“Your security team is currently zip-tied face-down on the concrete floor of the subterranean ambulance bay, Mr. Vance,” Caleb replied, his slate-gray eyes meeting Julian’s with a terrifying, unblinking gravity:
“Along with the private ambulance crew you hired from Camden to execute an unauthorized, non-consensual patient transfer to your private estate in Gladwyne at zero-three-hundred hours.”
Julian froze.
Every microscopic muscle in his aristocratic jaw calcified into gray stone:
*tick-tick-tick-tick.*
“You… you intercepted the transport?” Julian whispered, his hands coming up defensively: “She is my lawful wife! Under Pennsylvania health proxy statutes, I have the absolute statutory right to direct her postoperative rehabilitation!”
“You surrendered your statutory rights the second your silver paring knife severed her inferior epigastric artery, Julian,” I spoke from the pillows.
The words did not sound like they came from a woman whose abdomen was held together by forty-eight stainless-steel staples.
They sounded like an artillery shell sliding into a greased breech.
***
