Something that could bring everything down.
They wheeled him into the emergency room, lights blinding, voices overlapping, hands checking vitals—but Adrien’s focus never left Emily as she was guided alongside him.
“You need to stay,” he told her again, more urgently now. “Whatever you think this is, it’s bigger. And you’re already part of it.”
Emily stopped just inside the doorway, the chaos of the hospital swirling around her, and for a moment, she looked like she might run.
Because running was what people like her did to survive.
Disappear. Stay unnoticed. Stay alive.
But then her hand moved again to her stomach, and something shifted in her expression, something firmer, more resolute.
“I don’t get to run anymore,” she said quietly.
Adrien understood.
Because neither did he.
A nurse tried to separate them, guiding Emily toward another area, but Adrien reached out, catching her wrist just long enough to stop her.
“I’ll find you,” he said.
Emily nodded once.
“You’d better,” she replied.
And then they were pulled apart.
Adrien was rushed deeper into the hospital, surrounded by machines and voices, but his mind was no longer on his injuries or the near fall that had almost ended everything.
It was on the choice ahead.
He could go to the police, expose everything, trust a system he knew could be bought, manipulated, delayed.
Or he could handle it himself.
Quietly.
Decisively.
Dangerously.
For the first time in years, Adrien Cole realized that logic alone wouldn’t be enough to guide him through what came next.
Because this time, it wasn’t just his life on the line.
It was hers.
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