A bullet tearing through my side wasn’t what shook me that night, and neither were the armed men hunting my family. What terrified me came later, when a woman touched me without fear, without disgust, without pity—and for the first time in years, I had no idea what to do with it. / Chapter 2 / 6

Chapter 2 - The St. Catherine’s ThresholdInside the back of the screaming ambulance, I continued issuing rapid-fire tactical orders through my encrypted earpiece until Tessa suddenly snatched the phone right out of my hand.

“You confiscating that?” I demanded, glaring at her.

“You’re making my heart monitor useless.”

“I have business.”

“You have blood loss.”

The ambulance hit a massive unseen pothole in the rain-slicked city streets, throwing her forward. Her hand landed flat against my chest again to steady herself. My breath hitched and stopped entirely before I could force my lungs to cooperate.

When the heavy rear doors of the ambulance finally swung open at St. Catherine’s emergency bay, six of my private security detail were already lined up, waiting like stone statues.

“No private army in my ER,” Tessa announced, stepping out into the cold drizzle. “Two men. No visible weapons.”

Malcolm stepped forward, his face hardening as he challenged her authority. But I raised a hand, interrupting him. “Two.”

Four of my men melted silently back into the rainy shadows without a word of protest.

As Tessa turned toward the automatic hospital doors, a strange, foreign impulse took hold of me. I heard myself say, “Ms. Ward.”

She stopped and looked back over her shoulder.

There was a question hovering on my lips—a question I had never imagined asking anyone in my entire life. “Why weren’t you afraid to touch me?”

Before she could form an answer, Malcolm’s encrypted phone buzzed sharply in his hand. He pulled it to his ear, listening intently for several long, agonizing seconds. I watched the color drain completely from his face, leaving his skin a sickly gray beneath the flickering fluorescent lights of the hospital entrance.

“Boss,” Malcolm whispered, his voice cracking.

“What?” I demanded, a cold dread coiling in my gut.

His eyes slowly moved from me toward the empty stretch of the emergency entrance.

“The shooter wasn’t aiming at you.”

My entire body went completely still, freezing worse than it had when the bullet pierced my side.