Chapter 3 - Welcome to the Family
The darkness that swallowed Room 412 wasn't the soft gray of a fading evening. It was absolute.
The backup generators failed to catch. The green glow of the monitors vanished, leaving behind a silence broken only by rain hammering the reinforced glass.
I froze, the photograph still in my hand. The ten thousand dollars spilled from my fingers onto the linoleum like dead leaves.
"Anthony?" I whispered.
No answer. Only shifting sheets, then a low, rasping breath carrying a lifetime of cold, calculated fury.
A hand grabbed my wrist — not the clumsy weakness of a man waking from a coma, but the precision of a predator seizing prey.
"Door," Anthony rasped. The broken glass in his voice was gone, replaced by something dark and metallic that cut straight through my paralysis.
"The lights—"
"Door. Now."
I stumbled backward and lunged for the entrance. My fingers found the cold brass handle just as the hallway outside dropped into pitch blackness. Distant shouts echoed from the nurses' station — panicked, confused.
Before I could pull the door open, the lock clicked. From the inside.
My heart slammed against my ribs. I spun around, back against the wood. In the dim moonlight through the storm-lashed windows, a silhouette detached itself from the shadows near the bathroom door.
Not Dominic. Not Vincent.
A woman in a dark trench coat dripping with rain, wet hair clinging to a face sharp enough to have been carved from marble. In her right hand, a silenced pistol pointed lazily at the floor.
She didn't look like a sixteen-year-old hiding from the mob. She looked like an executioner.
"Sienna," I breathed.
She didn't look at me. Her dark, hollow eyes — an exact replica of the man in the bed — stayed fixed on the figure rising slowly from the sheets.
Anthony Rossi sat upright.
The man who'd supposedly been paralyzed and rotting for three months swung his legs over the bed's edge. Every movement slow, deliberate, painful — but there was no mistaking the raw authority radiating off him now. He didn't look like a king returning to his throne. He looked like something that had clawed its way out of hell.
"You're late," Anthony said.
Sienna lowered the gun a fraction, a cold, humorless smile at the corner of her mouth. "Traffic was hell, Father. And someone had to clear the lobby."
She turned to me finally, scanning me head to toe, eyes lingering on the photograph still in my paralyzed fingers. "You must be Grace. The nurse who reads bedtime stories to ghosts."
"I — I should call security," I stammered, though my legs felt like water.
Anthony stood completely, swaying for half a second, gripping the IV pole to steady himself before his posture straightened into something unyielding. He picked the photograph up off the floor, reading the handwriting on the back, eyes narrowing.
"Security belongs to Vincent," he said softly, turning his dark gaze to the locked door. "For now."
He stepped forward, harsh light catching the scar at his temple. The fragile illusion of the helpless patient shattered on the cold floor of Room 412.
"Pick up the money, Grace," he said without turning.
"What?"
"You're going to need it. Because starting tonight, you aren't leaving this hospital as a nurse."
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Sienna walked past me, sliding a heavy keycard into her pocket with a sharp click, and drifted toward the window overlooking the Chicago skyline.
"Welcome to the family," she whispered.
