Chapter 2 - The Ghost of David Carter
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The sterile smell of the trauma unit faded beneath the sudden, suffocating weight in the room.
Victor stared at me as if the dead had just crawled out of Lake Michigan.
His knuckles turned white against the silver handle of his cane.
"David Carter," Victor whispered, his voice trembling in a way I had never heard in twenty years.
"That nurse is his daughter," I said, every word tearing like glass against my fresh stitches.
"Richard, if the Moretti family finds out David Carter has a surviving daughter in this city, she won't last forty-eight hours."
Twelve years ago, Detective David Carter was the only honest badge left in the entire Chicago Police Department.
He was a man who refused my father’s envelopes and spat on Salvatore Moretti’s threats.
When the Morettis ambushed my father and me outside an alley off Michigan Avenue, David Carter threw himself into the line of fire.
I was twenty-two years old, arrogant, bleeding out on the wet asphalt, and completely helpless.
David Carter took three bullets meant for my chest.
Before he died, he looked into my eyes and told me to run.
The Morettis framed him the very next morning, planting dirty cash in his locker and branding him a crooked cop to ruin his legacy.
His family was disgraced, evicted, and run out of their neighborhood before the dirt on his grave had even settled.
I had searched for his family for a decade, but they had vanished into thin air under assumed names.
Now, his daughter had just stood over my bleeding body, barking orders at my soldiers without a tremor in her hands.
"She has his eyes," I murmured, staring at the closed door of the trauma room.
"She has his courage, Richard, which makes her entirely too dangerous for this world," Victor countered grimly.
"The shooters who hit my convoy tonight weren't random street thugs."
Victor adjusted his glasses, his expression hardening into stone.
"It was Julian Moretti's crew."
"They know I survived the ambush, and they know an ambulance brought me to Chicago Memorial."
"Which means they will send spotters to clean up whatever their rifles missed," Victor finished.
Pain flared across my ribs as I forced myself to swing my legs over the edge of the hospital bed.
"Boss, you can't stand," one of my guards stepped forward, terror in his voice.
I gave him a look that pinned him to the floorboards.
"Get my clothes."
"Richard, Nurse Carter just stitched your abdominal wall," Victor protested, stepping into my path.
"If Julian Moretti finds out that David Carter's daughter saved Richard Callahan's life, she will be dead before sunrise."
I reached down, ripping the IV line directly from the back of my hand.
A drop of crimson welled on my skin, but I didn't feel it.
"Put four men on her floor in plain clothes."
"And what about you?" Victor asked.
"I am going to make sure she gets to her car alive."
I pulled a clean black shirt over my bandages, gritting my teeth against the searing fire in my side.
Emily Carter thought she was just doing her job tonight.
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She had no idea that touching my blood had just pulled her straight into hell.
And whether she liked it or not, I was the only devil capable of keeping her alive.
