001: The Collection

Sage Monroe had her hands inside a man’s chest when Kade Blackwood walked into her operating room.

She did not look up immediately because she was busy clamping a bleeding artery, but she noticed when the doors opened. 

The operating room had a kind of quiet tension that came with life-and-death work, and whoever just walked in had messed it up completely.

“Clamp,” she said to Jenny, her surgical nurse.

“Dr. Monroe.” The voice was deep and unfamiliar, it came from somewhere near the door.

Sage looked up and saw three men in dark suits standing just in front of the sterile field as if they had never heard of infection protocols.

The one in front was tall with black hair, with a face that looked like it had been carved from stone. 

She recognized him from the photos she had found in Marcus’s apartment after he died.

Kade Blackwood.

Her stomach dropped, but her hands stayed steady as she worked on the artery.

“Gosh, this is an operating room. Get out.”

“We need to talk.” He did not move or even blink.

“I’m in the middle of surgery as you can see.” She put a stitch on another torn tissue and pulled it tight. 

“Right now, whatever you want can wait.”

“It’s been three months already.”

Sage felt sweat cringe down her forehead but she kept her focus on the patient in front of her. 

The man on her table had a name, a family and a life that depended on her not screwing this up, and she wasn’t about to let some debt collector ruin that.

“Then it can wait another twenty minutes,” she said. “Or you can leave, your choice.”

There was a long pause where she thought he might drag her out of the room by force, but then she heard him move to the side. 

When she risked another glance, he was resting his back against the wall with his arms crossed, watching her like a predator watches its prey.

She ended the surgery in eighteen minutes, checked the stitches twice, and made sure the patient’s vitals were stable before she stepped back.

“Close him up,” she told Jenny, then stripped off her gloves and walked out without looking at Kade.

He followed her into the scrub room and his two men stayed by the door like guards.

Sage turned on the water and started scrubbing her hands, more to buy herself time, because she needed to. She already knew why he was here and what he wanted, and there was no good answer she could think of giving him.

“What do you want?” she asked anyway.

“You know what I want.”

She kept scrubbing even though her hands were already clean. “I’m working on it.”

“Are you?” He moved closer and she could perceive his cologne, something expensive that probably cost more than her rent. 

“Because I have not seen a single payment in three months.” He said raising his right eyebrow.

“I need more time.”

“Your brother’s been dead for three months,” Kade said, with his flat and businesslike voice. “He owed me five hundred thousand dollars and he signed your name on the loan. That makes it your debt now.”

Sage turned off the water and grabbed a towel, hard enough her knuckles went white. 

“Marcus forged my signature. I didn’t even know about that loan until after he died.”

“Then prove it.” He said it like a challenge. 

“Take me to court. Hire a lawyer. While you are drowning in legal fees I’ll foreclose on this clinic and everything else you own.”

Both their eyes met. “I was busy burying my brother and trying to keep people alive. I haven’t had time to…”

“Not my problem.” He cut her off without raising his voice. 

“You have forty-eight hours to pay what is owed.”

“That is impossible.”

“Then I take the clinic.” He looked around the scrub room like he was already calculating what it was worth. “Your apartment. All of it.”

The unfairness of it hit her like a physical blow. she had spent years building this clinic from nothing, treating patients who had nowhere else to go, and now this stranger was going to take it all because her brother couldn’t stop gambling.

“I do not have that kind of money,” she said, and hated how desperate she sounded. “I run a free clinic. My patients can’t afford to go anywhere else. If you shut this place down…”

“I do not care.” His expression didn’t change at all. “Your brother took my money and lost it. Now someone has to pay it back.”

“He is dead!”

“Which is why I’m talking to you.” Kade straightened his cuffs in a gesture that was probably meant to look casual but just made him seem more dangerous. 

“Forty-eight hours, that is what you have Dr. Monroe. Five hundred thousand dollars is what I’m owed.”

“There has to be another way out of this.” Sage said helplessly.

He looked at her and reached into his jacket and pulled out a black envelope, the kind with heavy paper and a wax seal. 

He dropped it on the counter between them.

“What is that?” she asked.

“An alternative to bankruptcy.” He stepped back toward the door. “Read it, then think about it. You have forty-eight hours.”

“Just tell me what it says.”

“Read the contract.” 

He stepped toward the door. His men stepped aside immediately. He paused once more and looked back at her, there was no softness in his expression. 

“And Dr. Monroe? Don’t waste time pretending you have options. We both know you don’t.”