Chapter 2 - The Stitched-Up Truth
Working through the night under the dim amber glow of bedside lamps, I carefully cut away the rotting dressing on Dominic’s chest, revealing a jagged, hastily repaired gunshot wound. The suture technique was sloppy, riddled with industrial-grade nylon thread that no licensed physician would ever use, designed intentionally to harbor bacteria rather than promote healing. When I pulled the first infected stitch, Dominic hissed through his teeth, grabbing my wrist with a hand like iron. "Careful," he warned, his voice a low gravel rasp. "I am careful," I shot back, locking eyes with him without flinching. "Whoever put these in you wanted an infection to finish the job." The revelation hung heavy in the air. Dominic’s expression shifted from pain to a cold, razor-sharp realization. He released my wrist slowly, recognizing that the betrayal hadn't come from an opposing cartel or an anonymous street ambush; it had come from inside his own inner circle. As I flushed the wound with sterile saline and administered heavy-spectrum antibiotics I had smuggled in my medical bag, Dominic began to talk, offering fragments of information about the warehouse meeting where he had taken the bullet. But as dawn approached and his fever finally broke, the real danger revealed itself not in the wound on his chest, but in the electronic security logs blinking quietly on his encrypted bedside tablet.
