Chapter Two The Devil's Bargain

Marco survived. I didn't sleep.

Sleep architecture: completely destroyed.

REM cycles: nonexistent.

Hours of actual rest: zero point two, maybe.

"You should eat."

I looked up from Marco's monitors. Frank stood in the doorway holding a plate of food.

"I'll eat when I leave."

"Then you'll starve." He set it down anyway, sitting uninvited. "You saved my brother. That means something in my world."

"What does it mean?"

"It means you're under my protection. Anyone who touches you, they will answer to me. It also means you owe me."

"How generous. Considering you're the one who kidnapped me. And I don't owe you anything. I saved your brother, we're even."

"That's not how this works."

"Then explain how it works."

He leaned back, studying me like I was a particularly interesting chess problem. "You saved Marco. I'm grateful. But you also have information now. Faces, names, location of this facility." He paused. "That makes you a liability."

"So you'll kill me?" 

"I'm going to employ you."

"You mean you're going to trap me here."

"I'm offering you a job.” He stood, walked to the window, hands in his pockets. “I need a doctor I can trust. You need a way out of whatever hole you dug yourself into.”

"What hole?"

"The fake medical license. The creditors. The fact that Jane Evan didn't exist until two years ago." He paused. "The death certificate filed in Boston with your real name on it. Should I go on?"

He leaned forward. "So here's the deal. Three months. You work for me, treat my people, ask no questions. And at the end I give you enough money to disappear for real this time.” 

"And if I refuse?"

"Then I make one phone call. The medical board investigates, finds the fake license, you lose everything." His pupils dilated like he'd spotted a prey "And the people you're running from? They find you. Because I'll make sure they do."

My brain did what it always did under extreme stress: went clinical.

Heart rate: elevated (approximately 130 bpm)

Respiratory rate: shallow, rapid 

Blood pressure: spiking

“Let me get this straight. You kidnapped me, offered me a job, and now you're blackmailing me?"

"I prefer to think of it as aggressive recruitment."

"That's not funny.”

“Most people don't argue with me, Jane."

"Most people aren't doctors who watched one man try to kill them for having a conscience. I did what you ask. Now let me go.”

"I can't do that. You have twenty-four hours to decide." He stood, heading for the door.

"I don't need twenty four hours! I already know my answer!”

He paused, hand on the doorframe waiting. 

"Go to hell you criminal.”

He didn't react. Just walked out, leaving me alone with the plate of food I'd never eat.

I waited until 11 PM.

The compound was as quiet as it ever got with armed guards patrolling the grounds. I'd spent the evening watching them through my window, tracking their patterns. 

I packed light, just the essentials I'd brought to the clinic that night. Cash I kept hidden in my jacket lining. The fake ID I never went anywhere without. I couldn't take much. Couldn't risk being weighed down if I had to run.

The lock on my door was standard residential. I'd learned to pick locks six months into my new life, another survival skill YouTube had taught me. Thirty seconds with a paperclip and I was out.

The hallway was empty. I moved quickly, quietly, keeping to the shadows. My heart hammered so hard I was sure someone would hear it. Down the back staircase. Through the kitchen out the door.

"Going somewhere, Doc?"

I froze.

Vito Martinez stepped out of the shadows. Frank's head of security. 

I ran.

So incredibly stupid. He was trained, I wasn't. He caught me, one arm wrapping around my waist, lifting me off my feet like I weighed nothing.

"Easy, Doc. Nobody's gonna hurt you."

"Let me go!"

"Can't do that."

I twisted, tried to elbow him, remembered the self-defense moves I'd half-learned from online videos. None of it worked. Vito just held me effortlessly until I stopped struggling.

"You done?"

I sagged in his grip. "Please. Please just let me go. I won't tell anyone anything, I swear."

"Boss wants to see you."

"No, leave me alone!"

But he was already carrying me back toward the house.

Frank was waiting in his office.

"Thank you, Vito. That'll be all."

Vito nodded and left, closing the door behind him.

Frank studied me in silence. I couldn't read his expression. Anger? Disappointment? Something colder?

"I gave you a choice," he said finally. "You chose wrong."

"You gave me an ultimatum, not a choice."

"Call it whatever you want.”

"Do you have any idea how easy it would have been for you to die tonight?" He stood, walked around the desk. "You got twenty feet from my building. There are snipers on the roof who could have dropped you before you reached the wall. Vito was the kind option."

I said nothing. My hands were shaking.

“Run now, and I'll make sure whoever you are running from finds you in three days. I guarantee it.”

The cruelty of it knocked the breath out of me. He would actually do it. This wasn't a bluff.

"I hate you." 

"You don't have to like me. You just have to survive me." He leaned against his desk, arms crossed. "Now. Are you going to try that again? Or are we going to have an understanding?”

I had no good options. Just bad ones and worse ones. Frank Costello had me exactly where he wanted me.

“You said you would give me twenty-four hours.”

“I did and you used them trying to escape." He slid a file across the desk, it had been sitting there the whole time. "I've had this ready since the moment you walked into my compound.”

My real name stared back from the top page.

“Sign the contract, Jane… or tomorrow morning this goes to the medical board.”