Chapter 3 - The Shadow Over Mercy Lake
Six months passed.
Chicago moved from the harsh rains of spring into the sweltering, humid heat of late summer. For Grace, those six months were a blur of twelve-hour nursing shifts, endless fatigue, and the quiet, fierce joy of preparing for her baby’s arrival.
Her pregnancy began to show clearly by her fifth month. At Mercy Lake Children’s Hospital, her colleagues showered her with love. They threw her a small baby shower in the breakroom, gifting her handmade blankets, tiny yellow onesies, and diapers. When asked about the father, Grace simply smiled sadly and said he was not in the picture. The staff respected her privacy, knowing Grace was a woman of deep integrity who gave everything she had to the sick children in her care.
She moved out of her modest apartment to a smaller, cheaper studio closer to the hospital to save every penny. She cut her expenses to the bare bone, living on homemade soups and working overtime whenever her body permitted.
What Grace did not know was that she was never truly alone.
Every evening when she walked home from the hospital, a black SUV sat parked half a block away. Viktor’s men monitored her round the clock. Reports landed on Sebastian Rourke’s desk every single Monday morning.
“Subject worked 48 hours this week.” “Subject purchased a second-hand crib from a community center.” “Subject attended routine prenatal checkup at 14 weeks. No male visitors.” “Subject purchased generic prenatal vitamins.”
Sebastian read every report. He swore to himself that he was only monitoring her to ensure she wasn't conspiring with his rival syndicate, the Morettis, to frame him for a paternity scandal. But deep down, a dark, restless guilt was taking root in his chest.
He watched her from afar twice. Once, in late July, he sat in the darkened back seat of his sedan across the street from a local grocery store. He saw Grace emerge carrying two heavy bags of groceries. Her belly was noticeably round now, projecting under her thin blue summer dress. She looked tired, pale, but strangely serene. As she walked, she paused, placed her hand over her abdomen, and smiled—a soft, radiant smile that Sebastian had not seen since she used to lie beside him in his bed.
His hands had clenched into fists around his leather gloves. He wanted to get out of the car. He wanted to carry those groceries for her. He wanted to demand why she was buying cheap, non-organic food when he had billions sitting in international banks.
“She’s lying,” he reminded himself fiercely. “She’s playing a long game. She’s waiting for the birth to sue me.”
Yet, she had not filed a single legal document. She had not reached out to his lawyers. She had taken nothing from him.
In late August, during Grace’s twenty-eighth week of pregnancy, the calm shattered.
Grace was working a late night shift in the pediatric emergency wing. A severe thunder-and-lightning storm swept across Lake Michigan, plunging parts of the city into power outages. Mercy Lake’s backup generators kicked in, but the emergency room was chaotic, flooded with victims of traffic accidents caused by the blackouts.
Grace was tending to a seven-year-old girl with a high fever when a group of four men walked into the waiting room. They didn't look like patients. They wore heavy dark jackets despite the heat, and their eyes scanned the room with predatory calculation.
Grace recognized the lead man immediately. His name was Marco Moretti—the ruthless younger brother of Donato Moretti, Sebastian’s primary rival in the city's shipping and extortion network.
Marco had been shot in the arm during a turf dispute an hour earlier. He refused to go to a major trauma center where the police would be notified, choosing instead to force his way into the pediatric wing’s triage station.
“You,” Marco barked, pointing a bloody finger at Grace. “Fix this. Now.”
Grace backed up slightly, her hand instinctively coming up to protect her large bump. “Sir, this is the pediatric department. The adult emergency room is down the hall—”
“I don't give a damn!” Marco snarled, stepping into her space and shoving a security guard who tried to intervene. The guard hit the wall hard and slouched down, stunned. Marco pulled a suppressed pistol from beneath his coat and pressed it against Grace’s forehead. “You treat me right now, nurse, or I start shooting people in these beds.”
Grace’s heart hammered violently against her ribs. Fear, cold and terrifying, flooded her system. She could feel her baby inside her twisting uncomfortably, reacting to her sudden surge of adrenaline.
“Okay,” Grace said, her voice trembling but resolute. “Okay. Sit down. I’ll get the trauma kit.”
Outside the hospital, parked in the rain, Viktor saw Marco Moretti’s car sitting in the ambulance bay. He immediately dialed Sebastian.
“Boss,” Viktor said, his tone urgent. “Marco Moretti just walked into Mercy Lake ER with three armed men. Grace is on shift tonight.”
On the top floor of the Rourke Tower, Sebastian stood up so fast his leather executive chair flipped backward onto the rug.
“How many men do you have with you?” Sebastian demanded, his voice dropping into a lethal whisper.
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“Just three in the surveillance van, boss.”
“Call for backup,” Sebastian ordered, grabbing his coat and the weapon from his desk drawer. “If Marco so much as looks at her wrong before I get there, put a bullet through his head. I'm coming down.”
