Surgical Precision

The air inside St. Jude’s Private Hospital tasted of ozone and institutional decay—a sterile mask for the rot beneath. Elias Thorne moved through the ICU wing not as a disgraced son, but as a predator reclaiming territory. His hospital badge, a relic from his tenure before the Thorne family’s calculated smear campaign, clicked against the reader at the restricted entrance. It was a bluff, an expired credential paired with a clinical gait that commanded obedience. The security guard, a man whose uniform was a size too tight and whose eyes were dull with corporate complacency, didn't even look up from his phone.

“Doctor,” the guard grunted, waving a hand toward the double doors. He assumed Elias belonged to the fleet of sycopha

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