Chapter 2 - The Morning AfterBy 6:30 AM, the cleaning shift was officially over, but I couldn't bring myself to leave the Meridian Tower locker room. I sat on the wooden bench, staring down at my hands. The skin over my knuckles was bruised and tender from the force of thirty continuous chest compressions delivered at a rate of one hundred per minute.
My phone buzzed on the bench beside me. It was a text message from my landlord, Mr. Henderson: Rent was due yesterday, Bailey. If I don't see three hundred dollars by tomorrow morning, I’m locking the door.
I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples, a dull headache throbbing behind my eyes. Three hundred dollars. To the executives on the forty-fifth floor, three hundred dollars was the cost of a mediocre bottle of scotch or a lunch at a steakhouse. To me, it was the difference between keeping a roof over my head and sleeping in my battered Honda Civic.
Since my mother passed away eighteen months ago, leaving behind a mountain of medical debt that the collection agencies kept trying to squeeze out of my nonexistent bank account, every single day had been an exercise in survival. I had dropped out of nursing school with twenty-four credits left to my degree because the tuition checks bounced and the hospital bills demanded payment in human flesh. I traded scrubs for a mop, trading a future of helping people for a present of emptying wastebaskets.
And now, fate had decided to drop the city’s most notorious underworld figure right onto my cleaning shift.
When I finally punched out and stepped out into the freezing Chicago morning, the wind bit straight through my thin jacket. Gray slush lined the curbs, and commuters hurried past me toward the subway entrances, their faces buried in woolen scarves.
Instead of heading straight to my cramped, radiator-clanking studio apartment in Pilsen, I found myself walking three blocks out of my way toward Northwestern Memorial Hospital. I didn't know why I was going. Logic told me to run as far away from Lucas Bennett as humanly possible. If he was half as dangerous as Howard claimed, getting mixed up in his medical emergency was a fast ticket to a shallow grave in the Indiana dunes.
Yet, as I pushed through the heavy glass doors of the emergency entrance, my feet moved on autopilot.
The lobby was a chaotic blur of nurses, stressed family members, and tired residents grabbing paper cups of coffee. I walked up to the front information desk, keeping my head down, pulling my hood lower over my forehead.
“Excuse me,” I said to the clerk, a middle-aged woman with tired eyes and a name tag reading Doris. “I’m looking for a patient admitted early this morning. Lucas Bennett.”
Doris didn't look up from her computer screen immediately. She clicked a mouse a few times before sighing. “Family only, honey. Are you immediate family?”
“No,” I said, hesitating. “I’m... an acquaintance. I was there when he collapsed. I just wanted to make sure he stabilized.”
Doris finally looked up, her gaze scanning my tired face, the dark circles under my eyes, and the faint smudge of floor wax on my sleeve. A flicker of recognition—or perhaps just professional pity—crossed her features.
“You’re the one who called it in, aren't you?” Doris lowered her voice, leaning over the counter. “The night cleaner from Meridian Tower. Word travels fast when a billionaire drops dead in a corporate elevator. He’s up in the private cardiac wing on the twelfth floor, suite 1204. But good luck getting past the Cerberus at the door.”
“Cerberus?” I echoed.
“Private security,” Doris grimaced. “Men in black suits who look like they eat raw nails for breakfast. The entire floor is locked down. The Chicago police tried to send detectives up an hour ago, and those guards turned them around at the elevator lobby. If you have any sense, girl, you’ll turn around and go home.”
“Thanks, Doris,” I murmured.
Instead of turning around, I walked toward the elevators. I didn't take the main bank; instead, I slipped down the service corridor near the laundry intake, navigating the hospital’s subterranean labyrinth the same way I navigated the Meridian Tower. If you know how a building breathes, you know where its blind spots are.
Ten minutes later, I found myself standing in the stairwell directly adjacent to the twelfth-floor private wing. Through the wire-reinforced glass of the fire door, I could see two men standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the hallway. They wore identical charcoal suits, had earpieces wired into their collars, and carried themselves with the unmistakable stiffness of former military contractors or syndicate enforcers.
I pushed the door open just a crack, letting the cool air hiss into the hallway.
“He’s awake,” one of the guards muttered, his voice low and gravelly. “The doctor said he’s already demanding a phone. Boss doesn't waste time.”
“Did they find out who was on the elevator with him?” the second guard asked.
“Not yet. Howard Mills at Meridian gave a vague description—said it was a young woman in a cleaning uniform. Security footage from the car was wiped right around 1:45 AM. Someone hacked the local server from the inside.”
My breath hitched. Wiped the server? I hadn't touched the building’s security cameras. Who would have wiped the footage?
Before I could puzzle it out, a heavy hand clamped down on the back of my jacket, yanking me backward into the stairwell with terrifying speed.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing here?” a low, smooth voice hissed directly into my ear.
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I spun around, ready to throw an elbow, but my wrist was caught in a grip of iron. Standing before me was a man I hadn't seen on the twelfth-floor map—tall, with sharp aristocratic features, eyes the color of winter ice, and a tailored suit that screamed expensive pedigree. He looked like an attorney or a high-ranking lieutenant, not a common thug.
“I asked you a question,” the man repeated, his grip tightening just enough to make me wince. “Who are you, and why are you lurking outside Lucas Bennett’s room?”
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