The patient in 4B is prepped for the craniotomy,” my head nurse, Sarah, said, snapping her fingers in front of my face.
I blinked, pulling myself out of a trance. I was staring at the scrub sink, the water running over my hands until they were pruned. “Right. Thank you, Sarah. I’ll be right there.”
I dried my hands, but I couldn’t stop the slight tremor in my fingers. I was a world class neurosurgeon. I didn’t get the shakes. But then again, world class neurosurgeons didn’t usually perform illegal surgeries on wounded strangers in hotel suites.
The note was still in my purse, tucked into a hidden pocket.
I will find you when the time is right to settle the score.
The surgery went smoothly, a textbook tumor resection, but I felt like I was moving through water the entire time. When I finally exited the OR and headed toward my office, I closed the door behind me and sat down heavily in my chair, the silence of the room pressing against my ears.
I stared at the framed certificates on the wall. Degrees from Johns Hopkins. Fellowships in Zurich. Years of training and discipline. Paper shields I had built to protect myself from my own bloodline.
Then the private line on my desk rang.
It wasn’t a hospital extension. It was the phone I kept in the bottom drawer, the one I hadn’t touched in years. My heart didn’t just skip a beat. It plummeted. I answered without checking the ID. I already knew.
“Nadia,” the voice crackled. It was deep, weary, and carried the jagged edge of the Russian winters we had survived together.
“Mikhail,” I breathed, my grip tightening on the receiver. “I told you never to call me here. I told you I was dead to that life.”
“The life doesn’t care about your stories, little sister,” my brother replied. I could hear the faint clink of ice against glass, the sound of a man who hadn’t slept in days. “Father is failing. The Sokolovs are moving on our northern docks, and the Council is demanding a blood show. You’ve had your fun playing God in a white coat. Now it’s time to be a Snow.”
The air in my office felt thin. I had worked so hard to bury the name Nadia Orlova Snow. I had promised myself I would never look back at the red stained legacy of my family.
“I’m a surgeon, Mikhail. I save lives,” I said, my voice trembling with a mix of fury and a deep, ancient fear.
“And now you will save ours,” he snapped, his voice turning to ice. “A jet is waiting at O’Hare. Private hangar. Your duties begin at dawn, Nadia. You gave your word. A promise to the family is a contract that only ends at the grave. Will you be a woman of your word, or shall I send the boys to collect you?”
The line went dead.
I looked around my office. The expensive medical journals. The quiet life of a woman who thought she had escaped the shadows. It was all a beautiful lie.
I stood up, my legs feeling like lead. I had spent the last few days worried about the man I had treated in Milan and his promise to settle a score with me. I had been so focused on the threat from a stranger that I had forgotten the monsters who shared my DNA.
I reached into my desk and pulled out a small, locked mahogany box. I didn’t need a key. I remembered the code, the date our mother died. Inside wasn’t a stethoscope. It was a heavy signet ring and a passport with a name I hadn’t used in a decade.
I thought of the man in the Palazzo Parigi. I thought of his mismatched eyes and the way he had looked at me like I was something to be claimed.
Maybe it was fate. Maybe I had saved a devil in Milan because I was preparing to go home to Hell.
I grabbed my coat and walked out of the hospital without saying goodbye to anyone. I wasn’t just Dr. Snow anymore. I was a daughter of the Snow Syndicate, and I was going back to the fire.
- Writer
