The residual heat from Collis’s grip still burned against Alivia’s waist like a brand. She forced her shaking legs to move, following him through the heavy wooden doors into Theodore Duncan’s luxury suite.
The room was massive, dimly lit, and smelled heavily of antiseptic and impending death. The rhythmic, mechanical hiss of the ventilator and the steady beep of the heart monitor were the only sounds.
Collis didn’t look at the bed. He walked straight to the floor-to-ceiling windows. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his tailored trousers and stared out at the Manhattan skyline. His broad back was rigid, radiating a dark, suffocating hostility that filled the entire room.
Alivia walked to the side of the hospital bed. She picked up the heavy medical chart hanging from the footboard. She flipped it open, forcing her eyes to focus on the printed lab results, desperate to anchor herself in the clinical reality of her job.
Suddenly, a harsh, buzzing vibration shattered the quiet of the room.
Collis pulled a sleek black phone from his pocket. He glanced at the screen. It was K.C. Pierce, his most trusted executive assistant and head of his private security detail.
Collis didn’t step out of the room. He didn’t care who was listening. He swiped the screen and brought the phone to his ear.
“Speak,” Collis commanded.
Alivia couldn’t hear the voice on the other end of the line. The heavy silence of the ICU swallowed the tinny sound of the earpiece. But she didn’t need to hear the words to know something catastrophic had just been delivered. She watched as Collis’s entire body went terrifyingly rigid. The absolute zero temperature in his eyes instantly shattered into a million jagged pieces. The veins in the hand gripping the phone bulged so violently she thought the sleek black device would crumble into dust under his grip.
“Impossible,” Collis growled into the receiver. His voice wasn’t just cold anymore; it was the suppressed, agonizing roar of a wounded beast bleeding out. “You’re telling me you found her necklace in the ashes? In the main surgical tent?”
Alivia’s fingers froze on the edge of the paper chart. Her breath snagged in her throat.
The ashes. The main surgical tent.
Collis’s entire body jerked. It was a violent, physical spasm, as if a sniper’s bullet had just torn through his spine.
He ripped the phone away from his ear and stared at it for a fraction of a second. Then he slammed it back against his face.
“That’s impossible,” Collis snarled. His voice was a low, terrifying growl.
“The local militia commanders confirmed it, sir,” K.C. pushed on, sounding terrified. “No other adult survivors were found in that tent during the airstrike five years ago. Aside from the infant you pulled out yourself—the boy, Julian—everyone else burned to death.”
The whites of Collis’s eyes instantly flooded with red. The veins in his neck bulged against his collar.
He let out a sound that wasn’t human. It was the roar of a wounded, cornered beast.
He spun around and kicked the heavy glass coffee table next to him. The force of the blow shattered the thick glass instantly. Shards exploded across the carpet.
Eleanor screamed and jumped back, covering her face. The two nurses in the corner gasped, shrinking back against the wall in sheer terror.
Alivia stood frozen by the bed. She bit down on her lower lip so hard that the skin split. The metallic taste of her own blood flooded her mouth.
Burned to death.
The memory of the fire, the screaming, the collapsing roof of the medical tent ripped through her mind. That was where she had lost everything. That was where her newborn baby had been swallowed by the flames before she even had the chance to hold him.
The agony in her chest was so sharp it felt like a physical blade twisting between her ribs.
“I don’t accept that!” Collis roared into the phone, his voice cracking with a violent, unhinged grief. “Turn that entire fucking desert upside down! Sift through every grain of sand! You find her alive, or you don’t come back!”
He pulled his arm back and hurled the phone with all his strength.
The device smashed against the bulletproof glass of the window. The screen shattered into a spiderweb of cracks, and the phone dropped to the floor in pieces.
Collis turned. His chest heaved violently. His bloodshot eyes locked onto Alivia.
He stared at her. He wasn’t seeing Dr. Clay. He was looking right through her, his fractured mind desperately searching for the ghost of the woman he had just been told was dead.
Alivia watched the monster who had ruined her life shed tears of rage over her death. It was the sickest, most twisted irony she had ever witnessed.
She swallowed the blood in her mouth. She tightened her grip on the metal clipboard until her knuckles ached.
“Mr. Duncan,” Alivia said. Her voice cracked like a whip across the room. It was loud, sharp, and entirely devoid of empathy. “This is an intensive care unit.”
Collis’s breathing hitched. He stared at her, stunned by her audacity.
“Your lack of emotional control is elevating the patient’s heart rate,” Alivia continued, pointing a stiff finger toward the door. “Get out of my ICU. Now.”
Collis’s grief instantly morphed into a blinding, murderous rage. He closed the distance between them in three massive strides. He stopped inches from her face, towering over her, his chest practically brushing hers.
“No one,” Collis hissed, his breath hot against her face, “speaks to me like that.”
Alivia tilted her chin up. She refused to step back. She looked directly into his bloodshot eyes.
“I am a doctor,” she said, her voice dropping to a lethal whisper. “I answer to the monitor keeping your grandfather alive. Not to your temper tantrums. Get. Out.”
The air between them crackled with a violent, combustible energy. Eleanor held her breath, terrified Collis was going to snap Alivia’s neck.
Collis stared at her for five agonizing seconds. His jaw clenched so tight the muscle ticked visibly.
He let out a harsh, mocking scoff. He spun on his heel, his coat flaring out behind him. He marched to the door, ripped it open, and slammed it shut behind him with enough force to rattle the walls.
The moment the latch clicked, Alivia’s knees gave out. She collapsed heavily into the plastic chair beside the bed, her fingernails digging violently into her thighs as she fought to keep from vomiting.
