Damian’s Beacon Hill house looked nothing like I expected.
I had imagined black marble.
Security cameras.
Cold modern furniture.
Instead, I walked into a century-old brownstone with dark wood floors, tall bookshelves, a worn leather sofa, and framed photographs along the staircase.
It looked lived in.
Human.
That surprised me.
The photograph halfway up the stairs surprised me more.
Damian, perhaps seventeen years old.
Beside him stood a beautiful dark-haired woman with tired eyes and an enormous smile.
His mother, I assumed.
Damian followed my gaze.
“Her name was Elena.”
“You look like her.”
“I’ve been told.”
“What happened?”
He went quiet.
I almost apologized.
Then he said, “She died because a hospital turned her away.”
I looked at him.
“She didn’t have insurance?”
“She had insurance.”
“Then why?”
“Because somebody had followed her there.”
My stomach dropped.
“My father had enemies. The hospital administrator decided treating her created too much risk.”
“What was wrong with her?”
“Internal bleeding after a car accident.”
I closed my eyes briefly.
“She might have survived.”
“Yes.”
Now I understood Crosswell.
Damian looked toward the photograph.
“When I had enough money, I bought a failing surgical center and rebuilt it.”
“So nobody could refuse your people.”
“So nobody would ever be told they were too dangerous to save.”
For the first time, the criminal world surrounding Damian became complicated instead of simple.
I didn’t excuse what he was.
But I understood one part of why he had built what he had built.
The next morning, I insisted on returning to Crosswell.
Damian said no.
I said I needed to work.
He said somebody had shot at my car.
I reminded him it had been his car.
He did not appreciate the distinction.
Eventually, we compromised.
I went with four security guards.
Damian stayed close.
The clinic felt different after the gala.
Every hallway seemed to contain secrets.
I went directly to the medication inventory archives.
Six months earlier, supplies had been removed under my ID.
But pharmacy records didn’t simply disappear.
I compared the medication timestamps with employee access logs.
At 1:12 a.m., “I” had supposedly removed morphine.
At 1:13, my actual badge opened Operating Room Three on a different floor.
“It can’t be both,” I said.
Damian stood behind me.
“Meaning?”
“Someone cloned my access credentials electronically.”
“Who can do that?”
“IT.”
We requested the staff roster from that night.
One technician had resigned two days later.
Marcus Reed.
Damian immediately called Gabriel.
“Find him.”
They found Marcus Reed before noon.
Dead.
He had supposedly overdosed four months earlier.
That made everything worse.
Dead men couldn’t answer questions.
But dead men sometimes left evidence.
Gabriel located Marcus’s storage unit in Somerville.
Damian wanted me nowhere near it.
I won that argument by reminding him the files might contain medical abbreviations only I understood.
The storage unit smelled like dust and cardboard.
Inside were ordinary things.
Furniture.
Winter clothes.
An old television.
Then I found a Crosswell supply box beneath a tarp.
“Damian.”
Inside were copied patient labels.
Not dozens.
Hundreds.
Names.
Dates.
Procedures.
Many belonged to men connected to Damian.
Some were coded.
Several had handwritten symbols.
A serpent.
And a crown.
“The Mercer mark,” I whispered.
Damian’s expression became terrifyingly calm.
Marcus had been selling information.
Or being forced to provide it.
Then I found a page bearing the initials D.C.
Damian took it.
The page listed blood type.
Previous surgeries.
Known medications.
A food sensitivity.
And his resting heart rhythm.
Someone had built a medical profile of Damian Cross.
“They knew what drug to use,” I said.
“Yes.”
“The champagne wasn’t random. They selected something likely to trigger a cardiac event that could be blamed on your history.”
“I don’t have heart disease.”
“No. But you had myocarditis when you were twenty-two.”
His head snapped toward me.
“How do you know that?”
“It’s in your Crosswell record.”
“No one outside my doctors knows.”
“Someone does now.”
He looked at the paper again.
I saw anger.
But beneath it was something rarer.
Fear.
Not fear of dying.
Fear of betrayal.
“Who had access to your complete medical record?”
“Walsh.”
“Anyone else?”
He hesitated.
“Dominic.”
I knew the name.
Dominic Rusk was Damian’s second-in-command.
They had grown up together.
I had seen Dominic at Crosswell perhaps fifteen times.
He was charming where Damian was guarded.
Always smiling.
Always polite.
He once brought coffee for every nurse after three Cross security men arrived injured from a warehouse fight.
“Why would Dominic have medical access?”
“He is listed as my emergency representative.”
“And you trust him?”
“With my life.”
The way Damian said it made me uneasy.
Sometimes the most dangerous sentence in the world was I trust him.
Back at Crosswell, Dr. Walsh had disappeared.
His office was empty.
His phone was off.
His car remained in the garage.
A security guard found blood in a stairwell.
Not much.
Enough.
Gabriel locked down the building.
I checked Walsh’s office.
His desk had been searched.
Drawers open.
Documents scattered.
“Somebody got here before us,” I said.
Damian nodded.
Then I noticed the wastebasket.
A torn envelope.
I put on gloves.
Inside was half a shipping receipt.
The supplier name meant nothing.
The product did.
Cardioxyl-B.
The same cardiac compound discovered on the champagne glass.
My pulse increased.
“This came through Crosswell.”
Damian stared at it.
“How?”
“Research inventory.”
“We don’t research drugs.”
“Apparently somebody does.”
We searched the basement pharmacy.
The controlled-substance log showed six vials of Cardioxyl-B ordered three months earlier.
Purpose: cardiovascular trial.
Authorizing physician: Adrian Walsh.
Five vials remained.
One was missing.
I looked at Damian.
“There’s your poison.”
The door slammed behind us.
Lights went out.
I heard Damian curse.
Then footsteps.
Running.
He pushed me behind a metal cabinet.
A gunshot cracked through the darkness.
Glass shattered.
Damian fired back.
I flattened against the wall.
Someone moved near the doorway.
Another shot.
Then silence.
Emergency lights flickered red.
Damian was beside me immediately.
“Claire?”
“I’m fine.”
He touched my face.
My shoulders.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
His hand came away wet.
He looked at his fingers.
Blood.
“Damian, that’s yours.”
A bullet had grazed his upper arm.
“It’s nothing.”
“That phrase should be illegal.”
I dragged him toward a supply counter.
“You’ve been shot.”
“Grazed.”
“Sit.”
“Claire—”
“Sit down.”
To my surprise, Boston’s feared mafia boss obeyed.
I cleaned the wound.
The bullet had carved through skin but missed muscle.
While I worked, Damian watched me.
“What?”
“You’re not scared.”
“I’m furious.”
“Different emotion.”
“Somebody shot at me in a pharmacy.”
“They shot at me.”
“I was standing beside you.”
“That seems to happen often lately.”
“That is entirely your fault.”
His smile appeared suddenly.
Small.
Real.
I froze.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because you’re stitching my arm while insulting me.”
“It appears to be the only way you learn.”
He laughed quietly.
I tied the final stitch.
Then his expression changed.
He lifted one hand and brushed a loose strand of hair away from my face.
The gesture was so gentle that I forgot how to breathe.
“Claire.”
“Yes?”
“You should leave Boston.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“I can put you somewhere safe. Chicago. Toronto. Anywhere.”
“No.”
“People are shooting at you because of me.”
“They’re shooting because I saw something.”
“Because I brought you into that ballroom.”
“And if I hadn’t gone, you might be dead.”
His jaw tightened.
“That is precisely the problem.”
“What problem?”
“I’m getting used to you being near me.”
The words hung between us.
My heartbeat became painfully loud.
Before I could answer, Gabriel entered.
His face stopped whatever might have happened next.
“We found Walsh.”
“Alive?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“South Boston.”
Gabriel looked at Damian.
“He says he’ll talk.”
“Good.”
“There’s a condition.”
Damian’s eyes narrowed.
“What?”
“He’ll only speak to Claire.”
An hour later, I sat across from Adrian Walsh in a locked safe house.
His face was bruised.
His hands shook.
“I didn’t know they were going to kill you,” he whispered.
“Who?”
“Mercer’s people.”
“Why did you admit their man?”
“They threatened my daughter.”
I leaned forward.
“Who gave them access?”
“Marcus.”
“He’s dead.”
“I know.”
“Who ordered the records erased?”
Walsh began crying.
Not loudly.
Quietly.
“The orders didn’t come from Mercer.”
I felt cold.
“Then who?”
He looked toward the mirrored glass where Damian stood unseen.
“Someone inside Cross’s organization.”
“Name.”
Walsh swallowed.
“I never met him directly.”
“What do you know?”
“He knew Damian’s schedules. Shipping routes. Security rotations.”
“That could be several people.”
Walsh shook his head.
“No. There was one detail.”
“What?”
“Whenever Mercer wanted something, the instructions came through somebody who signed messages with a letter.”
My fingers tightened.
“Which letter?”
Walsh closed his eyes.
“D.”
Dominic.
I didn’t say it.
I didn’t need to.
Behind the glass, I knew Damian was thinking exactly the same thing.
And for the first time since this began, I was afraid not of his enemies.
I was afraid of what the truth was going to do to him.