Chapter 4 - The Shadow of Mercy General
The basement morgue of Mercy General Hospital smelled of bleach, cold steel, and old copper.
Gideon stood over the stainless-steel table where the body of Nurse Evelyn Vance lay covered to the chest in a green plastic sheet. Her throat had been cut with surgical precision—a message sent in blood to anyone who thought they could help the Mercer family uncover the truth.
Dr. Hayes, the city coroner and a man who owed his medical license entirely to Gideon’s protection, wiped his glasses with a paper towel.
“She died around midnight, Mr. Mercer,” Hayes said quietly, avoiding Gideon’s eyes. “Clean cut. Professional. The kind of work you only see from contract killers out of the West Side.”
“Did she leave anything behind?” Gideon asked. His voice was deathly calm, the kind of calm that preceded a massacre.
“Her locker at the hospital was turned out,” Hayes replied, shaking his head. “Security cameras in the maternity ward were wiped between 2:00 and 4:00 AM. But before she died, Evelyn left a digital drop on an encrypted drive attached to her personal key fob. She knew she was being hunted.”
Hayes handed Gideon a small black USB drive.
Gideon pocketed it. “Thank you, Doctor. Make sure her family receives fifty thousand dollars from my private accounts. Cover all funeral expenses.”
“I’ll see to it, Boss.”
Ten minutes later, inside the armored back of a black Suburban idling in the hospital parking garage, Gideon plugged the USB drive into his encrypted laptop.
The screen flickered to life. A single video file popped up: Evelyn_Statement.mp4.
Gideon clicked play.
The video showed Nurse Evelyn sitting in a cramped breakroom, looking terrified, casting nervous glances over her shoulder.
“If you’re watching this, I’m dead,” Evelyn’s voice trembled on the recording. “Two years ago, I was working the night shift at St. Jude’s when they brought in Mrs. Lydia Mercer. Her car had been pulled from the river. Everyone thought she was gone. But she had a pulse—faint, but there. Mr. Nolan Mercer was there at the hospital. He paid off the attending physician to falsify the death certificate and declare her dead on arrival.”
Gideon gripped the edges of the laptop so hard the plastic casing cracked.
“Nolan didn't want her dead right away,” the nurse continued, tears spilling down her cheeks. “He wanted her locked away in a private psychiatric facility upstate—the San Cristobal sanatorium—under a false name, to control her inheritance and the trust funds. But two weeks ago... she went into labor. She gave birth to a healthy baby girl inside that hellhole. She smuggled the baby out through a sympathetic orderly last night before they could silence her permanently. She told me to get the baby to Ironwood Mansion. She said... she said Gideon was the only one who could stop them.”
The video cut to black.
Gideon sat frozen in the dim light of the laptop screen.
Lydia wasn't dead.
She was alive, locked away in San Cristobal sanatorium—a black-site psychiatric prison tucked deep in the wooded hills of Wisconsin, run by men who answered to the highest bidder in the Chicago underworld.
And their daughter was sitting safely in a pale yellow nursery upstairs at Ironwood Mansion, while Nolan Mercer walked around believing he had won.
Gideon closed the laptop. He looked up at Pierce, who was sitting in the front passenger seat watching the rearview mirror.
“Pierce,” Gideon said softly.
May you like
“Boss?”
“Call the tactical squad. Tell them to draw full combat gear and load the heavy transport vans.” Gideon’s eyes flashed with a cold, feral light. “We’re taking a trip to Wisconsin.”
