[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-bl-bound-to-my-enemy-the-billionaire-who-took-my":3,"chapter-bl-bound-to-my-enemy-the-billionaire-who-took-my-bl-bound-to-my-enemy-the-billionaire-who-took-my-chapter-265":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"english","[BL] Bound to My Enemy: The Billionaire Who Took My Girl",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},1735699,2219,"Chapter 265: Another person’s hell","bl-bound-to-my-enemy-the-billionaire-who-took-my-chapter-265",265,"\u003Cp>NICK\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The hospital is never truly quiet, despite what the pamphlets suggest. It simply shifts into a different register of noise.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At 9:17 PM, the air has the specific, stale quality of a building that has been breathing in the exhaustion of its staff for twelve hours.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Most people are running on their second wind, that brittle energy that appears once the first wind has been thoroughly exhausted.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I snapped my latex gloves off, a sharp, percussive sound that signaled the end of my second successful surgery of the day.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I rubbed the back of my neck, a ritual I’ve performed a thousand times without ever deciding to.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Success is a tedious baseline in my profession.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It’s the minimum requirement. Anything less is a failure, and there is no \"above.\" You either do the job correctly, or you don’t.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Today, I had done it correctly. Twice.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I hadn’t eaten since yesterday. My body was making a quiet, nagging accounting of the deficit, but I ignored it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I’m never hungry while the work is in front of me. The hunger only arrives when the adrenaline leaves, and right now, the adrenaline was packing its bags.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I was halfway through signing out, pen poised over a case file, when the phone at the nurse’s station rang.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I answered before the second ring. I knew the tone of that particular phone.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Bennett,\" I said.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The information from the OR coordinator was, as always, minimal. Efficiency is the only thing that matters in a crisis. Multiple gunshot wounds. Male. Unstable. OR Three. Now.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I let out a single, brief sigh, the only indulgence I allowed myself, and set the pen down.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>My case file remained open, the ink still wet on the signature. I was already moving toward the elevators before the coordinator finished the sentence.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I don’t run in hospitals.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Running is for people who have lost control of the situation. It attracts attention and creates a localized bloom of panic in the corridors.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Instead, I use a controlled, fast-paced walk that covers ground with surgical precision.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A nurse fell Into step beside me as I hit the third floor, handing me a clipboard while reciting fragments of a life that was currently leaking out onto a gurney.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Brought in approximately twenty minutes ago,\" she said, her voice a rapid-fire clip. \"Multiple entry wounds. Chest and abdomen primarily. Blood loss significant. We’ve started two units, but he’s still diving.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"BP,\" I demanded.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She rattled off the numbers. They were abysmal. Manageable, perhaps, but only by the slimmest of margins.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"OR Three prepped?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Ready when you are.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"I’m already there,\" I said, pushing through the double doors.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The scrub bay was ahead, but my eyes, always scanning, always reading the room, caught a figure at the edge of my peripheral vision.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Against the wall, sitting directly on the linoleum floor, was someone covered in the specific, dark rust of dried blood. Beside him stood a man whose posture was so familiar it felt like a physical weight in the hallway.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Charles Wolfe.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I didn’t stop, but I filed the information instantly. If Charles Wolfe was here at this hour, the patient in OR Three wasn’t just another gunshot victim.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He was a political catastrophe or a personal one. Probably both.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I looked back at the figure on the floor. The hair was pink, an absurd, neon contrast to the sterile white of the corridor and the dark stains on his clothes.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wait—\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Cyan.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I didn’t freeze... I don’t freeze... instead, I recalibrated.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In the half-second it took to reach the scrub bay, I processed the collision of two separate worlds.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The person who had punched me on a sidewalk was now sitting on my hospital floor.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Which meant the person on my table was exactly who I thought he was.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The water ran hot over my hands. I picked up the scrub brush, the bristles stiff against my skin.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>There is a specific focus required for scrubbing, a meditative quality that forces the mind to narrow until there is nothing but the soap, the water, and the skin.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The nurse stood beside me, delivering the final rundown. Factual. Sequential.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Organs,\" I said, not looking up from my hands.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Possible damage to the left lobe of the liver,\" she said. \"One round lodged near the lower rib. Entry wound suggests a high-velocity projectile.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Count.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Seven confirmed entry wounds. Three recovered pre-op by the trauma team. Four remaining.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Seven. I turned the water off with my elbow and held my hands up, letting the excess moisture drip.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I was gowned and gloved within seconds. I moved into the OR, leaving the person who recognized the Wolfes behind.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Now, I was only the surgeon.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The room was a cathedral of white light and stainless steel. The monitors provided the only music, a rhythmic, frantic beeping that told me exactly how little time we had. The patient was already draped, the surgical field opened.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I stepped up to the table and looked at the face. Even pale, even slack under the influence of anesthesia, it was unmistakable.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Cassian Wolfe.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The brain is a strange organ. In a fraction of a second, it explained everything I had seen in the hallway.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Charles’s presence. Cyan’s blood-soaked clothes and his vacant stare. The entire story was written in the wreckage on the table.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Talk to me,\" I said.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The team began. Instruments were passed. Positions were taken. The work began.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The first hour was spent finding the damage. It was a map of violence. I moved my hands with a precision that exists below the level of conscious thought.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At this stage of my career, I don’t \"decide\" to cut; I simply cut where the body demands it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>My mind, however, ran on a parallel track. It’s a curse of my particular intelligence, I cannot fully shut down the analytical engine, even when I am elbow-deep in a man’s chest.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I thought about the work first. The work always takes everything.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Retractor,\" I said.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The instrument appeared. I placed it, felt the tension, and signaled for the team to hold.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"There.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I located the first round. It was wedged near the spine, a jagged piece of lead that had done a spectacular amount of damage on its way in.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I removed it, the metal clinking into a stainless-steel basin. One down.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The second hour was a battle against internal bleeding. The source was a shredded artery near the liver.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I found it, addressed it, and watched the monitors. They responded slowly, the numbers creeping In the right direction like a tired climber.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Cyan arrived at the edge of my thoughts somewhere between the second and third bullet. I pictured him on the floor.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The pink hair. The dried blood. The expression I had caught for a split second before I entered the scrub bay.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It wasn’t the expression I expected. It wasn’t the look of the person who had looked at me with such cool indifference before hitting me.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was something else. Something that didn’t fit the neat category I had assigned to him after Lila’s research and the bruise on my face.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Suction,\" I barked. The field cleared. \"Third one. Two millimeters left. Watch the vein.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The third hour was the slow, agonizing work of organ repair. It was the specific patience of suturing what cannot be hurried.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I didn’t hurry. If I rushed, he’d be back on this table in six hours, or he’d be In the morgue. Neither was acceptable.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I read the story of the fight in the damage. Seven wounds. The trajectory of each spoke of a man who kept moving through a hail of fire long after any reasonable person would have stopped.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was a fight. A significant one. Multiple shooters. Cassian Wolfe had fought his way here.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The fourth bullet was the hardest. It was buried deep in the muscle of the thigh, dangerously close to the femoral artery.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It required an angle that made my back ache. I adjusted my stance, the room falling into a heavy silence. The only sound was the mechanical wheeze of the ventilator.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Got it,\" I said.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The room seemed to exhale. Not much, but enough to notice.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The fourth hour was spent closing. Putting back together what the world had torn apart. Layer by layer, suture by suture.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>My hands remained steady, my body refusing to feel the fatigue until the last stitch was tied.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The OR doors swung open behind me. I pulled my mask down and stripped off my gown. The exhaustion hit me then, not a wave, but a tide.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Four hours of standing perfectly still while doing something enormous is a specific kind of drain. I was more tired than I thought was possible.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I scanned the corridor out of habit.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Cyan was still there. Same position. Same wall. The blood on his clothes was dark now, completely dry.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>His hair obscured his face, but his posture was that of someone who had been carved out of stone.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He looked like he was afraid to move, as if a single shift in weight would require him to make a decision about what came next.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Charles approached me immediately. The man never waits for information; he intercepts it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Mr. Bennett,\" he said. His voice was controlled, his composure iron-clad, but even he couldn’t hide the four hours of waiting entirely.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"He’s stable,\" I said, leading with the only fact that mattered. \"The surgery went well. We removed four rounds. There was significant blood loss and organ damage, but the repairs are holding. He’ll need a long recovery, but he’s stable.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Charles listened, his face moving briefly, a microscopic shift in the set of his mouth, before becoming still again. \"Prognosis.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Guarded,\" I said, my tone clinical. \"The next twenty-four hours are critical. If infection doesn’t set in and the repairs hold, he has a reasonable chance of full recovery.\" I paused. \"He’s strong. His body fought the anesthesia as much as it fought the injuries.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Charles nodded, as if he had already accounted for this. \"Thank you,\" he said. The two words were heavy, carrying a weight that felt almost out of place in a hospital.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I started to turn away, but my eyes moved, against my own intention, to the figure on the floor.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Cyan lifted his head. His eyes found mine.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I didn’t see the person Lila had described over dinner. I didn’t see the Prime Minister’s secret son, or the forensic psychology whiz, or the brat who had punched me.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I just saw someone who had been sitting in his own hell for four hours, covered in someone else’s blood, holding himself together with the last of his strength.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>His eyes looked through me. There was a specific vacancy in them, the look of a person who has used every ounce of energy just to get to this moment and has nothing left for the act of seeing.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It pissed me off.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I didn’t like being looked through. I didn’t like the vacancy. I felt the irritation, felt it prickle under my skin, but I didn’t examine it. I simply pushed it away.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I looked away first. I began the long walk down the corridor, toward the exit, toward whatever version of \"home\" was waiting for me or so I thought.\u003C\u002Fp>",1892,"2026-06-06T16:23:43.455Z",1,"novelbin.me","7f8c52c6e87cca0c71433fd1a187d05c4b7694838fdc4876697b6aba91918e4c","bl-bound-to-my-enemy-the-billionaire-who-took-my-chapter-266","bl-bound-to-my-enemy-the-billionaire-who-took-my-chapter-264",307,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fbl-bound-to-my-enemy-the-billionaire-who-took-my-cover.jpg"]