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The drive to the hospital is a blur in my memory. I don’t remember the traffic lights. I don’t remember parking. I only remember the cold air hitting my face as I sprinted toward the emergency room doors. I flashed my military ID at the nurse’s station, breathless.
“Tessa Hunter. My wife. Where is she?”
The nurse looked at me with pity. That was the second warning. When the nurses look at you with pity, it means there is no good news.
“She is in the ICU, sir. Room 404. But you should know… the family is already there.”
The family.
My stomach twisted. Tessa’s family wasn’t like mine. I grew up with nothing, scrapping for every meal. Tessa grew up in a fortress. Her father, Victor Wolf, was a man who owned half the real estate in the county and the souls of the politicians who ran it. And then there were her brothers. Seven of them. Dominic, Evan, Felix, Grant, Ian, Kyle, and Mason.
