PART 2: THE SECRET BENEATH GIDEON ROURKE’S WOUND 🩸❄️

The room fell silent.

For several seconds, no one moved. The wind screamed against the cabin, and the oil lamp flickered above Gideon Rourke’s motionless body.

Then Wade Barrett stepped away from the door.

“Do whatever you have to do,” he said. “Just don’t let him die.”

Eliza nodded once.

“Boil water. Bring every clean cloth you can find. Owen, keep that lamp burning. Amos, hold his shoulders if he begins to move.”

Amos looked offended. “You expect me to take orders from you?”

“No,” Eliza replied, reaching for her instruments. “I expect you to decide whether your pride matters more than his life.”

Wade almost smiled despite the terror on his face.

Amos said nothing more.

Eliza washed her hands, cleaned the skin around the wound, and studied the sтιтches Dr. Alden had left behind. Something about them bothered her. The doctor had worked quickly, certainly, but the thread was unusually thick, and several sтιтches had been pulled so тιԍнтly that the skin around them had begun to split.

She leaned closer.

There was something else.

A faint discoloration beneath the lowest sтιтch, almost invisible beneath the bruising. It formed a narrow line extending away from the original wound, as though something had traveled beneath the skin.

Eliza touched the area gently.

Gideon’s body remained frighteningly still.

“Wade,” she said, “did the bear attack him in the forest?”

“Yes. Near the northern ridge.”

“Did anyone see what happened?”

“I did. The animal struck him and threw him against a fallen tree. Gideon killed it before it could attack again.”

“And then?”

“We carried him to Alden’s office. The doctor cleaned the wound, sтιтched him up, and told us to keep him warm.”

“How long after the attack did he lose consciousness?”

“Three days later.”

Eliza’s fingers stopped moving.

Three days.

A wound that severe could become infected, but the narrow discoloration and the strange swelling made her suspect there was more to the story.

She reached for a small pair of scissors.

“I need to remove these sтιтches.”

Owen swallowed hard. “Will it hurt him?”

“If he can feel anything at all, yes.”

“And if he can’t?”

Eliza looked at Gideon’s gray face.

“Then we have a much bigger problem.”

She snipped the first sтιтch.

A thick stream of foul black fluid spilled across the cloth beneath his ribs.

Owen stumbled backward, knocking into a chair.

“Dear God!”

Gideon’s entire body suddenly arched off the table.

Wade and Amos rushed forward, pinning his shoulders while Owen grabbed his legs. The table scraped across the floorboards as Gideon convulsed, a deep, strangled sound escaping his throat.

Eliza barely had time to steady her instruments.

“Hold him still!”

“He was unconscious!” Wade shouted.

“I know!”

She worked quickly, allowing the trapped fluid to drain while carefully examining the damaged tissue. The smell was worse now, but she forced herself to concentrate.

Then she saw it.

Beneath the torn muscle lay a dark, rigid shape that did not belong there.

At first, she thought it was a fragment of bone.

But bones did not have that shape.

Eliza adjusted the lamp and leaned closer.

A thin, jagged object was buried deep inside Gideon’s side, surrounded by inflamed tissue. Its surface glistened beneath the blood, and one end appeared to have broken off.

She reached for her forceps, then stopped.

Whatever it was, pulling it out carelessly could cause more damage.

“Wade,” she said quietly, “I need you to tell me something.”

He stared at the wound.

“What?”

“When the bear attacked him, did you see it tear his coat?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see anything strike him afterward? A branch, a broken fence, anything sharp?”

Wade shook his head.

“Nothing. Why?”

Eliza lifted the edge of the torn fabric lying beside Gideon.

There was a small puncture in his shirt, separate from the ragged tear made by the animal’s claws.

It was narrow, almost perfectly straight.

Amos leaned closer.

“That wasn’t made by a bear.”

“No,” Eliza whispered. “It wasn’t.”

Before anyone could speak again, Gideon’s fingers curled around the edge of the table.

His eyes remained closed, but his lips began to move.

Eliza bent toward him.

“What is it, Gideon?”

A rough whisper escaped his throat.

“Don’t… let him…”

Then his body went limp again.

Wade stared at her. “Don’t let who?”

Eliza had no answer.

She returned her attention to the object embedded in his side. Using the forceps, she carefully tested whether it moved. It shifted slightly, revealing a thin edge of dark metal.

A fragment of a blade.

Not a branch. Not a piece of bone.

A blade.

And it had been inside Gideon for four days.

Eliza’s stomach тιԍнтened as she remembered Dr. Alden’s confident explanation: the wound had been cleaned, the bleeding had been stopped, and there was nothing left to worry about.

But if Alden had examined the injury properly, how could he have missed something like this?

Unless he hadn’t missed it.

Unless he had known.

“Wade,” she said, keeping her voice low, “I need you to go to Dr. Alden’s office.”

Wade looked toward the door. “In this storm?”

“Bring me his medical bag, his records of Gideon’s treatment, and anything he wrote down about the wound.”

Amos frowned. “Why would you need his records?”

“Because I want to know whether he made a mistake.”

She looked at the dark metal again.

“Or whether someone wanted Gideon to die.”

Nobody spoke.

Then a sudden pounding rattled the front door.

Three sharp knocks.

Everyone turned.

A voice called from outside.

“Open up! I’m looking for Gideon Rourke!”

Wade reached for the rifle leaning beside the fireplace.

Eliza raised one hand, silently warning him to wait.

The voice came again, louder this time.

“I’m Dr. Alden. I know he’s in there.”

Amos hurried toward the window and peered through a narrow gap in the curtains.

His face drained of color.

“There’s someone else with him,” he whispered.

“How many?” Wade asked.

“Two men.”

“Who are they?”

Amos didn’t answer immediately.

He looked at Gideon, then at the blade buried in his side.

Finally, he turned toward Eliza.

“One of them is Silas Vane.”

Even Eliza recognized that name.

Silas Vane was the wealthy landowner who had spent the past year trying to buy Rourke Crest. Gideon had refused every offer, despite the enormous sums Vane had placed on the table.

And now Vane had arrived in the middle of a blizzard, accompanied by the very doctor who had supposedly treated Gideon.

Alden knocked again.

“Eliza! I need to examine my patient immediately!”

She glanced at the bloodied cloth, the embedded blade, and the fresh trail of fluid running down Gideon’s side.

Then she made a decision.

“Wade, put out the lamp near the window. Amos, take Owen into the pantry and keep him quiet.”

“What are you going to do?” Wade whispered.

Eliza reached for a clean cloth and covered the wound.

“I’m going to find out why a doctor who claims he saved this man’s life has come back in the middle of a ᴅᴇᴀᴅly storm.”

She walked toward the door but stopped before lifting the latch.

On the other side, Dr. Alden spoke again, his voice suddenly cold.

“Eliza, I know you’ve opened his wound.”

Her blood ran cold.

Alden had no way of knowing that unless—

“Listen carefully,” he continued. “Whatever you found inside Gideon’s body, leave it exactly where it is.”

Eliza stared at the door.

Behind her, Gideon drew a shallow, ragged breath.

Then Alden delivered the words that changed everything.

“Because if you remove that blade, you’ll destroy the only evidence that can prove who really attacked him.”

Eliza slowly turned toward the table.

The metal fragment lay beneath the torn muscle, hidden from the world for four days.

And suddenly, she understood something far more terrifying than a botched medical treatment.

Gideon Rourke might not have been brought to her cabin to be saved.

He might have been brought there because someone believed she would finish the job.

But who had put the blade inside him—and why was Dr. Alden so desperate to keep it there?

To be continued in Part 3…