Chapter 3: White Walls & Strange Faces
Chapter 3: White Walls & Strange Faces
Mallory moved like a shadow through the corridors of Saint Gabriel’s Medical Center, the overnight shift humming around her. Midnight meant less noise, but not less chaos. The emergency department always found new ways to break her.
Her feet ached. Her eyes burned. But she was used to that.
She’d just finished charting vitals for a patient in 3B — a teenager with a bad reaction to street drugs — when the intercom crackled:
> “Dr. Lane, consult needed in Room 6.”
She sighed. “On it.”
Room 6 was nothing dramatic. Chest pains, late thirties, high blood pressure. Standard triage. But when she stepped in, something felt… off.
The patient sat calmly on the edge of the bed, impeccably dressed for a patient. Expensive boots. Wool coat folded neatly on the chair beside him. He looked too sharp for this place — like he’d stepped out of a boardroom and landed in the ER as a joke.
And he was smiling.
“You’re not what I expected,” he said smoothly, watching her from under thick lashes.
Mallory didn’t flinch. “Chest pain?”
“Sharp, left side. Since this morning.”
“History of cardiac issues?”
“Nope.”
“Alcohol?”
“Only when I'm heartbroken.”
She shot him a look. He smirked. “Sorry. I’m annoying when I’m in pain.”
She pulled out her stethoscope and approached without reacting. “Shirt off.”
“Not even a first name basis first? Brutal.”
She looked up, deadpan. “Unless you’re actively dying, I’d like to keep this professional.”
That shut him up — briefly.
His heart was fine. Strong. Rhythmic. Almost… annoyingly perfect.
She stepped back. “Vitals look normal. We’ll run bloodwork and an ECG to rule out anything major.”
“You’re fast,” he said. “And terrifying. I like it.”
“I’m not here to be liked.”
Another grin. Then he said it casually, like it meant nothing:
“My friend would like you.”
That made her pause.
She turned slowly. “Sorry?”
He shrugged. “Nothing. Just… you remind me of someone he once described.”
She narrowed her eyes. “And who’s your friend?”
He smiled but didn’t answer. Instead, he leaned back on the bed, hands behind his head.
“I’ll just be here, letting you save my life.”
She finished her notes, handed them off to a nurse, and left the room without another word.
But as she walked back into the fluorescent-lit hallway, something gnawed at her.
Not the patient. Not the flirtation.
The way he’d said it.
“You remind me of someone he once described.”
She shook it off.
Coincidence.
Just another strange man in a world full of them.
-----
The office was a fortress — glass walls, black marble floors, silence sharp enough to wound. The city glowed below, a sea of power and noise he no longer heard.
At the center of it all: him.
Blazer off, sleeves rolled, a whiskey glass untouched beside a laptop spitting numbers and bloodless forecasts. The deal with Shanghai had stalled. The board was jittery. The market was watching.
He didn’t flinch.
He made markets flinch.
Across from him, a junior partner fumbled with a tablet, voice taut with nerves.
“Sir — the proposed terms for the capital merger… they're demanding equity.”
He looked up, slow and precise. “Then they don’t understand who they’re dealing with.”
“They think we’re over-leveraged—”
“We’re not.”
“The press—”
“I own half their press.”
Silence.
Then — a soft chime. His personal phone lit up. A message from his mother.
Mother: Dinner tomorrow. 6pm. Be decent. No excuses.
He closed his eyes. Inhaled once.
Not this again.
His mother had a spreadsheet of eligible women, updated quarterly.
And he? He had no interest.
He didn’t want a woman who wore his name like armor. He didn’t want another merger.
He wanted silence. Space. Control.
The phone buzzed again.
Mother: You’ll behave.
He smirked. Then tossed the phone into the drawer and slammed it shut.
Another message would come. Then a call. Then threats about lineage and legacy. The usual.
He turned back to the financial model glowing on his screen.
Numbers made sense. Mothers did not.