Addiction is a killer

River

The sterile scent of antiseptic clung to everything in that hospital room, blankets, curtains, even my skin. I sat by the side of Kaiden’s bed, my elbows resting on my knees, fingers steepled beneath my chin. He hadn’t stirred in the last hour. His chest rose and fell in slow, shallow rhythm, skin pale, body far too still for someone who had once been so full of life and sarcasm.

But he was alive. And for the first time in weeks, that was something I held onto like it was oxygen.

Still, Bernard’s words echoed in my mind like a curse I couldn’t shake.

You’ve angered the man on top. You’ll regret it.

I didn’t scare easily. But I wasn’t naïve. Men like that, the ones who didn’t exist in databases, who could erase identities and fabricate whole people were never just ghosts. They were storms hiding behind smoke, and we’d just thrown a stone into their eye.

I stared at Kaiden’s face, his cheeks sunken, dark circles under his eyes. The bastard had injected him with somethin