Chapter 4 - Shadows Along the Glass Corridor
Before Matilda’s finger could make contact with the hard plastic of the emergency switch, a sound cut through the silence of the corridor outside—a sound that turned the blood in her veins to ice.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
The sharp, heavy strike of Italian leather soles against polished concrete echoed down the hallway. It was an unmistakable cadence: deliberate, measured, and devoid of the hurried panic that usually belonged to doctors or nurses. It was the stride of a man who owned the ground he walked upon, a man who possessed no doubt about what lay at the end of the hall. Accompanying those heavy steps was the softer, shuffling gait of rubber-soled medical shoes, hurried and uneven, trying desperately to keep pace.
Matilda froze, her hand suspended in mid-air, inches from the emergency button. She pulled her arm back as though the red plastic had become red-hot, tucking her hands tightly against the bib of her white apron.
Through the tall, frosted-glass door that separated the examination room from the dark corridor, two silhouettes materialized from the gloom. The first was towering and broad-shouldered, draped in the sharp, unyielding silhouette of an expensive tailored overcoat. The second figure was stooped, smaller, wearing the loose white outline of a physician’s laboratory coat.
As they reached the door, the shadows stopped. The thick glass muffled their voices, but in the dead silence of the medical wing, the words slipped through the gaps in the frame with chilling clarity.
"I need you to sign the release before the transport arrives," the physician’s voice wavered, thin and brittle with exhaustion. It was the lead surgeon, Dr. Vance, his silver beard and weathered face partially visible through the translucent pane. "The tox screen wasn't completed, Carmine. If the coroner from the district asks questions about the paralytic levels, or why his core temperature hasn't dropped to ambient levels—"
A sharp, violent motion interrupted him. The taller silhouette—Carmine—stepped directly into the doctor’s personal space. Carmine was forty-two, Gabriel’s underboss, a man who had spent years lurking in the boss's shadow with an insatiable hunger for the family throne. His dark beard was trimmed with razor precision, his features sharp and hawk-like under the corridor’s emergency lights.
"There won't be another examination," Carmine said. His voice was a low, rasping blade that carried no room for negotiation. "You signed the declaration at three in the morning. His heart stopped. He bled out from three hollow points in his torso. That is the story that gets delivered to the Commission, and that is the story you will repeat until your tongue rots."
"Carmine, please," the doctor whispered, his hands trembling as he held a clipboard against his chest. "If there is any residual neurotoxin in the tissue, an exhumation will show—"
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"There will be no exhumation," Carmine cut in, his tone dropping into a deadly whisper that made Matilda’s heart stop entirely. "He goes into the incinerator at dawn. Now open the damn door and let's get him into the bag before the morning shift wakes up."
Matilda retreated a step, pressing her back against the side of the steel examination table. Her breath came in silent, agonizing gasps. Through the frosted glass, she saw the second item the doctor was carrying: a long, heavy bundle of black reinforced vinyl, fitted with industrial zippers and nylon handles. A black body bag.
