Chapter 3 - The Hospital AmbushBefore my system could analyze his statement, my smartphone vibrated aggressively. I looked down at the display. A high-resolution image filled the glass screen.
Cole was standing directly inside a medical facility lobby. Positioned behind his shoulder were three high-priced litigation attorneys, smiling for cameras, waiting. Beneath the graphic was a text transmission:
Cole: “My team has just verified the triplet data. You are not clearing that medical facility with my children. The legal custody block is already initialized.”
My hands initialized such a violent tremor that the device nearly slipped onto the floorboards. Ronan leaned into my coordinate, his eyes scanning the text lines.
His expression turned to absolute, freezing ice. Not a loud, emotional display—a quiet, clinical coldness that caused the interior cabin of the SUV to feel suddenly smaller.
“Which profile transmitted that threat?”
I swallowed down the adrenaline. “My husband.”
“Ex-husband?” he corrected, his gaze dropping to the divorce folder sticking out of my canvas bag.
“As of tonight,” I confirmed.
Ronan gave a single, sharp nod of command to the driver. “Northstar Medical Center. Access the private executive entrance.”
The tactical SUV surged through the downpour like the city streets had opened an exclusive corridor for its clearance. I forced myself to maintain my breathing loops, trying desperately not to imagine Cole breaching a hospital room with a team of lawyers to seize control of my body while I lay incapacitated on a gurney. Ronan sat perfectly still beside my frame, alert and completely composed.
Calibrate your focus, Brooke. Right now, your solitary operational mandate is to breathe.”
May you like
My motor functions froze. “I never delivered my name to your system.”
His jaw tightened, his profile etched against the tinted glass. “No,” he said quietly. “You didn’t.”
