Chapter 2 - The Secret in the Vault
Headline: "A brilliant surgeon by day, a monster by night. The nurse discovers the terrifying truth behind the hospital’s 'Golden Boy'."
Mara didn't go home. She couldn't.
She knew Dr. Cross’s influence. By tomorrow morning, her termination papers would be processed, and a black mark would be placed on her nursing license, making her unhireable nationwide. She needed leverage. She needed to know what Adrian Vale meant when he said, “Find out what he’s hiding.”
Using her keycard—which hadn't been deactivated yet—Mara slipped into the administrative wing of Saint Jude’s Hospital. The corridors were dark and silent, a stark contrast to the chaotic emergency room below.
She made her way to Cross’s private office. It was a luxurious suite, filled with leather furniture and expensive art, paid for by the millions he brought into the hospital through high-profile donors.
She began searching his desk. Tax documents, research papers, expensive bottles of scotch—nothing unusual for a corrupt, arrogant doctor. But then, she remembered the locked cabinet behind the painting of the hospital's founding donors.
With trembling fingers, she approached the painting and swung it open. A digital keypad glowed in the dark.
"Think, Mara," she whispered to herself.
What would a narcissist like Cross use as a password? His anniversary? His graduation year? She tried his medical license number, which she had memorized from countless forms.
Beep. Green light. The lock clicked open.
Inside the small safe was a single black ledger and a flash drive labeled “Project Phoenix.”
Mara grabbed the ledger and flipped it open. Her breath caught in her throat. It wasn't medical research. It was a list of patients, all of them wealthy foreign dignitaries, followed by a list of "donors"—all of them poor, undocumented immigrants who had entered Saint Jude’s charity clinic and never been discharged.
"Organ trafficking," she whispered, her blood running cold.
Dr. Julian Cross wasn't just a surgeon. He was using the hospital’s charity wing as a harvesting ground, selling organs on the black market to the highest bidder, hiding the transactions under the guise of "experimental surgeries."
"It's a beautiful system, isn't it?"
Mara spun around, her heart leaping into her throat.
Dr. Cross was standing in the doorway, his silhouette framed by the dim hallway light. He had changed out of his bloody scrubs into a tailored suit. In his hand, he held a heavy silver scalpel.
"You always were too smart for your own good, Mara," Cross said, stepping into the room and closing the door behind him. "A quiet girl from a poor background, trying to save her mommy. You should have just taken the firing and walked away."
"You're a monster," Mara said, backing up against the desk, clutching the ledger to her chest. "These people trusted you."
"These people were nobodies," Cross sneered, taking another step closer. "They contributed nothing to society. I turned their worthless lives into millions of dollars that funded this state-of-the-art facility. I save thousands of lives a year with that money!"
"By murdering others?"
May you like
"A necessary sacrifice," Cross said. He raised the scalpel. "And now, you're about to become another unfortunate casualty of a hospital break-in. Such a pity."
Before Cross could spring forward, the heavy oak door of the office was blown off its hinges.
