Chapter 2 - Code Crimson
The emergency room doors burst open under Julian’s shoulder, the harsh fluorescent glare stripping away every illusion of dignity he possessed. His suit was ruined, drenched in Clara’s blood, his tailored cuffs soaked through.
"Trauma team! Now!" Julian roared, his voice echoing down the sterile corridor, shattering the calm of the late-night shift.
Nurses and an attending physician swarmed them instantly, transferring Clara onto a gurney with practiced, urgent precision. Julian tried to follow, clutching her limp, cold fingers, but two burly orderlies immediately stepped between them, hands raised.
"Sir, you have to wait outside. You cannot enter the surgical bay."
"That is my wife and my unborn child!" Julian snarled, lunging forward, but the heavy double doors swung shut in his face, their small wire-mesh windows offering only fragments of chaotic motion inside. He watched monitors flash to life, heard the shrill, rapid beeping of an erratic fetal heart rate, and smelled the sharp, chemical stench of antiseptic.
Behind him, the steady click of high heels approached. Julian didn't need to turn around to know who it was.
Evelyn stood at the end of the corridor, perfectly composed once more. She had wrapped herself in a dark cashmere coat, masking any sign of the struggle, though the slight tremble in her chin betrayed her mounting desperation.
"You should let them handle it, Julian," she said softly, her voice dripping with counterfeit maternal warmth. "She was always fragile. I warned you that her bloodline was sickly. Even if the doctors manage to stop the hemorrhage, an infant born under such trauma will only bring tragedy to this family."
Julian turned around very slowly. His eyes, normally sharp with corporate calculation, were black with an unbridled fury his mother had never witnessed before.
"What did you make her drink, Mother?" he asked, his tone dead and hollow.
Evelyn blinked, raising her chin. "A family tonic. An old recipe to stabilize the nerves. She simply panicked and fell."
Julian stepped closer until he stood towering over her, the smell of copper and terror radiating from him. "The toxicology lab will have the stomach contents within the hour. If there is even a trace of hemlock or abortifacient in her system, I will not call our family lawyers. I will call the district attorney."
Evelyn's lips tightened into a thin, bloodless slit. "You would destroy the Sterling empire for a stray girl from the gutter?"
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Julian leaned down until his mouth was inches from her ear. "I will burn this entire city to the ground if she does not wake up."
A sudden, flat tone echoed from the speaker above the surgical door: “Crash cart to OR Three, maternal arrest, crash cart now!”
