Chapter 1 - THE TOXIN IN THE VEINS
The emergency room doors did not simply open; they were practically torn off their tracks.
Four men in tailored midnight-blue suits strode into Lakeshore Metropolitan’s trauma wing. They didn't look like frantic wedding guests. They looked like an invading force. At their center was a woman in a dirtied ivory silk bridal gown, her train ruined by snow and slush, her face pale, and her eyes sharp with manic rage.
"Where is he?" she demanded, her voice echoing off the sterile tiles. "Where is Daniel?"
Nia didn't turn around. She was holding a syringe, adjusting the flow rate on Daniel’s central line as the digoxin-immune fab began to neutralize the digitalis-like cardiac glycoside tearing through his bloodstream.
"Keep her out of the bay," Nia said without breaking stride.
"I am his fiancée!" the woman snapped, shoving past a panicked triage nurse. Her name was Evelyn Vance, daughter of Julian Vance—the billionaire shipping magnate who held half of Chicago’s eastern port leases. "Who the hell are you to block me?"
Nia capped the syringe, turned smoothly, and looked Evelyn up and down. The silk dress was exquisite. The diamond necklace around Evelyn's neck was worth more than Nia’s five years of medical school loans.
"I am Dr. Bennett, the attending trauma physician," Nia said, her voice dropping into the terrifyingly calm frequency reserved for code-blue situations. "And right now, your fiancé is alive solely because I know the difference between a sudden heart attack and a lethal dose of Yellow Oleander poison."
Evelyn gasped, stepping back slightly. Behind her, one of the men in suits—a man with a jagged scar stretching from his temple to his earlobe—narrowed his eyes. His name was Victor, Daniel’s secondary head of security.
"Poison?" Evelyn whispered, her voice faltering. "That’s impossible. We were at the altar. We had just shared the ceremonial wine..."
"Which means someone gave him a wedding gift meant to put him in a coffin," Nia replied coldly. She turned back to the bedside monitor.
Daniel’s heart rate was creeping upward: 48... 52... 58 bpm.
The gray tinge on his skin was fading, replaced by the pale, familiar bronze she used to trace with her fingertips under candlelight four years ago.
Suddenly, Daniel’s chest rose with a violent gasp. His long fingers curled into the scratchy hospital sheet. His dark eyes snapped open—clouded with pain, disoriented, but instantly sharpening as they locked onto the face hovering directly above him.
"Nia..." he rasped.
It wasn't a question. It wasn't confusion. It was recognition, immediate and absolute.
Evelyn rushed to the side of the bed, reaching for his hand. "Daniel! Oh thank God! Daniel, I was so scared—"
Daniel flinched slightly, pulling his hand away from Evelyn’s manicured fingers. His eyes never left Nia.
"You..." Daniel breathed, his voice broken and rough. "You're... here."
"I work here, Daniel," Nia said, stepping back and slipping her hands into the pockets of her white lab coat, instantly throwing up a wall of professional detachment. "You were brought into my trauma bay. You were poisoned at your wedding. You're stable for now, but you need to be moved to the ICU."
"Nia, wait—" Daniel tried to sit up, but the cardiac monitors beeped wildly, and he winced, clutching his ribs where an old knife scar—the one she had stitched four years ago—twitched with tension.
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"Don't move," Nia ordered sternly. "You almost died ten minutes ago. Save your breath for your bride."
She turned on her heel and walked out of the bay, her head held high, though her hands were shaking so hard inside her pockets that she had to clench them into fists to hide the tremor.
